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DOI Artikel:Walanus, Wojciech: Z dziejów fotograficznej dokumentacji polskiego dziedzictwa kulturowego: Kampanie inwentaryzacyjne Adolfa Szyszko-Bohusza i Stefana Zaborowskiego
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.32786#0089
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SUMMARY
Wojciech Walanus
FROM THE HISTORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC
DOCUMENTATION OF THE POLISH CULTURAL
HERITAGE: THE RECORDING CAMPAIGNS
OF ADOLF SZYSZKO-BOHUSZ
AND STEFAN ZABOROWSKI
One of the main objectives of the Commission on Art
History of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cracow,
established in 1873, was to assemble all kind of informa-
tion and iconographic materials related to the historic
artefacts from the lands of the former Commonwealth
of Both Nations. At the time when Professor Marian
Sokołowski was the head of the Commission (1892-1911),
activities of this kind significantly intensified: numer-
ous collaborators of the Commission conducted random
fieldwork research in various regions of the partitioned
country and the materials they acquired (photographs in
particular) were sent to Cracow.
The point of departure of the present paper were high-
quality photographic prints, in the number of about three
hundred, currently held in the collection of the Photoli-
brary at the Art History Department of the Jagiellonian
University, depicting mostly historic buildings from the
area of the so-called Congress Kingdom of Poland and
from Lithuania. The photographs are the result of a re-
cording campaign initiated in 1905 by Adolf Szyszko-
Bohusz, then a student of architecture at the Academy of
Fine Arts in St Petersburg. Thanks to the financial contri-
bution of the Commission on Art History of the Acad-
emy of Arts and Sciences, during the following five years
Szyszko-Bohusz, together with a few of his fellow students
and the photographer Stefan Zaborowski, visited over
seventy locations, took over 1200 photographs and made
several hundred drawings. Thanks to the surviving cor-
respondence between Szyszko-Bohusz, Zaborowski and
Sokołowski, it was possible to follow the exact itinerary
of the recorders and establish precise dates for taking the
photographs. The ample archival material also enabled
a discussion of the role that photography played in the
work of the architects-recorders (as an aid in executing
descriptions and survey drawings) and in the research
of their mentor, Marian Sokołowski (as illustrations in
scholarly papers).
Special attention has been given to Stefan Zaborowski
(Fig. 17), an amateur photographer from Rawa Mazowiec-
ka, whose life and work are little known. He was a mem-
ber of two public organisations in Warsaw: the Polish So-
ciety of Photography Lovers (from 1905) and the Society
for the Protection of Historic Monuments (1906-1909);
was vividly interested in art history and it was probably
for that reason that he specialised in architectural pho-
tography. He considered this branch of photography as
a scholarly’ one, in contrast to ‘genre and artistic’ pho-
tography, although his own works show that a precise
distinction between these two categories is often impos-
sible to be made (see Figs 22-24). Worthy of mention is
a proposal, formulated by Zaborowski in 1910, to set up
a permanent photographic studio at the Academy of Arts
and Sciences that would serve scholars of various disci-
plines and be in charge of a collection of negatives (see
Appendix). This idea, however, was never realised, which
was one of the reasons for a conflict between Zaborowski
and Sokołowski. As a result, the photographer severed his
collaboration with the Academy.
SUMMARY
Wojciech Walanus
FROM THE HISTORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC
DOCUMENTATION OF THE POLISH CULTURAL
HERITAGE: THE RECORDING CAMPAIGNS
OF ADOLF SZYSZKO-BOHUSZ
AND STEFAN ZABOROWSKI
One of the main objectives of the Commission on Art
History of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cracow,
established in 1873, was to assemble all kind of informa-
tion and iconographic materials related to the historic
artefacts from the lands of the former Commonwealth
of Both Nations. At the time when Professor Marian
Sokołowski was the head of the Commission (1892-1911),
activities of this kind significantly intensified: numer-
ous collaborators of the Commission conducted random
fieldwork research in various regions of the partitioned
country and the materials they acquired (photographs in
particular) were sent to Cracow.
The point of departure of the present paper were high-
quality photographic prints, in the number of about three
hundred, currently held in the collection of the Photoli-
brary at the Art History Department of the Jagiellonian
University, depicting mostly historic buildings from the
area of the so-called Congress Kingdom of Poland and
from Lithuania. The photographs are the result of a re-
cording campaign initiated in 1905 by Adolf Szyszko-
Bohusz, then a student of architecture at the Academy of
Fine Arts in St Petersburg. Thanks to the financial contri-
bution of the Commission on Art History of the Acad-
emy of Arts and Sciences, during the following five years
Szyszko-Bohusz, together with a few of his fellow students
and the photographer Stefan Zaborowski, visited over
seventy locations, took over 1200 photographs and made
several hundred drawings. Thanks to the surviving cor-
respondence between Szyszko-Bohusz, Zaborowski and
Sokołowski, it was possible to follow the exact itinerary
of the recorders and establish precise dates for taking the
photographs. The ample archival material also enabled
a discussion of the role that photography played in the
work of the architects-recorders (as an aid in executing
descriptions and survey drawings) and in the research
of their mentor, Marian Sokołowski (as illustrations in
scholarly papers).
Special attention has been given to Stefan Zaborowski
(Fig. 17), an amateur photographer from Rawa Mazowiec-
ka, whose life and work are little known. He was a mem-
ber of two public organisations in Warsaw: the Polish So-
ciety of Photography Lovers (from 1905) and the Society
for the Protection of Historic Monuments (1906-1909);
was vividly interested in art history and it was probably
for that reason that he specialised in architectural pho-
tography. He considered this branch of photography as
a scholarly’ one, in contrast to ‘genre and artistic’ pho-
tography, although his own works show that a precise
distinction between these two categories is often impos-
sible to be made (see Figs 22-24). Worthy of mention is
a proposal, formulated by Zaborowski in 1910, to set up
a permanent photographic studio at the Academy of Arts
and Sciences that would serve scholars of various disci-
plines and be in charge of a collection of negatives (see
Appendix). This idea, however, was never realised, which
was one of the reasons for a conflict between Zaborowski
and Sokołowski. As a result, the photographer severed his
collaboration with the Academy.