„Fotografia amatorska „Wojtkuszki”” Stanisława Kazimierza Kossakowskiego
Stanisław Kazimierz Kossakowski’s „Amateur Photography „Wojtkuszki””

Summary/Abstract: The M. K. Čiurlionio National Museum of Art in Kaunas (Lithuania) is in possession of sixty-five albums with 6148 photographs from the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These photographs were taken by the photo-amateur S. K. Kossakowski, a Polish aristocrat and landowner of Wojtkuszki, an estate near Wilkomierz. After 1890 he established a private photographic atelier, named „Amateur Photography „Wojtkuszki”,, (fig. 2). To run a photo laboratory, he engaged the photographer Józef Krajewski (figs. 11-12). The photographs in the albums are provided with captions, which present the place of execution, date, title and negative number. Glass negatives of these photographs (mostly of format 24 x 30 cm) have not been preserved. A guide to the albums is the hand-written „Catalogue of the photographs in Wojtkuszki [...] till 1894 by S[tanislaw] Kossakowski]”, arranged according to their subjects. The motifs presented in the photographs are not exceptionally varied. They are mainly views of the Wojtkuszki estate (Neo-Gothic palace, park, fields, meadows and forests; figs. 1, 5, 10) and its vicinity, as well as portraits of the Kossakowski family, their relatives and numerous guests, and even servants (figs. 5-6). These are individual and group portraits, as well as scenes of everyday and social life: strolls, rides, meals, games, balls and various ceremonies. In addition there are many ethnographic photographs, such as studies of villagers, scenes from the life of peasants, village buildings (figs. 7-8). A keen heraldist and geneaologist, Kossakowski was fond of taking photographs of his forefathers’ portraits, family trees (fig. 9) and documents. In 1901-1904 he participated in several exhibitions, at which his photographs were awarded with medals (fig. 3). These exhibitions were held in Warsaw (1901 and 1903; fig. 9), London (1903) where his works were displayed under the sign „Native Land”, Vitebsk (1903), Krakow (1904), as well as the industrial-agricultural ones at Ponevežys and Daugavpils (1903, 1904). Although amateur in their character, Kossakowski’s photographs are sometimes distinguished by a great artistic merit. They are also of great iconographic value, presenting an extinct world; the life of Polish aristocracy and gentry in Lithuania at the turn of the nineteenth century. Digitalized and reedited material

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