Photography in Ukraine

Photography, as a branch of science, technology and art, developed in Ukraine in different ways, as historically lands were divided between two empires: Russia and Austria. This has led to some differences in the goals of photographic societies and in the technological and social role of photography in Ukraine.

The chemical principles of photography were discovered in the first half of the 18th century, when the effect of light sensitivity of silver salts was discovered and proved. Over the next century, knowledge in the field of chemistry was constantly improved, as well as technical aspects of exposure to light-sensitive substances and long-term fixation of the obtained images.

In Ukraine, photography as a form of art and a field of technology came from two directions: in the western lands—from Austria-Hungary, and in the eastern—from the rest of the world, including Eastern Europe.

Photography was brought to Ukraine in the 1840s by foreign photographers, participants in the annual international fairs in Kyiv—"Kontrakts", who often remained in Ukraine. The first settler photographers were the Frenchmen "Jacques" and Charles-Paul Herbst.

The pioneers of Ukrainian photography in the Western Ukrainian Lands in the second half of the 19th century were A. Karpiuk, Volodymyr Shukhevych in Lviv, Stepan Dmokhovsky, and Y. Lyubovych in Przemyśl, and F. Velychko in Stanyslaviv.

In the 1850s, there already were local photographers in Kyiv including I. Chekhovych, Ivan Hudovsky, Fedir Levdyk, K. Voyutky (photographed the coffin of T. Shevchenko), M. Gross, Yank, and others. From 1864, M. Benzeman, Franz de Meser, the author of landscapes of Kyiv in the 1860s and 1880s, Josyp Kordysh (1868), M. Pasternak (1869) and others had photo studios.

In the 1860s and 1890s, professional photo studios opened up in Odesa, Kharkiv, Poltava, and other big cities. One of the first Ukrainian photographers, Wlodzimierz (Volodymyr) Vysotsky, opened a photo studio in Kyiv in 1871, where a well-known Ukrainian photographer and cinematographer, Alfred Fedetsky, worked from 1880 to 1886.

The most famous photographers-artists of that time in Odesa were Philip Haas, Michri, Fedorovets, Khloponin and K. Migursky. From June 1886, Fedetsky, the founder of cinematography in Ukraine and tri-color photography, worked in Kharkiv, and was honored at foreign exhibitions for artistic portraits and landscapes. From the 1880s such artists as O. Suchkova, G. Serebrin, V. Tymoshenko, R. Tuken and others were gaining popularity.