In this age of rapidly advancing technology and social media, a good photograph hardly surprises anyone anymore. But in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, photography was truly considered Art with a capital “A,” and its creators received honor and recognition as a reward for their tremendous efforts. Naturally, this also benefited our beloved city. At the international level at that time, the name of the Kharkiv photographer Alfred Fedetsky was widely known. In 1888, he received a gold medal at the World’s Fair in Brussels, and photographers were also featured at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889.
According to the general classification, the 12 categories of exhibits included:
— Photographs on paper, glass, wood, fabric, enamel, etc.
— Heliography
— Lithographic and lithophotographic prints, photographic plates, stereoscopic images, and stereoscopes.
— Enlarged photographs.
— Photochromism.
— Photography tools, equipment, and supplies.
— Photography studio supplies.
Among the photographs on display at the exhibition by photographers from Poltava, Odesa, and Kyiv were works by Alfred Fedetsky, whom we already know. However, this time he did not receive the top prize; he brought home to his native Kharkiv only a silver medal. In the following years, the photographer was awarded gold medals and a diploma for his participation in international exhibitions in Madrid, London, and at the International Photography Exhibition in Paris.
In August 1894, newspaper correspondents of the time reported that the renowned French composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and music writer Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns and France’s foremost pianist, Professor Dimère, while touring the Russian Empire’s pavilion at the World’s Fair in Antwerp, took a keen interest in a portrait of the late Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky exhibited by the Kharkiv photographer Alfred Fedetsky.
The newspaper reporters went on to write: “The platinum print portrait, like the photograph, is a true masterpiece of art, so it is no surprise that it has aroused such admiration among the public, not only at home but also abroad.”
Petr Ilyich himself, during his lifetime, had this to say about the Kharkiv photographer’s work:
You know, no one has ever photographed me quite like Fedetsky. This is definitely my best portrait. It’s not just a photograph—it’s truly a work of art.
Of course, at the Antwerp exhibition, the Kharkiv photographer was awarded a gold medal—the twelfth in his career by that time. So the creator of the most famous portrait of Tchaikovsky can literally be called the record-holder among Kharkiv photographers in terms of the number of awards won at international and national exhibitions.
Following the unexpected death of Alfred Fedetsky on July 21, 1902, in Minsk, his photography studio was purchased in 1903 by the owner of another photography studio, but with the right to be known as “A. Skassi & Co.—Fedetsky’s Successor.” A year later, this firm received a gold medal for the photographs exhibited at a show in London. Thus, the unique traditions established by Alfred Fedetsky were successfully carried on.
Another well-known and respected master of photography in Kharkiv, on par with Fedetsky, was Alexei Mikhailovich Ivanitsky. It was about these two that Kharkiv newspapers wrote the following in early April 1896:
Medal Award.
At a recent photography exhibition in Moscow, Kharkiv photographer A. M. Ivanitsky, who exhibited his photographs, received a silver medal.
It’s true, however, that our second hero became more famous in Kharkiv and throughout the Russian Empire than abroad. From September 23 to October 12, 1887, our city hosted the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition. Alexei Mikhailovich Ivanitsky served as the official photographer for the event. The more than 200 photographs he took of the event itself, as well as of the award-winning animals, formed the basis of a beautiful album dedicated to the exhibition. Also included in the book “Forestry, Horticulture, Vegetable Gardening, and Winemaking at the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition in Kharkiv” are two phototype drawings of the exterior and interior of the horticulture pavilion, based on a photograph by A. M. Ivanitsky, were also included in the book *Forestry, Horticulture, Vegetable Gardening, and Winemaking at the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition in Kharkiv in 1887*
Only one photographer from Kharkiv, Markus Abramovich Elkon, traveled to Nizhny Novgorod for the large-scale exhibition in 1896, and he exhibited his work in the “Art Section.” He did not receive any awards for his photographs at that time.
In 1899, Ivanitsky sent more than 40 of his photographs to the Paris World’s Fair. However, we cannot find his name among the participating photographers. It is quite possible that Alexei Mikhailovich’s works were displayed at the booth of Christina Danilovna Alchevskaya’s Kharkiv Private Women’s Sunday School, or at the booth of another exhibitor from our city. In the years that followed, Ivanitsky continued to participate in exhibitions and receive awards. For example, in 1903, at an exhibition organized by the St. Petersburg Photographic Society, he was awarded a silver medal. Incidentally, since we’ve brought up Khrystyna Alchevska, it’s worth noting that she herself was no stranger to photography. Her photographs, however, were never exhibited. Olga Vladimirovna Kaidanova, who knew her well, recalls the following on this subject in her book *Half-Century Jubilee (1862–1912)*:
Faith in the people and in their intellectual powers was one of the central themes of Khrystyna Danylivna’s worldview and work—a theme she carried through in everything she did. While organizing a school celebration one day, Khrystyna Danylivna took a series of photographs of her students’ faces and costumes, and one of the purposes of this photo session was, among other things, to prove that there are people among the common folk who are no less intelligent than those in our circle, and indeed, this was proven by the photographs
Furthermore, even though Andrei Nikolaevich Krasnov—the well-known Kharkiv traveler and university professor we are already familiar with—was not a professional photographer, the photographs he took during his travels were exhibited both in our city and at the first geographical exhibition in Moscow in 1892.
During the 12th Archaeological Congress held in Kharkiv, a large-scale ethnographic exhibition was organized, which attracted significant attention from the press and the public. It featured numerous photographs of Ukrainian huts and other structures in the Kharkiv Governorate taken by Andriy Mykolayovych Krasnov, Mykola Fedorovych Sumtsov, and Vasyl Yefymovych Danilevych. All of them were scholars, not professional photographers. Also, during the congress, one of its organizers, Yegor Kuzmich Redin, took about 300 photographs of the exhibits on display at the exhibition. In 1903, these photographs were published as the exquisite “Album of the Exhibition of the 12th Archaeological Congress in Kharkiv” (Moscow, 1903), with a foreword by Redin himself.
Well, and finally, I can’t help but mention two more friends who were passionate about photography. In the summer of 1914, Count Nikolai Vladimirovich Kleinmichel, together with the renowned art historian Georgy Lukomsky, set out on a road trip. These trips culminated in the 1917 publication of the book *Ancient Estates of the Kharkiv Governorate*. The authors themselves write the following about this in the preface:
And so, in June 1914, together with the author of this book, architect G. K. Lukomsky, we set out on a road trip through the Kharkiv Governorate by car, equipped with two cameras, striving, whenever possible, to take photographs of everything that held special interest for us.
…..Unfortunately, I was unable to take a sufficient number of good photographs of the interiors of the estates, nor was I able to present in the book, with the same exhaustive precision as, for example, regarding the facades, the collections of paintings, porcelain, furniture, and documents. I hope that for the second volume of this edition, I will be able to include photographs of some of the most interesting items
However, the revolution prevented the publication of the second volume. And who knows—perhaps if it hadn’t been for the revolution, a wonderful photo exhibition would have been held in our city based on the book, whose pages feature about 116 photographs of historic estates in the Okhtyrka, Bohodukhiv, Valky, Vovchans’k, Sumy, and Kharkiv counties—a wonderful photo exhibition would have been held in our city, and its authors would have received recognition and awards for their photographs…
Of course, this is by no means everything there is to say about exhibitions and amateur photographers in Kharkiv. After all, we live in a wonderful city whose past we could talk about endlessly. What matters to me is that even today, photographs from that era—when photography was not an everyday occurrence but a high art form on par with painting—continue to delight us, preserving remarkable characters and beautiful views of estates.
