Com­pi­la­tion of a con­sol­i­dated (All-Russ­ian) cat­a­log of da­guerreo­types is an in­te­gral part of the his­tor­i­cal sec­tion of the state-run pro­gram Preser­va­tion of Pho­to­graphic Doc­u­ments in the State-Owned Col­lec­tions of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. Fact-find­ing and ma­te­r­ial col­lec­tion for the Cat­a­log cre­ated a whole new branch in the re­search and pre­sen­ta­tion of the na­tional col­lec­tions of his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments and, in the mean­time, demon­strated a patent dearth of sci­en­tific in­stru­ments for this kind of ma­te­r­ial, as op­posed to paint­ings and graphic art. Lack of sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture on the his­tory of pho­tog­ra­phy of the 1840s–1860s, com­bined with the total ab­sence of reg­istries of da­guerreo­typ­ists, both Russ­ian-born and for­eign, ac­tive in Rus­sia at the time, hin­der a good deal proper dat­ing and at­tri­bu­tion of the plates. The pre­sent state of da­guerreo­types, their phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal de­te­ri­o­ra­tion add extra, in many cases al­most un­sur­mount­able, dif­fi­cul­ties to re­searchers. But all of these, nonethe­less, did not pre­vent the com­pil­ers of the cat­a­log The Da­guerreo­type in Rus­sia from pub­lish­ing the en­tire body of sil­ver pic­tures dis­cov­ered in the state-owned col­lec­tions. Not only did they save these unique spec­i­mens from obliv­ion and “fad­ing away,” but they also gave an im­pulse to fur­ther thor­ough stud­ies of this price­less in­her­i­tance of our na­tional his­tory and cul­ture.

This pub­li­ca­tion of the sci­en­tific con­sol­i­dated cat­a­log The Da­guerreo­type in Rus­sia is con­ducted by the State Mu­seum and Ex­hi­bi­tion Cen­ter ROSPHOTO within the frame­work of the state pro­gram for preser­va­tion of the na­tional pho­tog­ra­phy in­her­i­tance. The Cat­a­log ac­quaints its read­ers – his­tory buffs and pro­fes­sion­als — with the da­guerreo­types cur­rently stored in the col­lec­tions of state mu­se­ums, archives and li­braries of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. All of these “metal draw­ings” were made by means of the ear­li­est pho­to­graphic process in­vented in France in 1839 by L. J. M. Da­guerre and based on the re­search by J. N. Niépce. The method was used ex­ten­sively in the 1840s through the 1860s, and was con­stantly en­hanced and bet­tered by sve­topis (pho­tog­ra­phy) en­thu­si­asts in all cor­ners of the globe.

The major Moscow and St. Pe­ters­burg in­sti­tu­tions are not the only pro­ject par­tic­i­pants. Among those are also var­i­ous re­gional mu­se­ums and state archives. All the par­tic­i­pat­ing par­ties used the same meth­ods of pic­ture dig­i­ti­za­tion and data cat­a­loging, de­vel­oped and in­tro­duced specif­i­cally for this pro­ject. Be­sides em­ploy­ees of ROSPHOTO, sev­eral promi­nent spe­cial­ists – his­to­ri­ans, art ex­perts, archivists — were in­vited to serve on the Ed­i­to­r­ial Board. Pro­ject Leader: Z. M. Kolovsky (ROSPHOTO, Di­rec­tor Gen­eral). Ed­i­to­r­ial Board: E. V. Barkha­tova (RNL), A. V. Mak­si­mova (ROSPHOTO, Chair), T. G. Saburova (SHM), O. F. Uima­nen (ROSPHOTO).

Pub­li­ca­tions of da­guerreo­type col­lec­tions began in 1999, when the State His­tor­i­cal Mu­seum held a tem­po­rary ex­hi­bi­tion on its premises, At the Ori­gins of Pho­to­graphic Art, ac­com­pa­nied by the pub­li­ca­tion of a full cat­a­log of their col­lec­tion of “pic­tures on metal,” the largest one in Rus­sia. A cat­a­log of the col­lec­tion of da­guerreo­types held at the State Her­mitage in St. Pe­ters­burg was pub­lished in 2012. It was pre­ceded by the cat­a­log of an ex­hi­bi­tion held at this major world-class mu­seum a year ear­lier, The Era of the Da­guerreo­type. Early Pho­tog­ra­phy in Rus­sia (2011). In ad­di­tion to these major col­lec­tions of the two Russ­ian cap­i­tals, stud­ied and pub­lished on a reg­u­lar basis, there is plenty of rare spec­i­mens of early “pho­tog­ra­phy on sil­ver,” held in a great num­ber of local mu­se­ums, li­braries and archives through­out Rus­sia, for which this Cat­a­log will be their first ever ap­pear­ance in a print pub­li­ca­tion. Fea­tured all to­gether and in­tro­duced to the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity via this unique medium, they un­doubt­edly en­rich the po­ten­tial of wide areas of hu­man­i­tar­ian and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and, more­over, pro­vide us with one more van­tage point of look­ing back at the evo­lu­tion of na­tional vi­sual art.

The vol­umes of this pub­li­ca­tion, while stick­ing to its gen­eral con­cept and fol­low­ing its rules of ob­ject de­scrip­tion, dif­fer, nonethe­less, from each other in minor as­pects: some of them, for in­stance, are ded­i­cated en­tirely to a sin­gle col­lec­tion, while oth­ers fea­ture on their pages a num­ber of smaller col­lec­tions.

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As of today, five vol­umes of the Cat­a­log have been put out: two of them fea­ture just one col­lec­tion each, and three vol­umes come with col­lec­tion as­sort­ments. The total num­ber of al­ready pub­lished da­guerreo­types reached 686. At least 335 spec­i­mens are still in the works.

Vol­ume I united the col­lec­tions of the Sci­ence Li­brary of the Russ­ian Acad­emy of Arts (St. Pe­ters­burg), Russ­ian Mu­seum of Ethnog­ra­phy (St. Pe­ters­burg), State Russ­ian Mu­seum (St. Pe­ters­burg), Russ­ian Na­tional Li­brary (St. Pe­ters­burg), State Mu­seum of Leo Tol­stoy (Moscow), Leo Tol­stoy “Yas­naya Po­liana” Mu­seum-Es­tate State Memo­r­ial and Na­ture Re­serve (Tula Re­gion, Yas­naya Po­liana), St. Pe­ters­burg State Mu­seum of The­ater and Mu­si­cal Art (St. Pe­ters­burg), A. A. Bakhrushin Cen­tral The­ater Mu­seum (Moscow), M. I. Glinka All-Russ­ian Mu­seum As­so­ci­a­tion of Mu­si­cal Cul­ture (Moscow), Na­tional Mu­seum of the Re­pub­lic of Tar­tarstan, St. Pe­ters­burg Branch of the Archive of the Russ­ian Acad­emy of Sci­ences, F. I. Tyutchev Mu­ra­novo Es­tate Re­serve, Mil­i­tary and His­tory Mu­seum of Ar­tillery, En­gi­neer­ing and Sig­nal Corps (St. Pe­ters­burg), Pe­ter­hof State Mu­seum Re­serve, Pavlovsk State Mu­seum Re­serve, and Arkhangel­skoe Mu­seum-Es­tate (Moscow).

Vol­ume II in­cludes the col­lec­tions of the Irkutsk Re­gional Mu­seum, Irkutsk Re­gional His­tor­i­cal and Memo­r­ial Mu­seum of De­cem­brists, State Mu­seum of A. S. Pushkin (Moscow), All-Russ­ian Mu­seum of A. S. Pushkin (St. Pe­ters­burg), To­bolsk State His­tor­i­cal and Ar­chi­tec­tural Mu­seum-Re­serve, Kras­no­yarsk Re­gional Mu­seum, Mu­seum-Es­tate of N. G. Cherny­shevsky (Sara­tov), State Lit­er­ary and Memo­r­ial Mu­seum of N. A. Do­brol­ubov (N. Nov­gorod), Nizhny Nov­gorod United Mu­seum-Re­serve, State Mu­seum of A. M. Gorky (N. Nov­gorod), Nizhny Nov­gorod State His­tor­i­cal and Ar­chi­tec­tural Mu­seum-Re­serve, Russ­ian Mu­seum of Pho­tog­ra­phy (N. Nov­gorod Re­gion), Mu­seum of Or­ganic Cul­ture (Kolomna), Mul­ti­me­dia Com­plex of Ac­tual Arts (Moscow), Poly­tech­nic Mu­seum (Moscow), V. K. Ar­se­niev Pri­morksy United Mu­seum (Vladi­vos­tok), Yaroslavl State His­tor­i­cal Ar­chi­tec­tural and Art Mu­seum-Re­serve, Pereslavl-Za­lessky State His­tor­i­cal Ar­chi­tec­tural and Art Mu­seum-Re­serve, Chere­povets Mu­seum As­so­ci­a­tion, Vologda State His­tor­i­cal Ar­chi­tec­tural and Art Mu­seum-Re­serve, State His­tor­i­cal and Art Mu­seum-Re­serve “Abramt­sevo,” Orel State United Lit­er­ary Mu­seum of I. S. Tur­genev, Kostroma State His­tor­i­cal Ar­chi­tec­tural and Art Mu­seum-Re­serve, I. A. Gon­charov Ulianovsk Re­gional Mu­seum, State Mu­seum of His­tory of St. Pe­ters­burg, Lit­er­ary and Memo­r­ial Mu­seum of F. M. Dos­to­evsky (St. Pe­ters­burg), State Memo­r­ial Mu­seum of A. V. Su­vorov (St. Pe­ters­burg), Cen­tral Navy Mu­seum (St. Pe­ters­burg), Sverdlovsk Re­gional Mu­seum, State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), State Mu­seum-Re­serve “Ros­tov Krem­lin”, Russ­ian State Archive of Lit­er­a­ture an Art (Moscow), Russ­ian State Li­brary (Moscow), Russ­ian State Li­brary of Art (Moscow), Ivan­gorod Mu­seum, State Mu­seum and Ex­hi­bi­tion Cen­ter ROSPHOTO (St. Pe­ters­burg), Russ­ian Na­tional Li­brary (St. Pe­ters­burg), State A. A. Bakhrushin State Cen­tral Mu­seum of The­ater (Moscow), Kirov Re­gional Mu­seum, Lit­er­ary and Art Mu­seum Es­tate “Priyutino,” and His­tor­i­cal and Memo­r­ial Mu­seum Es­tate of P. E. Shchrbov (Gatchina).

The SHM Vol­ume pre­sents the col­lec­tion of the State His­tor­i­cal Mu­seum (Moscow). It in­cludes new data gleaned in the course of on­go­ing re­search and restora­tion ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ed­i­tors ded­i­cated Vol­ume III to the col­lec­tion of the Lit­er­ary Mu­seum of the In­sti­tute of Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture (Pushkin House) of the Russ­ian Acad­emy of Sci­ences in St. Pe­ters­burg. The Pushkin House Col­lec­tion is third in size after the col­lec­tions of the State His­tor­i­cal Mu­seum and Russ­ian State Li­brary.

Vol­ume IV ac­quaints the read­ers with the col­lec­tion of the State Lit­er­ary Mu­seum — the largest lit­er­ary mu­seum in Rus­sia and one of the largest in the world — which was founded on the idea of doc­u­ment­ing and pre­sent­ing to the pub­lic the en­tire his­tory of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture, from its very be­gin­nings to the pre­sent day. A task of such a scope could be im­ple­mented only on an enor­mous bulk of his­toric ma­te­r­ial, which the State Lit­er­ary Mu­seum cer­tainly pos­sesses. Da­guerreo­types con­sti­tute an in­fin­i­tes­i­mally small part of its vast col­lec­tion. But, like any other items in it, they — ei­ther by their ori­gin, setup, or his­tory — are in­sep­a­ra­bly con­nected to the lit­er­ary chron­i­cles of Rus­sia.

Three more vol­umes of the con­sol­i­dated cat­a­log The Da­guerreo­type in Rus­sia are cur­rently going through prepa­ra­tion stages.

Vol­ume V will be fully ded­i­cated to the col­lec­tion of the State Russ­ian Li­brary (Moscow) — about 250 plates;  Vol­ume VI will pre­sent to the pub­lic the unique col­lec­tion of the State Her­mitage (St. Pe­ters­burg) — about 58 plates; Vol­ume VII will fea­ture all the ref­er­ence ma­te­r­ial: a bi­og­ra­phy index of da­guerreo­typ­ists, sam­ples of stu­dio logos, a list of all the (known) per­sons pho­tographed, bib­li­o­graphic data, etc.

The unique­ness of this pro­ject lies not only in new his­tor­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies, at­tri­bu­tion break­throughs, cre­ation of a ref­er­ence base for fu­ture stud­ies and in­tro­duc­tion of new meth­ods of at­tribut­ing and cat­a­loging da­guerreo­types, but also in the fact that it al­lows us to pub­lish many price­less pho­to­graphic mon­u­ments of the na­tional cal­iber, which laid the grounds for the cre­ation of the Reg­istry of the most valu­able pho­to­graphic items in the state-owned col­lec­tions of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion.

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Last up­dated on 15.11.2021