1142
Odessa, J. Berkowski in the Kingdom, W. Malinowski
in Riga. Amateurs: L. Barszczewski in Central Asia, J.
Kozłowski in Suez, J. Potocki in Africa, J. Stróżecki, R.
Szwoynicki, L. Kraszewski and others in Siberia. There
were about 35 in France and approximately 60 pho-
tographers in Berlin who had Polish surnames. A large
percentage of photographers were of Jewish origin.
Schlesien. This was a very industrialized region with
numerous wealthy towns and bourgeoisie that made the
most of their photographers. I have a list of approxi-
mately 210 daguerrotypists and itinerant photographers
prior to 1860 in Schlesien. 19 originated from Berlin
and 38 were from Breslau (Wrocław), its capital. Here,
amateur photographers, K. Langhans and T. Goldamer,
exhibited daguerrotype photographs at the art exhibi-
tion of 1840. In 1844, the mechanic, Karl Staritz, took
daguerrotype photographs, and from 1846, E.Wehnert
earned his living from them. H. Krone was born here
and taught the daguerrotype process, he was known
for his activities in Dresden. The most prolifi c, with
thousands of architectural photographs were made in
the establishment of E.v. Delden (1877–97), a Berlin
man. A.Leisner from 1876 covered the surfaces of
porcelain dishes with photos from the surroundings of
Waldenburg (Wałbrzych).
Pommeren. The area including the Baltic coast line,
with two ancient and wealthy ports. Danzig, where
monuments were fi rst photographed by C. Damme
(1850). In 1858, E. Flottwell sold a series of 8 photo-
graphs of the town and 23 photographs in connection
with the 300th anniversary of the grammar-school. The
following photographers printed their own photographs
of monuments: R.Fischer (approx. 1870), A. Gottheil
(approx. 1860), R.T. Kuhn (approx. 1894) and H. Ruck-
wardt (1889). The most famous ones in Stettin were the
following: E. Kiewning, L. Klett, A. Pauly.
Jacek Strzałkowski
Further Reading
Krystyna, Lejko, and Jolanta Niklewska, Warszawa na starej
fotografi i, Warszawa 1978.
Mossakowska, Wanda, Po c zątki fotografi i w Warszawie (1839–
1863), Warszawa 1994.
POLICE PHOTOGRAPHY
The emergence of photography in the nineteenth century
coincided with the introduction and professionalization
of the police. In 1800 the world’s fi rst professional police
service was established by Act of Parliament in Glasgow,
in response to the failure of the city’s old system of
employing unpaid constables and hired watchmen to
keep law and order over the expanding population. Other
industrialised British towns experiencing similar rises in
criminality quickly followed suite. In 1829, just a decade
before the public announcement of the daguerreotype,
the Metropolitan Police Force (The Met) was founded in
London. The Met, the fi rst civil police force organized
on modern lines, provided the model for other early
municipal police forces around the world, including in
Gibraltar (1830), Toronto (1834), Boston (1839), and
New York City (1845).
Nascent law enforcement agencies soon recognised
the value of photography for identifying criminals. From
as early as 1841 in France, and over the next decade in
other Western Europe countries and the United States,
police forces paid professional daguerreotypists operat-
ing in the vicinity of their stations, to take portraits of
suspects. Ambrotypes mounted in ornamental frames,
dating from the late 1850s and 1860s in the collection
of Birmingham’s West Midlands Police Museum show
how closely early police photographs resembled regular
commercial studio portraiture. By the 1870s their for-
mat and conventions were gradually adapted to police
requirements. Offenders were photographed against
plain backgrounds, posed frontally—sometimes with a
mirror to simultaneously show their profi le—and often
holding a board on which was written their name and
detention number. Attention was directed towards their
hands—placed on their chest—which were considered
useful for identifi cation purposes. The photograph il-
lustrated a paper record documenting further details
including name and aliases, date and place of birth;
marital status, occupation and address; vital statistics
and distinguishing features; reason for conviction and
sentence.
From the mid-1850s, with the technical advances in
the positive-negative system of photography and the
diffusion of the carte de visite, the practice of creating
and disseminating portraits of criminals became more
widely used. Photographically-illustrated criminal re-
cords were sorted and classifi ed according to offence
committed in albums and card indexes. In America these
‘rogues’ galleries’ were often displayed in a grid—on
purpose-made boards or racks—in police stations. As
the number of records grew, sorting, classifying and,
particularly, retrieving an individual’s details became
increasingly impractical.
In 1856 the journalist and critic Ernest Lacan (1829–
79) advocated the wider use of portrait photography by
the French police for checking recidivists and escapees.
However, his suggestion for the systematic use of the
medium to apprehend criminals was not adopted until
the 1870s. Following the violent repression of the Paris
Commune of 1871, the Parisian police used photographs
taken by the Communards of themselves posing proudly
and defi antly on their barricades or triumphantly beside
the destroyed Vendôme Column, to track down and pun-
ish the insurgents. In addition, Eugène Appert (active