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on a career as a court painter before taking up the da-
guerreotype c.1844 and establishing himself as a portrait
photographer. By 1848 he was using albumen-on-glass.
By the early 1850s, he was working with collodion.
Szathmari took his camera to war a full year before
Fenton, photographing the early months of the Crimean
confl ict along the River Danube. He also reportedly had
a horse-drawn darkroom van with him, and, like Fenton,
found himself under fi re.
Unlike Fenton and others, whose photography was
unashamedly partisan, Szathmari’s political contacts
enabled him to photograph the war from both sides.
Thus his images showed the Russian troops and their
fortifi ed positions as well as Turkish units, fi eld hospitals
and military leaders. It was while working at a Russian
fi eld hospital that he came under fi re from the Turkish
artillery.
After the war, Szathmari compiled albums contain-
ing 200 images from the campaign which were widely
acclaimed throughout Europe. Amongst the reported
recipients of copies of the album were Napoleon, Queen
Victoria, the Emperor of Austria, and the pianist Franz
Joseph Liszt. The images were exhibited at the Exposi-
tion Universelle in Paris in 1855.
He also photographed the Turkish-Russian-Roma-
nian War of 1877 at age 65.
John Hannavy