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rose to the level of Vienna, Prague and Paris. It was
only natural that new industrial and artistic ideas were
realized in this thriving environment.
The sons of Divald senior, Lajos in Eperjes, Károly
junior in Budapest, in the course of a few years be-
came the most known enterpreneurs of the Hungarian
postcard industry. Their annual output consisted of 3–4
million postcards, which well qualifi ed their activity.
Károly Divald established a new enterprise with György
Monostory in 1912. The employees of the Divald and
Monostory Co, which functioned until the beginning of
1940s had taken photographs of virtually all the towns
and cities of Hungary, which were published in a series
of excellent quality. Lajos Divald’s Institute in Eperjes
started to decline after WWI, partly because the local
industrial area lost its signifi cance, to the extent that the
buildings were demolish in the 1970s.
The youngest member of the dynasty, Kornél Di-
vald, was more an art-historian than a businessman.
The photo-historical researher of past years brought to
surface, Kornél Divald’s great impact on documentary
photography. The topics of his photogaphs were church
monuments and artifacts in Upper Hungary, whose ter-
ritory then covered one quarter of Royal Hungary. These
monuments and often fragments thereof were discovered
in artics, behind altars, in granaries and lumber-rooms.
These discovered relics of the past such as tryptichs,
devotional articles, textiles, paintings were arranged and
photographed outdoors by Divald. His goal was simply
not just to document, but to research the monuments and
artifacts in detail. His composition was comprised of not
only taking photographs of the objects, but, since know-
ing everything about these monuments, knew what to
take pictures of. According to Divald, photography was a
very important tool similar to writing or taking notes. His
original glass negatives and their copies, which are rare,
were discovered together with his diary in which he took
notes of the specifi cs of his photography like exposure,
technique, topic, and route. Kornél Divald illustrated his
books and studies written on the history of architecture
whith his own excellent photogaphic collection.
Ibolya Plank
Exhibitions
Hungarian National Museum Historical Photoarchive (Buda-
pest).
National Offi ce of Cultural Heritage Photoarchive (Budapest).
Hungarian Museum of Photography (Kecskemét).
Further Reading
Divald Károly, Wágner János, A Képzömüvészet Remekei.
/The Masterpiece of Fine Arts./ Eredeti metszetek után
fényképnyomatban. /Phototypes based the engravings/. Vol-
ume I-IV. Budapest és Eperjes, published by Károly Divald,
1882–1884.
Chyzer Kornél, Divald Károly, A bártfa fürdö képekben [Bárt-
fafürdö in pictures], Eperjes, published by Károly Divald,
1886.
Divald Károly, Egy város a ravatalon [One city on the catafalque].
Eperjes, 1887.
Siegmeth Károly, Divald Károly:, Az aggteleki cseppköbarlang
[The cave of Aggtelek], Eperjes, published by Károly Divald,
1890.
Divald Károly Jr., Országház [Parlament], Budapest. 1906.
Oeuvre of Kornél Divald art historian
“A szentek fuvarosa” Divald Kornél Felsö-magyarországi
topográfi ája és fényképei. 1900-1919. Budapest, 1999.
“The carrier of the saints” Topography and Photography of Upper
Northern Hungary by Kornél Divald between 1900 and 1919.
Bardoly István and Cs.Plank Ibolya (Eds.)
Budapest, published by Hungarian Natioanl Board for the Protec-
tion of Historic Monuments, 1999.
DIXON, HENRY (1820–1893) AND
THOMAS JAMES (D. 1942)
English printers, photographers, and studio owners
Henry Dixon was born on 14th April 1820, the son of
Thomas Dixon, a printer, and by 1836 was himself ap-
prenticed as a printer.
He took up professional photography before 1860,
at which date he operated a studio in London’s Sussex
Terrace, Bayswater, moving to Albany Street before
- His studio operated at two addresses in that street
under his own name until 1886 when his son Thomas
James joined him as a partner. Thereafter the studio was
known as Henry Dixon & Son, and continued under that
name until shortly before Thomas’s death.
From the late 1860s, he photographed many of
the vanishing buildings of the city for the Society for
Photographing Relics of Old London, along with other
photographers including Alfred and John Bool. Their
negatives survive in the National Monument Record,
and the Guildhall Library.
Throughout the 1870s, Dixon’s printing works pro-
duced many of the society’s carbon prints, from nega-
tives by the Bools and others as well as his own.
Dixon & Son also photographed the animals at
London Zoo, as well as portraiture and undertook a
wide range of photographic commissions from pianos
to copying works of art.
Captain Henry Dixon (1824–1883), who photo-
graphed in India and exhibited widely in Britain in the
1860s, was a separate individual.
John Hannavy
DMITRIEV, MAXIM PETROVICH
(1858–1948)
Russian professional photographer
Maxim Petrovich Dmitriev was born in 1858 into a