Introduction

Abstract

In this first issue we begin the serialization of twelve articles under the general heading of Early Photography in Eastern Europe. Together they will form a compendium of information and comment not now available from any other source. The fame of Nicefor N'eps and Luijs ?aks Dagers may have travelled to Latvia and beyond, but the West has remained largely uninformed of photographic achievements in the East. International gatherings of the kind that bring scientists and engineers into regular communion are still a great rarity among photographic historians who, more often than not, have tended to view their task in nationalistic terms. No doubt this outlook stems from the fact that photography itself did much to raise national consciousness in many lands. The East was not short of photographic heroes but, on the whole, they remained local heroes (pace Joseph Petzval; pace Count Esterházy}, not unsung, but rarely more than folksung. Language problems may have contributed to this state of affairs, as did the bitter wars and struggles against unacceptable regin1es, which run like a grinding refrain through all accounts of the past century. Again and again, the work of talented photographers was destroyed, sometimes accidentally, often with savage deliberation.