Shtetl Links: Lyakhovichi

Part One- to 1900

This is a research report, created in the effort to learn more about resources that would be valuable to Lyakhovichi researchers. I am not an authority on photography, nor on photographic technique. What I did, was two-part. I looked at materials from the time period offered to Russian Empire photographers, advertising by the photographers of the time and place, and catalogs and advertising material directed at those photographers. I further had the opportunity to examine hundreds of photographs taken of Jewish subjects in many Russian cities, with a small percentage of those actually from Lyakhovichi. The author is not a photographer nor any kind of expert on photographic techniques, simply a researcher who hopes you can profit from her studies. - DGG, 2007

Between 1880 and 1920, thousands of Lyakhovichi Jews left the town. A move to even a nearby town, could mean that an older relative might not be seen again before they died. The result of this viewpoint, was that many older people went and "sat for portraits" so that the young ones would have a picture to take along. Pictures were given before the young folk moved away and others were mailed to them soon after departure with heart-rending instructions like- "and when its time, k'aynhora, write the yahrzeit right on the picture so you remember."

This is not the first generation that took pictures in our portion of Eastern Europe. Many pictures in museum and archival collections, evidence the common practice of redoing old photographs taken decades earlier, and the copying of portraits taken with earlier technologies onto the latest card stocks. Images, originally on tintype and from all the 1840-1870 photographic technologies (ambrotypes and the even earlier daguerrotypes), were transferred in the 1860s and 70s to cartes de visite, a small photograph mounted on paper backings, and in the 1880s and 1890s, to cabinet cards, which were also the most popular for new pictures, dominating right into the 1920s. The cabinet cards were a great way to move pictures that one had only in limited numbers, or in antique forms, you could take a wet-plate negative and suddenly have multiple copies of what had been one-of-a-kind heirlooms.In the days when Jewish families rarely had less than six children grow to adulthood, the ability to duplicate these pictures must have been greatly valued. Cabinet cards also had less flaking than the earlier cartes de visite and the thicker card stocks with a high rag content meant they had longer endurance. The average buyer also appreciate the larger size of the cabinet cards, cartes de visite were named for the small cards that visitors would leave in a basket at your door, they reminded one of calling cards of diminutive size, rather than something reminiscent of a rich man's large oil portrait. Portrait photographers in Minsk Gubernia, announced in their advertising and on the backs of photos themselves, that they would happily make duplicates of your family heirlooms or make additional photos of the image your son sent from his far away school.

If pictures could be taken in any time period and moved to a long-lasting medium, how can you tell when they were taken? There are two ways to date photographs, from their content and from their characteristics. Content addresses issues like: the clothing worn; the attitudes assumed for the portrait; and what was the intent of the portrait. Characteristics speak of: the card stock on which the photo is mounted, the photographers imprint, and the specific info of the photographic method. Even the earliest pictures preserved in wooden cases have distinctive traits. Is it reflective, does it float like a hologram? Then you are probably looking at a daguerrotype. Is it in a wooden case with a white grey photo background, but you can see it clearly from all angles? - then you may have an ambrotype. Does it appear as the description for an ambrotype, but it is magnetic? Then you have a tintype. Is it a modern looking photo on a white background under 3 inches in size, then it may be a carte de visite. These all have dates of common usage that can help you, just as discerning whether a picture was taken on a 1930s Brownie or a 1950s Polaroid will tell you information you need. When there is a conflict between content and characteristics – i.e. a person in clothing of the 1860s and a photographic technique of a later time, what we are probably looking at is a re-photographed image. Sometimes you can get a hint from the photo itself. You can see the outline of the brass daguerrotype frames in some of the re-copies of this time period. Or if you have evidence that the subject died in the 1880s and there is a 1902 date on the photograph, that was the year that more of the family wanted pictures of the deceased, clearly not the year the picture was taken. Pictures of an already deceased member of the family were popular for a kind of image called a “Crayon Portraits.” They look like pencil (in French, crayon) on canvas, but were actually photographic images. I have seen many from the Ukrainian guberniyas and almost always the "new portrait" was created for a yahrtzeit of the deceased. I have two for my great-great-grandparents Forman of Cherkassy and Chigirin. They are large images on canvas, a quick photographic way to have a family heirloom of the zayda's picture.

The distinguishing feature of the cabinet cards, which eventually drove out the little cartes de visite as competition, was their larger size, on heavier card stock, and they were even less expensive and less difficult to produce than the carte de visites, which in turn had bested their earlier competition with their relative inexpense of production. It is card stock that makes the task of a historian working in the Russian Empire, easier. Russian photographers bought their card stock from English merchants, almost exclusively, in an industry which replenished card stock every six months. The card was usually ornamented distinctively and can be dated by catalogue or by manufacturer’s date printed on the card. I examined a large number of scanned photos for another project and found that of over 200 randomly selected images of Jews in the Russian Empire’s gubernias of today’s Ukraina, more than two thirds showed English company information on the backing papers. In the larger cities of Ukraina (Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav, et al), the material was frequently "current stock," that is the dates of the paper and the date of usage was within 6 months of each other, though I would have expected that Russian photographers and merchants could reasonably have been sold stock from previous years, or not used it quickly. England dominated the market but did not own it exclusively. Materials were also shipped from the Netherlands and Germany.

A Russian Jewish Soldier
This is not a Lyakhovichi resident. It is a good example of learning how to identify regiments and divisions from photos of men in Russian military uniforms, and secondarily an example of the card stock, "The photo itself is about 4” x 5½”. The card that it is mounted on is 4¼” x 6½”. The photo is mounted on the upper portion of the card, revealing the words “Cabinet Portrait” below along with some decorative scrollwork. The reverse is absolutely blank. I refer to this as a “placard” because of its thickness, it is a stiff cardboard about 1/16th inch thick, you can rap on it with your knuckles if so inclined." as shared in a letter by the image's owner Mike Kraft, to the webmaster. The card stock, with its English language caption, had initially surprised me, until further research showed that English paper suppliers were the backbone of the photographer supply market of Russia.

With space constraints, this is the only place I am going to get to talk about identifying Russian uniforms in this update, so here is the major point. Click on the title to go to an enlarged version of this photo (and hover in the right corner to get the expander icon that will let you enlarge it further) and note that the "enlisted man's badge" on the cap is numbered, as are the shoulder boards. The cap number refers to the regiment and the shoulder boards announce the division. In this case, the 91st Dvinsk Infantry Regiment, which was part of the “23rd Infantry Division, and though titled "of Dvinsk," was stationed in Tallinn, Estonia.- while I suggested that Mike check out the cap and epaullette numbers, it was Mike that did the legwork.

Pictures taken in the earlier times were taken for the same reasons as those in the 1880s to the first decade of the 1900s - to preserve an image of an elderly relative for children moving away; to keep the portrait of an adult child embarking on a dangerous venture; and to aid in making matches for children no longer resident at home but whose parents wanted to arrange a match there. The first group, the pictures of venerated parents and grandparents, was packed up and taken to towns like Slutsk, Bialystok, Riga, Minsk, to accompany Lechovichers who settled in Russia's big cities. The second group, viewed nervously by the parents who received them, were of their newly adult children in Russian military uniforms; of their more fortunate children in far-away schools, and of their daring children who had reached a settlement in a foreign European country. The third, portraits of young women or young men, were often carried back to the party who had sent them, when they arrived to meet their potential marriage partner for the first time. The author has a tintype of her great-grandmother (not a Lyakhovichi family) which was carried by the man who came to marry the young widow in Philadelphia and which he had received from her parents in Vilna.

Photography was a studio event in both of those time periods 1840s-1870s and 1880s-1920s but costs dropped considerably between the two time periods. As the expense associated with photography came down, people who were only sufficiently monied to pay taxes, could now afford to buy photographs of their aged parents/grandparents, instead of such a purchase being the gift from well-established heads of families in their fifties and sixties. Anecdotal stories abound in this time period of older couples making the commitment to "sit for their portrait" after long importuning by their grown children. Lowered portrait costs meant that more people were photographed and lowered duplication costs meant that more photographs could be distributed among the typical households of eight or more grown children. Even in 1900, you see advertisements for photographers offering to convert and duplicate old pictures and to make more copies of pictures you had taken elsewhere!

The portrait that heads this column was taken in the 1870s not for, or by, loving grandchildren but rather for the students and scholarly admirers of a well known rabbi who had infused even the detailed instructions of his book on schechita (kosher slaughtering) with his sense of awe for G-d's handiwork. This is the type of portrait that created a livelihood for itinerant photographers and booksellers in the first half of the nineteenth century - if the customer couldn't pay well, then take a picture of a subject that a lot of people will want to honor. If you sell books associated with famous rabbis, see if you can't also place a chromograph or lithograph or inexpensive reprint of an early photo. But this one was handed down in the family of the rabbi and it was used as the family's focus for all kinds of family gatherings and charitable events, as evidenced by its appearance on a 1920s pamphlet calling on the family to donate to a community cause in the name of their ancestor. (See the pamphlet on another part of our webpage.) It is also a good example of the kind of picture taken with the technology of one time period that was modified in the next twenty years to make it more accessible to the subsequent generation. The portrait was made in the in the 1860s or 1870s, Rabbi Alexandrovsky died in 1877. It was put onto canvas in the 1880s and real card stock probably before the turn of the century.

Lyakhovichi Jews began taking pictures outside the studio, somewherre before the year 1905. Candids include picnic scenes, political activists, book discussion grooups and community theater participants. They show co-workers gathered around new machinery, or in a law library, or just taking advantage of a pretty day and a camera. That last type mentioned, was frequently turned into homemade picture postcards. Mr. Brevda, the photographer who had been taking Lyakhovichi pictures for a quarter century, wasted no time remonstrating with people who took their own. He advertised that he would mount their pictures on mailable cardstock and soon photos left Lyakhovichi with these scenes enclosed.


Little Garden Pond in Lyakhovichi
Probably on one of the residential streets with orchards and small ponds like Sanitorium or the Rampart.


One of 8 windmills in Lyakhovichi in 1908
The windmills were also sites of picnics and trysts. It was hard to decide which it was better to tell your parents, you were at a meeting for young Zionists, or you were taking an unsupervised stroll with a party to whom you were not engaged. A windmill picture sent to a friend overseas could remind them of whichever you chose.

Ice being taken from the Vedma
One of the photos that Alter Brevda took himself, for the burgeoning postcard market.

Photo Mysteries

The picture below's mystery is not who is it. We know that it is a young man named Todros Zalman Kirschner. His last name was said Kushner, Kishner, Kershner, and spelled Kershner and Kerzner in surviving records. We know that Todros moved from Lyakhovichi to Nesvizh and then to the United States, and while he stayed in close touch with his wife and children in Nesvizh, only one daughter joined him in the United States. We know that his father who was past sixty came to America and was still living fifteen years later when Todross applied for a passport. But for all of that, the picture contains mysteries. Was it taken in Lyakhovichi to court a bride in Nesvizh? Was it taken in Nesvizh to send to his parents in Lyakhovichi? Was it taken in the United States to send to his "American wife," the term for women with husbands in the US?


Todres Kirzner as a young man
The photo was sent by Tina Levine who would appreciate your sharing knowledge on the Kirshners and Kushners of Lyakhovichi.