Adam Jerzy Czartoryski w obiektywie Nadara – fotografie z Muzeum Zamoyskich w Kozłówce

This text is a continuation of and a supplement to Małgorzata M. Grąbczewska’s Adam Jerzy Czartoryski w obiektywie Nadara [Adam Jerzy Czartoryski in the lens of Nadar], an article published in Blok-Notes in 2009. It presented the history of the prince’s unique photo session from 1856 and was inspired by a photograph of Adam Jerzy Czartoryski discovered in the Polish Library in Paris. Convinced of the value of this find, Grąbczewska, the then curator of the photography collection, searched the Parisian records for other photographs of Czartoryski taken by Nadar, one of the best photographers in 19th-century Paris. She found only one negative from the said photo session, at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and only six positive prints from two portrait shots of the prince. Unbeknown to her, however, other photos from that session ended up in Konstanty Zamoyski’s collection of photographs in Kozłówka. As it turns out, Nadar took not two but four photographs of Czartoryski. Based on this discovery, it was my intention to reconstruct the 1856 photo session in its entirety and share the results of my work and observations. The research was conducted on the Polish collections and documents of prince Czartoryski’s family. The collected material confirmed that the series of his portraits in Kozłówka is likely to be the only such extant collection.