Photographic calendar for 1872

A photographic calendar consists of a calendar, photographs and drawings. Usually, the photographs were taken by a professional photographer, while the drawings and the overall composition were the responsibility of a draughtsman. In this case, the photographer and draughtsman were one and the same person - Henryk Filipowicz, who in 1872 worked with his wife Izabella at Wanda Chicińska's photography workshop in Lublin.

Henryk Filipowicz (1842-after 1915) was a versatile artist. He practiced painting, drawing and sculpture. He dealt with photography not only in practice, but also in theory. He willingly experimented with new photographic techniques. He travelled a lot. He had a photographic studio in Warsaw at 58 Krakowskie Przedmieście Street and even in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he also had a painting studio. He made drawings and reproductions of masterpieces of painting for the press.

He was one of the first theoreticians of the new branch of art, which was photography. He gave lectures in the Warsaw Charity Society. He compared photography to art and the photographer to the artist. He claimed that if a photographer has talent and sensitivity, he can influence the composition and mood of a photograph in the same way as a painter can influence his painting. It was a very innovative observation for those times.