Places / Carl Oswald Bulla’s photo studio
Carl Oswald Bulla’s photo studio / Places
Carl Oswald Bulla’s
photo studio
In 1866, the studio becomes the ownership of the
Italian Giovanni (Ivana) Bianchi, the famous St. Petersburg
photographer who took pictures of the city and made photo
reportage. A little later, in 1872, Bianchi sells the photo studio
to a merchant of the second Guild Beyer Rudolf Fedorovich,
and later the photo studio is inherited by his son Johann.
In the 1880s, appears a new owner, Grigory Aleksandrovich
Borel, a St. Petersburg commoner, the owner of another
photo studio in the house No. 90. The studio at Nevsky 54
was located in the most prestigious location, almost in the
middle of the Nevsky Prospect, near the Anichkov Palace,
the Alexandrinsky Theater and the Public Library, with
a busy trade intersection on which the Gostiny Dvor and
Passage were located, and therefore enjoyed the greater
popularity of the public who eagerly attended it.
Carl Oswald Bulla Brothers and father
Leo Tolstoy So, in its original form, the studio will exist until 1882.
The following year, house 54 on Nevsky Prospekt was rebuilt
according to the project of the prominent architect P. Yu.
Syuzor who built seven houses here, including the famous
«Zinger House» — now the House of Books. Instead of a
rather modest three-storied building, a house familiar to us
today appeared with rich stucco on the facade, two-storied
bay windows and a spectacularly rounded corner crowned
with a small dome.
The photo studio here, certainly, was saved. It was owned
by Chesnok (Chesnokov) Ivan Pavlovich, who founded a
photography workshop «Borel».
The photo studio was fairly well known in St. Petersburg,
however, somewhere in 1906–1908 a new stage began in the
life of a photo studio at Nevsky 54. After numerous owners,
it becomes the ownership of the most famous photographer
of Petersburg — Carl Oswald Bulla, and the workshop «Borel»
was transferred to the neighboring house number 56 where it
situated until the reconstruction of the Eliseevsky House.
Carl Bulla was at the zenith of glory, and, therefore, a
new beautiful house on Nevsky attracted his attention.
At that place he also bought an apartment for his family.
It was Bulla who illustrated the jubilee edition dedicated
to the 200th anniversary of the city, «Nevsky Prospekt»
(author I. I. Bozheryanov), where he presented a panorama
of the modern Nevsky Prospekt, photographing each of the
houses situated there. Interestingly, in this edition, for the
first time, there was an advertisement by Carl Bulla, where
we see an energetic man in a bowler-hat surrounded by
numerous cameras, eager and ready to take pictures of a
new city-view object.
View from the roof
In the very center of St. Petersburg at the crossroads
near Gostiny Dvor there is an amazing place that has
existed since 1850 and still offers to appreciate the beauty
of the panorama of Nevsky Prospekt, Sadovaya Street
and Ostrovsky Square from the balcony of the house on
Nevsky 54. It is so attractive for photographers taking
pictures of the city center from a bird’s-eye view. The
photo gallery of Carl Bulla is situated here.
The history of the studio was started by the first owner.
Carl Ludvigovich Kulish began his photographic activity
as a daguerreotypist. The house at that time was owned
by the merchant Demidov and the address read as follows:
«Kulish’s photo in Petersburg on Nevsky Prospect against
the Alexandrian theater in the house of Demidov No. 55».
Until now, a small number of photographs of this master
have remained, in the format of a modern «business card»
and a very popular size of photographs in the 1850s. Here,
against the background of a rather modest entourage,
residents of St. Petersburg take pictures: a captain, a pupil of
military school, a fashionista in a luxurious summer dress
with a crinoline and a young woman with her son.
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