As the first photographer in the world, Brandel changed the format of the negative to the popular size (sometimes used even today) of 6x9 centimetres. This light camera was provided with a cassette with two glass tiles – it was the first step on the path to creating a negative containing more than one image. The camera was adapted to taking pictures on the so-called "dry tile” (created by Brandel himself), which eliminated the arduous preparation, a design which was ahead of its time. It had a very quick shutter, exposing the negative in one fiftieth of a second, which allowed for Brandel to not only become independent from the studio, but also to take pictures of real life, not just posed scenes. The invention was patented in 1889.
Soon the photo-revolver (as he named it) was improved so that it could hold twenty-five glass negatives. With this camera he recorded Warsaw's scenes and landscapes, and he was also the chronicler of the meeting of three emperors in Skierniewice in 1884. There, he received an order of merit from Frank Joseph. Brandel made copies of his invention and his cameras started being used outside of Poland. Brandel became very famous, even amongst the royalty. In his diaries, Julian Fałat wrote about a meeting with Tsar Alexander II. When, during a hunt in 1899, the emperor Wilhelm II presented him to the Russian emperor, the tsar saw Brandel’s photo-revolver hanging from his neck and asked: "N'est ce pas, c'est appareil de Bradel de Varsovie?" ("Isn’t it Brandel’s Warsaw camera?"). "Oui, Votre Majeste" ("Yes, Your Majesty") responded Fałat. Brandel’s camera was used by other painters such as Wojciech Gerson, Aleksander Gierymski, and Henryk Siemiradzki.
Brandel’s role in the history of photography isn’t limited to technical development. He’s also considered a pioneer of photo reportage – his pictures were published in illustrated magazines, making him the first photoreporter. Brandel is also the author of a breaktrough in looking at photography as an autonomous work, created by a specific artist. Until then photography reproduction meant copying it through etching or lithography, and the images made this way were signed only with a note “from photography”, usually without the author’s name. Brandel’s works, published in “Kłosy”, and then as the so-called “trawionki”, first photographs using a half-tone raster, were always signed by the author.
He was recognized in 1905 as a honorary member of the Warsaw Photographers’ Society, but by then he didn't live in Warsaw. In 1900, he'd resigned from professional life and moved to Toruń. He died on 28th October 1920, and was buried in Powązki cemetery in Warsaw.
Original photographs by Konrad Brandel are owned, among other places, by the Warsaw Museum and Warsaw Public Library. They are now reproduced as a document of Warsaw development in the second half of the 19th century.
Bibliography:
- Krystyna Lejko, Warszawa w obiektywie Konrada Brandla / Warsaw through Konrad Brandel's lens, Warszawa 1985;
- Ignacy Płażewski, Dzieje polskiej fotografii / History of Polish photography, Warszawa 2003.
author: Tomasz Mościcki, February 2011, translated by N. Mętrak-Ruda, November 2015.