Matuszewski's photographic career led him to Tsar Nicholas II. Since 1886, he had been an aulic photographer of the Russian emperor and recorded all-important historical occurrences with his camera. He was then given proof that his idea of cinema as a tool of researching history is right.
Everything came to a head because of a political scandal. In 1897, the French president Félix François Faure paid a visit to tsar Nicolas II. Matuszewski perpetuated the meeting, which was to become a subject of diplomatic controversies, with his camera. Otto von Bismarck accused the French politician of offending Russia by not behaving according to the protocol and not paying enough respect to the flag of the visited state. The diplomatic war would perhaps last much longer, if not the film recorded by Matuszewski, which became major evidence of Faure's innocence for European journalists. Many years after the incident occurred, the film was brought to the Polish National Film Archives.
For Matuszewski, the whole situation was evidence of his theory about the social role of cinema. In 1998, Matuszewski published two texts of great importance: New Source of History (Une nouvelle source de l'histoire) and Vitalised Photography, What it is Like and What it Should be Like (La photographie animée, ce qu’elle est, ce qu’elle doit être), where Matuszewski postulated to use cinema as the first tool of recording the most important historical events and organize a film archive with the most important testimonies of our times gathered.
In New Source of History, Matuszewski wrote:
Vitalized photography has the inimitable quality of authenticity, accuracy and precision. It is a credible and infallible eyewitness par excellence. Such photography is able to control statements and if living eyewitnesses do not agree on a certain issue, the vitalized photography may bring opponents to terms by silencing the one who is not right.