Jozeph Khmelevskyi

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Description

Jozeph Khmelevskyi is a famous Ukrainian photographer-artist, the author of unique pictures from the life of the provincial city, its prominent people and landmarks. He was born on March 18, 1849 in Warsaw, in the family of a Polish nobleman and a Russian noblewoman. After the arrest of his father, who participated in the Polish uprising of 1863-64, Jozeph and his mother moved to St. Petersburg, where he worked in the photo studio of Boleslaw Galuschynskyi. In 1875, he met the granddaughter of the Poltava procurator Konstiantyn Romer, got married the same year and moved from St. Petersburg to Poltava, where his wife's parents lived. Here, in 1875, he opened his first photo studio - on the corner of Olexandrivska and Stritenska (now Sobornosti and Stritenska) streets. Khmelevskyi became a well-known photojournalist of Poltava: he immortalized the participants of the opening of the monument to Ivan Kotliarevskyi (1903), the visit to Poltava of members of the imperial court (1909). His works were exhibited at many domestic and international exhibitions and were awarded prizes.

Khmelevskyi was not just an outstanding photographer, he was one of the pioneers of the photographic craft, a connoisseur of technology and chemistry in this field. Since 1883, the image of the first medal received by him at an industrial and art exhibition in Moscow appeared on business cards and the backs of Khmelevskyi's photographs. In 1902, in addition to numerous medals (Petersburg, Paris, Lausanne, Brussels, Chicago), on his business cards there is an image of the French Order of Academic Palms, received by the photographer in 1900 at the World Exhibition in Paris, along with a special award from the French government.

In Poltava, Jozeph Khmelevskyi created two famous photo albums: "Gogol on the Homeland" and "Zemstvo building in Poltava", which preserved the unique beauty of Vasylivka, Yanovshchyna, Dykanka, Myrhorod, Poltava, as well as the original interior of the building of the Poltava provincial zemstvo, built during 1903 - 1908 according to the project of the famous architect and artist Vasyl Krychevskyi (1873-1952).

For almost half a century, Khmelevskyi recorded the life of the Ukrainian region, preserving the images of many people for posterity. Entire series of postcards "Types of Ukraine" and "Landscapes of Poltava Region" were printed based on Khmelevskyi's photographs. Volodymyr Korolenko, Panas Myrnyi, Hryhorii Miasoiedov, Mykola Sklifosovskyi, Maria Bashkirtseva, Maria Zankovetska and others filmed in his studio.

In 2016, the people of Poltava honored the memory of Jozeph Khmelevskyi by opening a memorial plaque on the building where his photo workshop was located, at 20 Sobornosti Street.

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