Oct/25

The Last Years of the Russian Empire in Unique Photographs

No comments · Posted by Sergei Rzhevsky in History, People, Photos

Carl Oswald Bulla or Karl Karlovich Bulla (1855-1929), a portraitist and master of documentary photography, was the owner of a photo studio in St. Petersburg. He became known as “the father of Russian photo reporting.”

In 1886, he received from the Ministry of Internal Affairs “permission to carry out all kinds of photographic work outside his home, such as: on the streets, apartments and in the vicinity of St. Petersburg.” In 1897, Karl Bulla’s photographs began to be published in the popular magazine “Niva”. Since that time, his name became known throughout the Russian Empire.

In total, his legacy is about 230 thousand photographs of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Tsarskoselsky (Vitebsky) Railway Station in St. Petersburg.

Monument to Empress Catherine II.

Nevsky Prospect – the main street of St. Petersburg.

The Dvortsovyy (Palace) Bridge.

The Winter Palace.

Celebration of the 200th anniversary of St. Petersburg (1903).

Flood. The Kryukov Canal (1903).

St. Petersburg Athletic Society (1905).

Collapse of the Egyptian Bridge (February 2, 1905).

The gymnastic society “Polish Falcon” (1907).

Leo Tolstoy – one of the greatest writers of all time (1908).

Launching the battleship “Pobeda” from the slipway of the Baltic Shipyard (1911).

The dining room for the poor (1911).

Academician Vladimir Bekhterev – a neurologist and the father of objective psychology (1912).

Leonid Andreev and his wife Anna (1912). He was a prominent Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer, the father of Expressionism in Russian literature.

Feodor Chaliapin – a Russian singer, who had a great influence on the world of opera (1913).

Matilda Kshesinskaya – a famous Russian ballerina and teacher of Polish origin (1916).

A group of Old Believer choir singers (1917).

The group portrait of members of the cycling society.

Cossack of the Cossack regiment.

Grigory Rasputin with officers.

Alexander Kerensky with his assistants – Minister-Chairman of the Provisional Government between the February and October revolutions (1917).

This photo was taken by Viktor Bulla, Karl Bulla’s son, from the rooftop near his photography studio. It was taken immediately after demonstrators were machine-gunned in the summer of 1917.