Four Portraits, No Retouching

Abstract

Researchers are still raising questions related to the time and place of shooting of certain portraits in the scarce photographic iconography of F. M. Dostoevsky. First of all, this pertains to a set of early photographs, whose dating ranges between 1857 and 1863, according to various sources. The article offers new arguments in favor of attributing several portraits of F. M. Dostoevsky to 1859. This refers to photographs that captured an image of F. M. Dostoevsky that is unusual for most of his admirers, namely, without a beard. Two of them were taken in Semipalatinsk by the photographer S. A. Leibin, while in one of them F. M. Dostoevsky was captured together with the Kazakh educator Ch. Ch. Valikhanov, whom he befriended during the years of his exile. Another photo has not been precisely attributed. A comprehensive analysis of the details depicted on them, the facts of the biography of Ch. Ch. Valikhanov and the letters of F. M. Dostoevsky allows to date the Semipalatisk photographs with greater accuracy. The article proposes that another one of the portraits taken in Tver was carried out simultaneously with the shooting of the portrait of M. M. Dostoevsky. A comprehensive examination of various details and circumstances also leads to the same conclusions. To date, only a few copies of photographs with Ch. Ch. Valikhanov and a photograph allegedly taken in Tver are known. The original solitary portrait made in Semipalatinsk has been lost. The conducted research allows to assert that other copies of these photographs may exist. The proposed conclusions are made on the basis of a study of the originals of photographs in the collection of The V. I. Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature.