Sampson Tchernoff: Creator of symbol for Serbian soldiers in the Great War: Photography 'The Hawkeye'

Abstract

Documentary photography, especially the one that dates back to some distant point in history, is invaluable in preserving cultural and national identity of a country and its people. In our country it was thought until recently that Rista Marjanovic was the most important photographer of the Serbian army in the period of the wars in Serbia and the Balkans from 1912 to 1918, while about Sampson Tchernoff, the war photographer who actually indebted Serbian people by leaving the biggest photo archives from the wars of the early 20th century, we knew inexplicable so little. Thanks to the famous photography, his name was never completely forgotten, but only after discovering the documentation which was settled in 8,000 boxes in the Archives of Serbia, in 2008, Tchernoff took his place in Serbian history. The paper is about known aspects of life of this extraordinary man and his photographic and filming engagement during the First World War and the emergence of photography 'The Hawkeye', which has become a symbol of Serbian troops from that era, ever since.