In the middle of the 19 th century the full members of the French Society of Photography were Alexander Ivanitski and Count Ivan Nostits employed in Georgia.
In 1857 the head of the Mining Service in the Caucasus colonel A.Ivanitski was sent on a business trip to Paris and London with a very significant task. The commander-in-chief A. Bariatinski ordered him to establish a military photographic institution under the main headquarter of the Caucasian Army.
The organizational work took a few years and in 1863 this photographic institution started functioning. Military photographers played great role in the development of professional photography in the Caucasus.
I. Nostits began to study photography in 1839 at the Cadet Corps in Petersburg. First he started his military career in Tbilisi, then he was the leader of the Nizhegorod regiment in Dagestan. There he received in his apartment the famous French novelist Alexander Dumas, who travelled in the Caucasus in 1859, and showed his guest the album of pictures taken by him
On 25 August the Russian army took Shamil's last foothold Aul Gunib and captured the Imam. Shamil's photo with his son was taken by I. Nostits in Chir-Yurt on 4 September, 1856. |