0273 Anastas Jovanović: Photographer of the New Slovak Political Representation

Abstract

This essay looks into the very beginnings of paper photography in the Austrian Empire. It focuses on two salted paper portraits of two most iconic figures of the Slovak National Revival in the mid-19th century, Ľudovít Štúr and Jozef M. Hurban. Created around 1849 by Anastas Jovanović, a Serbian photographer and lithographer based in Vienna, both portraits are the earliest paper photographs today preserved in Slovak collections. The article elucidates not only the salted paper prints’ authorship, origin, ownership and material characteristics, but also the notion of reproduction and circulation of images during the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1849 and by the advent of photography on paper in Central Europe at the same time. Special attention is paid to social and cultural contacts between Slovaks and Serbs around 1848 as a key factor to the photographs’ production.