7 December 2023 – 10 March 2024 the Royal Łazienki Museum in Warsaw, Poland, hosted a photography exhibition entitled ” The Photo-Aesthetics of Count Benedykt Henryk Tyszkiewicz (1852-1935), showcasing the work of photographer and traveler Benedikt Henrik Tiškevičius (1852-1935). The exhibition was organized by the Šiauliai Aušra Museum branch – Photography Museum, in cooperation with the Royal Lazienki Museum in Warsaw and the custodians of the photographic legacy of Benedikt Henrik Tiškevičius in Lithuania. The project brought together an international team of curators, including Dr Dainius Junevičius and Dr Małgorzata Maria Grąbczewska, researchers of the heritage of old Lithuanian and Polish photography, to present the most comprehensive overview of the photographer’s oeuvre and one of the most solid expositions of old Lithuanian photography in Poland to date.

In the catalogue of this exhibition published by the Šiauliai Aušra Museum “DISCOVERED IMAGES. The Photo-Aesthetics of Count Benedykt Henryk Tyszkiewicz (1852-1935)” / “ODNALEZIONE OBRAZY. Fotoestetyka hrabiego Benedykta Henryka Tyszkiewicza (1852-1935)” (in English and Polish) contains a detailed presentation of the exhibition’s themes, additional information that was not included in the exhibition, and the documents of the exhibition.

Edited by Dr Dainius Junevicius and Dr Małgorzata Maria Grąbczewska

Designer – Juozapas Švelnys

The catalogue

Count Benediktas Henrikas Tiškevičius, the owner of Raudondvaris near Kaunas, started taking photographs around 1882. Photography became a passion that captivated him for more than two decades. Tiškevičius, who lived in Paris, played an important role in the history of French Pictorialism and is also deservedly considered one of the founders of artistic photography in Lithuania and Poland. For a long time very little was known about his work. It was believed that most of his work had been lost for centuries. A few years ago, Lithuanian collector Gediminas Petraitis caused a sensation by discovering and bringing to Lithuania several hundred surviving photographs by count Tiškevičius dating from 1892-1898.

The exhibition at the Royal Łazienki Museum showcases around 200 photographs from the collections of Šiauliai Aušra Museum, the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Kaunas District Museum, Trakai History Museum and Gražina Petraitienė’s private collection. The photographs in the exhibition portray Tiškevičius as a traveler, portraitist, attentive observer of rural realities, documenter of his life and creator of historical narratives.

More about the exhibition