Toruń, J. Bułhak – The Church of Saints James and Philip the Apostles in Toruń, as seen in a photograph from 1925.

[TORUŃ - Church of Saints James and Philip the Apostles in Toruń - panoramic photograph]. [1925]. Photograph, size 16.5x11.4 cm, by JanBułhak in Vilnius.
An exterior view of the former parish church of Toruń’s New Town, located at the eastern corner of the New Town Market Square. In the lower right corner is the imprint: “Jan Bułhak Vilnius.” The photograph is part of the author’s series “Poland in the Images of Photographer Jan Bułhak.” On the reverse, a stamp reads: “POLAND in the images of photographer J. Bułhak No. 4414 Toruń St. James’ Church [written in ink] / J. Bułhak, Art/ Photo. Vilnius, Jagiellońska 8 / 6,000 photographic images from all over Poland / [...]” and a handwritten identification in ink, in Italian. Minor scuffing on the corners; otherwise, in very good condition.
J. Bułhak (1876–1950)—an outstanding Polish photographer, the doyen of Polish photography, a philosopher and theorist, founder of the Vilnius Photo Club in 1927, and a co-founder of the ZPAF after World War II. He established his first studio at the urging of Ferdynand Ruszczyc. For a time, he worked in Hugo Erfurt’s studio in Dresden. His first works in Vilnius were created between 1912 and 1919 and were devoted mainly to landscapes and monumental architecture. It was precisely these themes that became central to his work, and he focused primarily on them for the rest of his life. He was a pioneer of landscape photography. His collection of approximately 10,000 photographs, “Poland in Photographic Landscapes,” along with a photo archive of Polish and foreign images, were destroyed by fire in Vilnius in 1944. After the war, until 1946, he took approximately 1,000 photographs documenting the destruction and reconstruction of Warsaw and approximately 2,000 photographs from the Western Territories. He published numerous albums, portfolios, and postcards featuring photographs, mainly from the Borderlands and especially those depicting the Vilnius region. He was also the author of many textbooks on the aesthetics and techniques of photography and regional studies, as well as the initiator of historical research on photography.