Retro photographs, over 80 cameras: a thematic exhibition is presented at the Lepel Local History Museum

 Visitors to the permanent exhibition of the Lepel Regional Museum of Local Lore can find out what Lepel and its surroundings looked like in the 19th century, what cameras photographers used, how they developed films and preserved history in photographs. Director of the cultural institution Alla StelmakhtoldBelTA, who was at the origins of photography in the Lepel region and how many cameras are stored in the museum.

The exhibition dedicated to photography and its figures in the Lepel Regional Museum of Local Lore is one of two that exist in Belarus. There is another one in Gomel. “Here are presented both copies of photographs taken in the 19th-20th centuries, as well as cameras - from the first ones that appeared in Belarus to modern ones, in total there are more than 80 cameras on display,” said Alla Stelmakh and explained how this direction developed on Lepel land . Landowner Mikhail Kustinsky is considered one of the first photo chroniclers of this region. He was an educated man: he graduated from the Vilna Noble Institute, the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, and was fond of archeology. When he got his own camera (and such equipment was not cheap in those days), Mikhail Kustinsky began photographing Lepel’s landscapes. All of his works completed before 1865 were presented at the All-Russian Ethnographic Exhibition in Moscow. In the author’s photographs you can see what the locks of the Berezina water system located in Lepel looked like, through which timber was floated from the upper reaches of the Berezina to Europe, the employees who worked on this artificial waterway, as well as residents of the city and its attractions. At the beginning of the 20th century, photographic history in Lepelshchyna was made up of father and son Boris and Rafail Fidelman. They took professional photographs in their studio, which had specially equipped rooms for portraits. Both residents and views of the city were caught in the lens of their camera. Among the Fidelmans' regular clients were representatives of the Soviet government. Now the local history museum houses copies of the works of this family contract. Part of the thematic exhibition is “Fidelman’s office” - an installation where you can take a photo in an antique interior that imitates the atmosphere in a hundred-year-old studio. By the way, in this photo zone there is an authentic chair and mirror from the early 20th century. Another location of the exhibition is designed in the form of an apartment of a photographer of the second half of the 20th century. Here is a living room with furniture, clothes, a radio, even parquet that have been preserved from the 1970s-1980s, and the holy of holies of the amateur photographer of those times - a bathroom with special equipment for developing film and printing photographs. Each exhibit in this area is 50-60 years old, and together they create a vintage atmosphere, returning museum visitors, peers of that era, to the years of their youth and youth. Young people and schoolchildren will be interested in seeing the collection of film and digital cameras, which were later replaced by modern gadgets - smartphones with built-in cameras. “We tried to take into account the interests of all generations, so that adults remember the times of film, and children learned how the transition to digital photography took place,” noted Alla Stelmakh. There is a video guide in the exhibition hall that talks about the history and development of photography, so you can take a tour here You can also walk through on your own, looking at the exhibits accompanied by sound. Photo by BelTA.