Jan Langhans

ISBN: 80-7215-251-3|Published: 2005|Pages: 140
Binding: Softbound|Format: 160 x 180 mm|Graphic design: Pavel Lev, Studio Najbrt
http://www.langhansarchiv.cz/en/galerie-historie.php

Jan Langhans (1851–1928) is now, once again, among the best known figures in Czech photography. His studios in Prague and elsewhere in Bohemia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were famous for the outstanding visual and technical quality of their work. This book presents many photographs from the key part of this portraiture, “The Celebrities Gallery.” Begun by Langhans in 1890 and continued by his successors, this set of photographs became a valuable portrait gallery not only of famous Czechs but also of important visitors to the country, who, attracted by the renown of Langhans, had their portraits made in one of his studios. In a unique way, the present volume also illustrates the development of portrait photography in the last two decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It opens with a brief introduction by Zuzana Meisnerová-Wismerová, a great-granddaughter of Langhans and manager of the Langhans Gallery in Prague, and an article about the life and work of Langhans by Pavel Scheufler, a historian of photography who has published widely on the period before 1918, and had organized a number of exhibitions as well.