Karl Karlovich Bulla (or Karl Ostwald Bulla Russian: Карл Карлович Булла; 26 February 1855 [1] or 1853 [2] - 1929) was a prominent Russian
photographer, often referred as the father of photo-reporting in Russia.[3]
Biography
Karl Ostwald Bulla was born in the Free City of Lübeck (then a state of the
German Confederation) to a merchant family.[1] His exact birth year is unclear with some references citing 1853[2] then others citing 1855.[1] In 1865 the adventurous boy ran away from his
family to St. Petersburg, Russia. The reasons prompting
the boy to choose Russia out of all possible destinations are as yet unknown.[3]
After arriving in St. Petersburg, Bulla started to work as a delivery-boy in the firm Dupant that made and sold
photography supplies. Soon his responsibilities included handmaking (coating and sensitizing) of the photographic glass negative
plates. At the age of twenty Bulla opened a small factory producing "momentary dry bromine-gelatin plates". Buying the readymade photographic materials was much
more convenient than handmaking their own and soon Bulla's plates became popular, selling not only in St. Petersburg but across
the whole Russian Empire.[1] In February 1876
Bulla requested his naturalization and in July 1876 became a citizen of the Russian
Empire.[1]
In 1875 Bulla opened his first Photographic Studio on the Garden Street, 61 and soon
became a fashionable photographer. For ten years he was working there doing pavilion portrait photography. Then in 1886 he
received the permit from the St. Petersburg Police allowing him to take pictures everywhere. While he did not abandon studio
photography (in fact he opened two more studios: on the Catherine Canal and on
Nevsky Prospekt) but became more in more involved into photography of city life.[1]
At the end of the 19th century newspaper printing technology allowed the publishing of photographs. In 1894 Russian Department
of Post and Telegraphs also allowed use of postcards. Both events significantly increased the
demand for photographs.[1] In 1895 Bulla
stopped his production of photographic supplies [1] and put all his energy into photography. In his advertisement he wrote "The oldest
photographer-illustrator Karl Bulla photographs for the illustrated magazines anything and anywhere without limits from the
landscape or the building, indoor or outdoor day or night at the artificial light".[2]
Indeed he photographed everything and anything: Life of Tsar family and assemblies of anti-government intelligentsia, stars of scene and manual workers, palaces and hostels for homeless, even such exotics as
gay parties.[4]. Bulla was on the editorial board of many
magazines including popular Niva.[1] In 1910s
the annual revenue of the firm "Bulla and Sons" reached 250 thousand roubles.[1]
In 1916 Bulla passed the management of the firm "Bulla and sons" to his sons Alexander and Victor and moved to Ösel Island
(currently Saaremaa, Estonia). He lived a quiet life there,
photographing the local ethnographic material and teaching Estonian boys the basics of photography until his death in
1929.[1]
The sons
After the retirement of Karl Bulla his firm was managed by his sons, Andrey and Viktor. Viktor Bulla was a notable
photo-reporter in his own right. He was the author of a series on the Russo-Japanese
War and World War I.[3] At that time, before the invention of the telephoto
lens, photography was a very difficult and dangerous mission.[3].
Later Victor Bulla made photographs of the October Revolution and the
Russian Civil War. He was appointed the Chief Photographer of the Leningrad Soviet. He took a lot of photographs of Vladimir
Lenin and other bolsheviks. In 1938 during the Great
Purge he was arrested and accused of being a German Spy and shot.[3]
The life of Andrey Bulla also ended tragically. He was arrested in the early 1930s and sent to Belomorkanal labor camps. He returned after five years and
soon died.[2]
The archive
In 1935 the son of Karl, Victor Bulla donated to the State Archive of Leningrad District
132,683 negatives of Bulla's photographs. The archive grew and now consists of more than 200,000 negatives of works by Karl Bulla
and his sons[3]. All the photographs in the
archive are in the public domain and are a favorite source of illustrations of life in
Saint Petersburg.[1]
In 2003 there was a large exhibition of Bulla's prints celebrating 300 years of Saint Petersburg and 150th birthday of Karl
Bulla (by the 1853 version).[5] People of Saint Petersburg
put a bronze sculpture of Karl Bulla on Malaya Sadovaya Street near the former studio of Karl Bulla. The sculpture shows a
photographer with an ancient camera and an umbrella photographing a bulldog. [6]
Some works
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Opening of the Hercules club, 1912
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References
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