M.V. Lobethal 1846 Self portrait of Czech photographer M.V. Lobethal
Daguerreotype Prácheňské museum in Pisek - The Prácheň Museum (Jack Wilgus, 23 August 2025) Marcus V. Lobethal was a Czech photographer born in Wroclaw in 1809 and died there in 1890. This is the first self-portrait of a photographer in his photo studio in the Czech Republic. He had his studio in Prague and made both ordinary and colored daguerreotypes with a Voigtländer camera and also made photographs on paper.
In 1847 his self-portrait daguerreotype was placed in a memorial box of a corner stone of the foundation of a bridge in Podolsk. Amazingly it was discovered in 1960, and is indeed the oldest self-portrait of a Czech photographer.
