Fridrich, František

František Fridrich was a Czech photographer of the second half of the 19th century, who at that time was the only photographer from Bohemia to gain truly international fame. He is most famous for his pictures of Prague and photographs of spa towns.

František Fridrich, whose full name was František Josef Arnošt Fridrich, was born on May 21, 1829 in Mělník. After the usual studies of a bourgeois son, he entered the Faculty of Law in Prague in 1847, but left in 1851. He may have already taken photographs during his university studies and therefore had some experience with the daguerreotype, the oldest photographic technique used in practice. He may also have been fascinated by Talbot's calotype, the first technique that allowed for the creation of copies from a paper negative. It was from 1851 that the wet collodion process technique began to be used, which had more suitable properties in every way than the techniques known until then. In any case, we do not know much about the beginnings of his career as a professional photographer.

In 1855, Fridrich visited the World Exhibition in Paris, from which he brought back a number of stereotypical photographs, which he then exhibited in Prague in September 1856, and then toured the countryside with his stereoscope and photographic images. It was the first photographic exhibition in the history of Czech photography. Fridrich's stereoscopic exhibition was associated with a small scandal. Fridrich was apparently slightly unconventional and exhibited photographs of female nudes behind a screen and for a special admission fee. This episode was undoubtedly one of the main reasons why the otherwise successful and already well-known Fridrich was later refused the title of Court Photographer . (It should be noted, however, that he made up for it in 1866 after Austria lost the war with Prussia, when he applied for a similar right in Prussia and, after the application was granted, he then used the title "Royal Prussian Court Photographer.")

František Fridrich opened his Prague photo studio in 1862, in the Old Town on Michalská Street. Sometime after 1870, František Fridrich, in addition to his studio on Michalská Street, also ran his own photography shop on the corner of Příkopů and Havířská Streets. In 1875, he rented his photography studio to the painter and trained daguerreotypist Jan Maloch (1825–1911), who incidentally worked for him in the 1860s, and he himself set up a new studio on Ferdinandova Street.

The second half of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s were the years of greatest expansion and fame for Friedrich's studio, which far exceeded the borders of Austria-Hungary. At that time, in addition to Teplice, Karlovy Vary, and Mariánské Lázně, he also had a branch in Hamburg, contractual buyers in other European cities (including Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and London) and warehouses practically all over the world, of course in the United States, Brazil—where he was also appointed court photographer of the imperial house—in Australia, Algeria, Shanghai, Japan, and elsewhere. He retired in 1889 at the age of 60.
—Wikipedia, https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franti%C5%A1ek_Fridrich_(fotograf)