The Pioneers of Photography in Trieste: Daguerreotypes, Ateliers and Dynasties of the 19th Century

When news of Louis Daguerre's invention crossed Europe in 1839, few cities were better prepared to embrace it than Trieste. The great Adriatic port of the Habsburg Empire was a crossroads of merchants, opticians, chemists and travelling artists: exactly the mixture of money, technique and curiosity that the new art of "drawing with light" required. The history of photography in Trieste is thus far more than a local chronicle — it mirrors the rise of a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie that wanted to see itself portrayed, and a city that wanted to be remembered.

The daguerreotype pioneers: Trieste 1839

Trieste learned about the daguerreotype astonishingly early. On 21 March 1839 the newspaper L'Osservatore Triestino described the procedures of Daguerre's invention, months before its official disclosure in Paris. In November of the same year the optician Giovanni Mollo (1799-1883) announced that Daguerre's machines were available in his shop on the Corso.

The first documented experiments came almost immediately. On 20 November 1839 Carlo Antonio Fontana (1809-1886), a wealthy thirty-year-old amateur, produced the city's first daguerreotypes. The writer Francesco Dall'Ongaro recounted those experiments on 24 November 1839 in the periodical La Favilla, capturing the city's enthusiasm for the "mirror with a memory". By 1842 Fontana had moved from city views to portraiture, producing a self-portrait and a portrait of his wife Adele Reisden — among the earliest intimate photographic portraits in the region.

Wilhelm Engel and the studio of the Austrian Lloyd

Photography in Trieste became an institution thanks to a shipping company. In March 1854 the Third Section of the Austrian Lloyd — its literary-artistic division — founded a photographic establishment, entrusting it to the German photographer Wilhelm Engel (1824-1891). The first advertisement of the Photographisches Atelier des Oesterreichischen Lloyd appeared in the newspaper Il Diavoletto on 1 April 1855; in 1857 the studio moved to the prestigious rooms of the Tergesteo building, next to the Stock Exchange.

Engel specialised in bourgeois portraits of remarkable quality. In July 1859 he resigned from the Lloyd to open his own studio in via dei Forni, where he trained an entire generation of photographers:

• Giuseppe Wulz, founder of the city's greatest photographic dynasty
• Luigi Boccalini, Wulz's first business partner
• Francesco Schwarzbeck and Giovanni Ortolani, later masters in their own right

Sebastianutti & Benque, a gold-medal partnership

The story of Trieste's most internationally renowned studio begins with a watchmaker seeking redemption. Guglielmo Sebastianutti (1824-1881), after various commercial failures, looked for a foreign partner to enter photography. The answer came from Ludwigslust in northern Germany: Franz "Francesco" Benque (1841-1921) arrived in Trieste in 1864, and a studio opened in via dell'Annunziata 11. On 30 September 1867 the two signed a ten-year partnership contract.

The partnership was turbulent — it broke in 1869, when Benque left for Hamburg and later Brazil — but it was reborn in 1879 as Sebastianutti & Benque, collecting international gold medals and imperial recognitions. In 1887 the studio moved to its famous seat in Piazza della Borsa, and in 1888 Benque accomplished a technical feat for the age: photographing the dark caves of San Canziano (Škocjan) by artificial light.

The photographers of the Jewish community

Trieste's tolerant, commercial atmosphere attracted Jewish photographers from across the Habsburg lands. Leopold Goldstein (1819-1894), born in Galicia, opened his "New Photographic Studio" on the Corso in November 1864. His son Giuseppe Mayer Goldstein (1848-1930) became one of the most important photographers of the eastern Adriatic: in 1875 he co-authored what is considered the first photo-reportage in Croatian history, documenting Emperor Franz Joseph's journey through Dalmatia.

Edmund Lichtenstern (1840-1895), a painter-photographer from Budapest who had worked in Vienna, opened his studio on the Corso in September 1863; the Corriere israelitico praised him in 1864 as "one of the most able and accredited photographers of Vienna". The Trieste-born Antonio Lindehmer (1838-1873) completed this group, working in partnership with Goldstein from 1864.

Female gazes: the women pioneers of Trieste photography

Photography was one of the first modern professions in which women could become entrepreneurs. Anna Scrinzi, owner of the studio "Al Progresso" on the Corso from 1865, specialised in urban views: in 1870 alone her studio produced 18 of the 24 views of the port recorded in the catalogues of the Civic Museums.

Emilia Manenizza (1853-1905) arrived from Venice in 1881 with her father and brother to take over the historic Rottmayer atelier. From 1895 she ran the studio alone — a rarity in Europe at the time — moving it to Piazza della Borsa. In 1904, together with Francesco Penco (1871-1950), her former apprentice and later husband, the studio became the first in Trieste to photograph by electric light: period advertising boasted two 1,500-candle lamps, while the newspaper L'Indipendente, announcing the nighttime photo sessions on 5 September 1904, described electric reflectors of more than 2,000 candles each.

Giuseppe Wulz and the birth of a dynasty

No name embodies Trieste photography like Wulz. Giuseppe Wulz (1843-1918), born in Cave del Predil near Tarvisio, arrived in Trieste as a child and trained in Engel's studio, where in 1866, his apprenticeship complete, he was hired as an assistant. After the master's departure in 1868, he opened the studio "Allievi di G. Engel" with Luigi Boccalini in Piazza della Borsa 10. In 1874 he obtained his own licence, and in 1891 he inaugurated a prestigious "Studio of photographic art" on the top floor of Palazzo Hierschel on the Corso.

Wulz photographed the city's transformation — the port under construction, the new boulevards, the society portraits — and passed the craft to his son Carlo Wulz, and then to his granddaughters Wanda and Marion Wulz, leading the atelier deep into the twentieth century. The Wulz archive, today held by the Alinari Foundation, remains one of the most complete visual chronicles of any European city.

A heritage printed in silver

Daguerreotypes, cartes de visite, glass plates: the pioneers of photography gave Trieste something rare — a continuous visual memory stretching from 1839 onwards. Their images do not merely show buildings and faces; they document a port city inventing its modern identity. Walking today through Piazza della Borsa or along the Corso means walking through the frames of Engel, Wulz, Benque, Scrinzi and Manenizza: the people who taught Trieste to look at itself.