The Mystery of Helena Modjeska’s First and Last Kraków Photographs: The Walery Rzewuski’s and Józef Sebald’s Glass Negatives in the Jagiellonian Library Collection

The article focuses on a unique collection of glass negatives held at the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. These works by the esteemed Polish photographers Walery Rzewuski (1865–1869) and Józef Sebald (1903) capture the actress Helena Modjeska in her first and last photographic sessions in her hometown. In 2024, the negatives were digitised for the first time at the Museum of Photography in Kraków, so that digital copies identical to the originals were obtained. By reconstructing the history of the relationship between the actress and Rzewuski based on various sources, the article examines the phenomenon of Modjeska’s earliest photographs in character and investigates the talent of one of the first Polish theatre photographers. Inspired by Geoffrey Batchen’s Negative/Positive: A History of Photography (2021), the author attempts to demonstrate how examining negatives can shift our perspective on the understanding of photography, including theatre photography.