17th Photography Cabinet: Józef Czechowicz (1818-1888) - Photographer of Vilnius

Vilnius, in Lithuania today, becomes the subject of a Photography Cabinet show for the first time - Baroque architecture, green hills, and the Neris (Wilia) River as captured by Józef Czechowicz, a Vilnius landscape photographer.

National Museum on the exhibition (our translation):

From 15 September we are launching a series of three monographic exhibitions devoted to selected photographers. The first of them is Józef Czechowicz (1818-1888) - a master of outdoor photography, emotionally and artistically bound up with Vilnius from 1865. An expert in the wet collodion plate technique and in the current trends of European photography, he was able to record in an original way the face of the city, the historic monuments of Vilnius and its finest panoramas with the picturesquely winding Viliya (Neris) and Vilnia rivers.

What to expect

The exhibition runs from 15 September to 13 December 2026 in the Photography Cabinet (Gallery of 19th-Century Art, Main Building). You’ll see views of Vilnius from the 1870s - Baroque architecture, green hills, the Neris (Wilia) River - through the lens of Józef Czechowicz, whom Jan Bułhak considered “the first Vilnius representative of homeland photography”. The show also traces the photographer’s little-known biography, which took him through Kyiv and Vitebsk before he settled in Vilnius.

Tickets and opening hours are on the National Museum’s website.

Museum profile: National Museum in Warsaw.