Monk, around 1860.

The photo shows a monk in front of a canvas with a painted landscape with a house and a river, but standing on the ground, so it is an improvised scenography in the open. It was created on a metal plate that carries an emulsion for photography and was cut into an irregular rectangle shape (10.4 cm x 6 cm). According to the technique of production, it is a ferrotype, the authors of which we can look for in traveling photographers in Serbia in the second half of the 19th century, which is also indicated by the scenography. It is one of the two oldest photographs in the Historical Collection, which were donated to the National Museum Kraljevo by the Bunjak sisters, Rada (Stanojević) and Desa (Pača), in 1997. The Bunjak family is a respectable Kraljevo family that occupied a significant place in the city during the 19th century. The Bunjak sisters recognize Bishop Janja (Joanikije Nešković 1804–1873) in the photo, who was a good friend of their grandfather Milan Bunjak, but this has not been reliably confirmed. Traveling photographers took photos using the ferrotype technique on a thin sheet metal coated with a layer of bromo-silver gelatin, most often at fairs and street corners.

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