Fotografo non identificato, stampa aristotipica virata al collodio

The Museum will virtually bring to your homes a selection of photographs coming from our archive. Every week you will discover new images.

Philippe Rostchine, a Jewish prisoner from Moscow, 1900.

Unidentified photographer, collodium aristotype print on cardboard.

Philippe Rostchine is of Jewish origins and part of Moscow’s middle-class, at the end of the 19th Century whilst serving as a gunner he’s sentenced to six years of hard labour for committing two burglaries. This image shoot in the prison of Łomża (currently in Poland but at the time part of imperial Russia) portrays him with his prison uniform and the typical detainees’ asymmetrical hair cut done to identify inmates in case of escape.

Cesare Lombroso comes from a Jewish family and is one of the first Italian intellectuals to denounce the risks in the relationship between antisemitism and nationalism in the newborn mass societies. In his later years, facing popular riots against Jews in Russia, he will relate to the Zionist movement directed towards the creation of a Jewish state in what was then known as Palestine.