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Khudaibergen Devanov [Attributed to]
Ekaterina Korytnikova, daughter of Konstantin Korytnikov, a Russian employee of the Khiva shipping company, Urgench city. Khiva Khanate.
1911, August
Cabinet card
Private collection of Sergey Maximishin
LL/104512
The photographs are not signed, but highly likely the author is Khudaibergen Devanov, the first Uzbek photographer.
(Sergey Maximishin, 15 September 2020) Devanov is a very interesting photographer. He was the son of the Finance Minister of the Khiva khanate. A German colonist gave him a camera and the boy became interested in photography. As part of a diplomatic mission, he went to St. Petersburg and stayed there to study photography. His teachers were the best - Karl Bulla and Elena Mrozovskaya. My favorite story about this photographer: one day a crowd of fanatical Muslims came to Devanov's house and demanded that his father forbid the young man to take photos. "An angel will not fly into the room where the camera is," the leader said. "My house has 10 rooms. If an angel does not arrive in one of them, the 9 remaining rooms are quite enough for communication" - father said. Khudaibergen Devanov was, like many others, shot in 1937.
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