Pierre Choumoff

Pierre Choumoff (Russian: Пётр Шумов, tr. Pyotr Shumov, French: Pierre Choumoff, Polish: Piotr Szumov; born 26 March 1872 in Grodno, Russian Empire; died 25 June 1936 in Łódź, Poland) was a Russian–French photographer and the personal photographer of Auguste Rodin.

Life and work

Russian Empire During his grammar school years, Choumoff became interested in revolutionary currents and participated in the publication of an underground newspaper. In 1891 he entered the Technical Institute in Saint Petersburg. In the 1890s he joined the Grodno revolutionary circle of Sergei Galyun, who maintained links with the Polish Second Proletariat, illegal organisations in St. Petersburg, Kiev and other cities of the Russian Empire.

Choumoff's first arrest came in the summer of 1894. He was charged with possession of illegal literature and banned from leaving Grodno for three years. However, his underground activities continued. Choumoff worked with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and led the Grodno organisation of the Polish Socialist Party. Afterwards he was arrested several times and had to spend four years in prison. and invited Choumoff to become a partner. Unlike Strożeci, who experimented with photography in exile in Sakha between 1903 and 1904, photography was an unknown field for Choumoff.

Thanks to the knowledge acquired at the St. Petersburg Technical Institute and the support of colleagues, Choumoff mastered the mechanical and chemical basics of photography quite quickly. To understand the art of creating images, composition and the combination of light and shadow, Choumoff went to the cafés Café du Dôme, Le Select, and Café de la Rotonde, among others, which were popular meeting places for painters, poets and writers and thus represented a kind of centre of cultural life in early 20th century Paris. Through the contacts made in the cafés, Choumoff specialised in portrait photography and became popular among the artists of the Rive Gauche.

On 14 November 1920, Choumoff attended the celebration of Claude Monet's 80th birthday in Giverny. On this occasion, he produced a photo reportage showing the painter and his accompanying works in the intimate surroundings of the estate and gardens. This was also partly due to the crisis in the photography profession caused by the popularisation of amateur photography. Choumoff moved with his wife and son to Łódź in 1935, where he resumed some of his photographic activities.

In Łódź, through his friend Aleksander Prystor, Choumoff was hired by Louis Geyer's Cotton Works as an advisor to the management.

On 25 June 1936, Pierre Choumoff died of heart failure. His funeral was attended by prominent Polish figures. He was buried in the cemetery of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Łódź.

Exhibition participations and awards In 1911, Choumoff took part in the photo exhibition du Nord de la France organised by the Amicale-Photo association, where he won second prize in the portrait category. Choumoff became internationally known in 1922 with his photograph "Portrait of Countess X", for which he received the Grand Prize of the London Photographic Salon and the "Photograph of the Year" award. He was awarded the bronze medal of the French Society of Photography for his portraits and the gold medal of the 1925 World's Fair in Paris. In 1927 and 1930 he took part in the exhibitions of the Société du Salon d'Automne (Paris Autumn Salon) and in 1932 in an exhibition at the Salon des Tuileries.