Engel Alexander Karlovich

Russian photographer, master of light painting, member of the Russian Geographical Society (1879). He was an artist by education and worked in Central Asia and the North Caucasus. In 1879, he opened the first photo studio in Pyatigorsk and began shooting albums of views of Pyatigorsk and the Caucasus. He became one of the first photographers to become a full member of the Caucasian Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. By order of the society, he made a long expedition to the Transcaspian region. The expedition resulted in a series of view albums and an album dedicated to the construction of the Transcaspian military Railway. Subsequently, he rented collections of archaeological objects and minerals for the Geographical Society. In 1892, he presented photographs of the Caucasus and the Transcaspian Railway at the Moscow Geographical Exhibition. By 1884, he owned the largest network of photographic studios in the Caucasus: in Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Mineralnye Vody, Baku, Ashgabat and Samarkand.