The album „Vilnius and the Vilnius Region at the Turn of the Century in the Photography of Stanislaw Filibert Fleury (1858-1915)“ as an inspiration for linguocultural reflections

Abstract

Photographs from years gone by have always been a source of valuable retrospective documents. With the passage of time, however, it has become considerably
difficult to read and interpret those which were not signed or described. This is because the task is usually undertaken by people who did not always live in the times
that had been recorded in the photographs. This is also true of the daguerreotypes
by Stanislas Filibert Fleury that have been included in a separate album monograph
devoted to them. Their reading and interpretation, however, are made possible by the verbal, ancient and contemporary, commentaries that supplement almost every
photograph included in this proposal. The aim of the present considerations, therefore, is to make linguocultural remarks about the “linguistic data” recorded in such “photographic” commentaries, owing to which it becomes possible to reconstruct Vilnius and the Vilnius region of the times Stanislaw Filibert Fleury lived in. The names of places, physiographic objects, other objects, various details, people… which are their representations, make it possible for that northern borderline reality, which survived by means of the correlation of image, word and memory, to be saved from being forgotten.