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A Woman's Search for Self by Leah Bendavid-Val
In 1887, a year before George Eastman introduced roll film to the world, Countess Sophia Tolstoy purchased a Kodak large-format camera.
Her purpose was to photograph her husband, the famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, for posterity.
She quickly mastered the camera, which shot individual 5x7-inch glass-plate negatives, and she began carrying it around with her in a special road basket.
This was less than 50 years after the first daguerreotypes had been unveiled in Paris.
Though the Kodak box camera would soon shift photography's paradigm, Sophia's equipment made taking pictures physically difficult and aesthetically insecure.
Yet she was undaunted by that challenge.
Leah Bendavid-Val
