On 16 October 1889, a patent was granted for the photorevolver, a hand-held camera for snapshot photography, which became a sensation in Poland as well as worldwide. Its creator was Konrad Brandel, born in 1838, a Polish photographer and inventor.

Work on this innovative device began as early as the 1870s, but only in 1889 Brandel gained an official patent for a “cartridgeless revolver holding 25 plates”. Poland did not exist at the time, as in the 18th century, Russia, Prussia, and Austria had violently annexed the territories of Poland.

Kazimierz Brandel was personally involved in the production of the apparatus (about 100 pieces were made in total). Brandel’s cameras were made using a cottage industry method by his carpenter cousin, except for the lenses, which were supplied by specialist companies. The invention had different formats and capacities of film cartridges, which facilitated its use in different conditions.

The equipment was available for purchase on request. It was very popular with members of the press and artists such as Wojciech Gerson and Henryk Siemiradzki, who used it to capture the dynamics of movement in their works. Even Tsar Alexander II of Russia recognised the camera held in the hands of painter Julian Fałat, attesting to the international reputation of the invention.

Brandel’s photorevolver was part of the search for technologies that made ‘fast’ photography possible at the time. Earlier, Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey had worked on similar solutions, but it was Brandel who introduced innovations such as a movable shutter and a shortened exposure time, allowing hand-held photography. Each photograph was recorded on a separate film, which marked a major advance over other methods that forced the use of a single disk to store all the images.

Konrad Brandel was not only an inventor, but also an excellent photojournalist and documentarian of Warsaw. Thanks to him, we have access to extraordinary photographs from that period.

His work was very innovative – as early as 1865 he was taking pictures of Warsaw from a balloon.