Sreznevskii, Viacheslav

Sreznevskii, Viacheslav Izmailovich 

Born Sept. 21 (Oct. 3), 1849, in St. Petersburg; died 1937. Russian scientist specializing in scientific and engineering photography. Son of I. I. Sreznevskii.

Sreznevskii graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1870. One of the founders (1878) of the photography division of the Russian Technical Society, he headed the division until 1916. He founded the magazine Fotograf (The Photographer) in 1880 and was its editor until 1884. Sreznevskii was the author of the first Russian handbook on photography, The Photographer’s Handbook (1883). He was also one of the founders of the Higher Institute of Photography and Photographic Technology in Petrograd, becoming a professor there in 1918.

Sreznevskii designed such special-purpose equipment as a portable darkroom (1875), a camera resistant to external influences (1882), which was designed for N. M. Przheval’skii’s expedition, and the first aerial camera. He also designed an underwater camera (1886) and a camera for recording the phases of a solar eclipse (1887). Sreznevskii developed and was the first to produce special photographic plates for aerial photography (1886).