Among the political emigrants after the January Uprising were many prominent Poles. After leaving the country, they headed mainly towards Western Europe or the United States of America. Scandinavia was a much less popular destination. Nevertheless, it was there that Ludwik Szaciński, regarded as one of the first professional photographers in Norway, found his way. He opened an atelier in Christiania (today's Oslo), whose services were willingly used by the most prominent personalities of the world at the time, including the Norwegian king.

Today, a large collection of photographs by Ludwik Szacinski (taken both by himself and in the atelier run by his wife after his death) is held in the collection of the Oslo Museum. This institution has one of the largest and most important collections of photographs in the country, and Szacinski's works occupy an important place in it. The online database contains almost 2,500 records linked to the name of the Polish photographer. All the well-known and important politicians of the time, military officers, writers, actors, sportsmen and sportswomen appeared in front of his lens... An overview of Szacinski's work provides an insight into Christian life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The road to Norway
Ludwig Szacinski earned the nickname 'royal photographer' thanks to the recognition he received from Oskar II, the ruler of Norway from 1872 to 1905, who admitted Szacinski to his court as an official photographer in 1888. This was a major success for the former insurgent born in Suwałki on 16 April 1844.

Szaciński's family arrived in the area from the village of Virbalis (Wierzbołów), not far from the current Polish-Lithuanian border. Ludwik was born as the fourth of eleven children of Feliks Szaciński, an assistant professor at the Suwałki Credit Society, and Józefa, née Frydrych. He was educated in Warsaw, where he was staying when the January Uprising broke out. He was sent to a Russian prison for taking part in the fighting. During his escape, he was wounded in the leg, which caused him to limp for the rest of his life.

Looking for a new place to live, he wandered through Europe - visiting Vienna, Paris and Switzerland. In Stockholm, he became involved with the royal court, where he took up dog training. Together with his younger brother Kazimierz and two friends, Władysław Strutyński and Michał Wielgoławski, he set off on a journey to Malmö and then to Christiania. Along the way, they casually earned money with their photography business. Ludwik Szaciński had already learned this craft before the January Uprising, when, during his travels in Bavaria, he practised in the workshop of the famous daguerreotypist Carl Albert Dauthendey in Würzburg.

He started in Norway without any money or connections. At first he still stuck with his friends, but later their paths diverged. Nevertheless, Szacinski managed to make a name for himself in an industry that was already quite developed. At the time, there were around 20 photographers operating in Christiania.

Career as a photographer
The figure of Ludwik Szacinski appears in the memoir publication My Contemporaries. Among strangers by Stanisław Przybyszewski, who was in Christiania because of the Norwegian origin of his wife Dagny Juel. In his memoirs, he describes the beginning of Szacinski's career while still in Stockholm and his meeting with the then King Charles XV during a parade:

And it was during such a parade that the king saw, with great amazement, a man who set up his camera with cold composure - at that time the camera was still a large machine - to capture this historic moment on record.

The King walked up a few steps, but stopped abruptly as he was drawn to the spot by an impatient order: "Let Your Majesty not move from his seat now". And the King, bewildered, amused, did not move from his seat until the young and very handsome man had completed his manipulations. It was Szacinski. [...] The king took an immediate liking to Szacinski - he got into a long conversation with him, and the result of that conversation was that he entrusted him with his entire hunting doghouse. It turned out that photography was only a side occupation for Szacinski, and his main and beloved vocation was the training of hunting dogs.

Throughout his life, Ludwik Szaciński tried to combine these two passions. He spent his free time in a hunting hut located on the island of Ormøya, where he hunted and fished. He established his photographic studio in 1869 on the main street of today's Oslo - Karl Johans gate. Members of the royal family, aristocracy and important cultural figures (such as the polar explorer Roald Amundsen and the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson) were photographed there. Szacinski had the honour of taking a posthumous photograph of King Charles XV, and also photographed King Oscar II. Another distinguished Pole for Scandinavia, Henryk Bukowski, also stood before his lens.

Szacinski's oeuvre is dominated by portraits, but you can also find shots of old Christiania and hunting motifs. He was commissioned by the police to make portraits of detained prostitutes. He has won a number of awards both in Norway and abroad. Many Norwegian photographers have trained in his studio.

Family life
In 1871, Szacinski married Hulda Hansen. His wife willingly became involved in his work, posing for photographs, and after Ludwig's death she ran the family atelier herself. The photographic passions in Szacinski's family also became apparent in his sister Józefa. She lived with Ludwik in Christiania for a while, but because she missed her country, she returned to Suwałki and opened her own atelier there. Ludwik's brother Kazimierz also ran his own photography business in Christiania for some time. However, he settled for a longer period of time in Ålesund, where he was one of the founders of the Photographic Society. Szaciński's son Stanislaw (Stanni) took over from his father. His atelier "Stn. Szacinski jr." was initially located at Kongens gate 12 in Christiania (1893-1910), later moving it to Tønsberg (1910-1913) and then to Skien (1913-1931).

Although Ludwig Szacinski obtained Norwegian citizenship in 1882, he felt a stranger in this country until the end of his life. In the volume of memoirs already quoted, Stanisław Przybyszewski describes him as a man "whose face was shrouded in black shadows by a heavy gloomy melancholy". The writer's meeting with the photographer took place a few days before the suicide of Szacinski, who took his own life on 8 July 1894 in a hunting lodge on the island of Ormøya. The funeral took place in Oslo with great honours.

For the next few years, Ludwig Szacinski's photographic atelier was run by his wife Hulda. Initially continuing at Karl Johans gate 4 and then, until 1914, in a location changed due to renovation at Karl Johans gate 20.