Odessa photography is more than 176 years old: the countdown starts from the official announcement made in Odessa Herald on February 27, 1843. The announcement was given by the painter Philip Haaz: he invited odessites to his studio on 27 Bunin street, to make a daguerreotype portrait.

Decades later, photographic institutions in Odessa flourished, located not only in the city center, but also on Moldavanka, Peresyp and Slobodka districts. It was 1916 year when the country's first photographic educational institution was founded - “Three-Year Photographic Courses by G.S. Mikhailov-Muchkin."

Professional photographers have achieved significant success: the son of the Odessa Italian architect Luigi Cambigiogio, who received the name of his stepfather, became one of the first local photographers known abroad.

The main source of information about photographers is a passe-partout, a cardboard on which the photo was pasted. Passepartout was filled with artists and retouchers names, the address of the studio and the photographer's awads.

On the corner of Rishelievskaya and Skobelevskaya (Jewish) streets in the house number 25 there was an institution with a modest advertisement “Photographer Genius Shapiro”.

Weinstein’s institution, located “against the main synagogue”, in a newspaper advertisement in 1885 reported the following:

“All pictures are taken improved way instantly, I invented a hand-held laboratory, which makes it possible to take a lot of all kinds of different pictures at any time of the year and in any weather, in cottages, on water, inside buildings, etc. “My 22-year practice vouches for the accuracy and conscientiousness of the execution of orders.”

Photographer Weinstein