Casimir Zagourski

• Name — Casimir Zagourski • Birth Name — Kazimierz Zagórski • Born — 9 August 1883 • Birthplace — Zhytomyr, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) • Died — 10 January 1944 • Place of death — Léopoldville, Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo) • Field — Photography in Central Africa in the 1920s to 1940s • Training — Imperial Russian Air Force (aerial intelligence) • Works — L'Afrique qui disparaît!

Zagourski was born in the city of Zhytomyr in the Russian Empire in 1883. He was Polish, from the noble Clan of Ostoja. Zagourski first served in the Imperial Russian Air Force until the fall of the Russian czar in 1917, rising to the rank of colonel, and then in the Polish military in 1920. During this time, he started with photography, which later would become his profession. Looking for a new life, he emigrated from Europe in 1924 and settled in Léopoldville, the capital of the former Belgian Congo, where he slightly adapted his name to French spelling and opened a photographic studio. In Léopoldville as well as in other regions of the Belgian and French Congo, he documented colonial life such as the visit of Belgian king Albert I and his wife in 1928. His customers were mainly members of the European expatriate community. Between 1924 and his death twenty years later, he travelled widely in Central Africa, undertaking expeditions to photograph "disappearing" native African traditions in 1929, 1932, 1935 and 1937. Apart from selling his images to newspapers, he mainly published them as postcards and large prints. In 1937, 60 of his prints in large format were shown at the Belgian pavilion of the Paris World Fair. • Illustration — Portrait of a Mangbetu woman His book L'Afrique qui disparaît! (Lost Africa), with 415 silver gelatin prints on postcard stock, numbered and originally published in leather-bound editions, was later translated into English and Italian and has contributed to his reputation after his lifetime. The photographs in this book were taken in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Chad, Kenya, Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Congo Brazzaville. Apart from many scenes of everyday life, they include vernacular African architecture, picturesque landscapes, animals and portraits of African men and women, including the Mangbetu people and others. After his death in Léopoldville in 1944, his nephew Marian Zagórski continued the studio, selling and republishing his uncle's images until 1976.