Frank Vulf Ekhilevich (1890)

Frank Vulf (Wulf) Ekhilevich (6 January 1890, Varaklani — date of death unknown) - photographer.

Vulf Frank was born into a poor family: his mother, Esther, worked milking cows for a landowner, while his father was a shoemaker. The family had seven sons and three daughters, and from an early age he had to earn a living. He began by working in Catholic churches restoring icons, and during his service in the Imperial Russian Army he became an icon painter, decorating regimental churches. Alongside this he drew, staged amateur theatrical performances, and dreamed of cinema, yet his lifelong passion and profession became photography.

Even before the First World War he trained in Rezhitsa (Rēzekne) under the well-known master I. Taubkin, who also had studios in Korsovka and Ludza. In 1918, after returning from the war, he opened his own photographic studio in Ludza. During the 1920s he participated in the passportization of the population of the Ludza district and collaborated with illustrated journals such as “Atpūta” and “Idishe Bilder” in Riga. He took part in exhibitions, maintained contacts with writers, and kept a personal diary.

In the early 1930s he founded the studio “Frank-film” with the intention of producing a film titled Tsu shpet! (“Too Late!”), dedicated to the fate of poor elderly people abandoned by children who had emigrated to America. The project, however, was never realized. During his involvement with cinema, his photography business declined, and clients moved to competitors, including his former pupils. Financial difficulties followed: the house he had purchased after the passportization work had to be sold, his possessions were seized for debts, and what remained was destroyed in a fire on 11 June 1938, which he himself documented photographically.

His entire photographic archive was lost during the Second World War. Only a small number of views of Ludza, several portraits, and numerous photographs preserved in private family albums of local residents have survived, along with the photomontage Sapnis (“Dream,” 1934).

Frank continued working as a photographer until the age of seventy. During the Second World War he worked in the Ural region, and after the war in Ludza, Jekabpils, and Riga. His son, Herz Frank, a world-renowned Latvian documentary filmmaker, dedicated to his father the book The Ptolemy Map (Moscow, 1975; Berlin, 2006). One of Frank’s works, “Ruins of Ludza Castle in Winter,” was included in the collection Photographers of Latvia: 100 Best Images (Riga, 2001), published in several languages.

Family:

Herz Frank – son

Фотографии Вульфа Франка: