CAMERA OBSCURA
Pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish Photographs

Destroyed │ Displaced │ Re(dis)covered │ Reclaimed

DIRECTORY

Work in progress.

Each destination will begin with a short overview of its individual Jewish history, including information about, and/or links to, (internal) features on the subject of Lithuanian Jewish photographers and photography studios that were active in the region before the Second World War. In the  directory's current form, the listings are grouped together according to Lithuania's 10 contemporary counties.

ALYTUS

ALYTUS

Jewish studio photographers in Alytus before the war included Isaakas Abramavičius (1863-1934), Šimelis Abramavičius (1899-?) and B. Kaplanas. 

 
ALYTUS REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
The museum, which was founded during the interwar period, holds a total of 73,011 artefacts, which are divided into several different categories, including photography. During my last visit (I think in 2018), there was nothing on display in the public galleries to suggest that Jews ever lived in the city. This doesn't mean that the museum's collections won't feature original Jewish artefacts.

KAUNAS REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES IN ALYTUS
Website
Nothing currently known. From past visits to other regional archives, it's quite clear that none hold photographs, although they do sometimes keep tax records from before Second World War, as well as business-related documents from the first Soviet occupation that both reveal previously unknown information about the studio photographers that were working in the region at  the time.

AROUND ALYTUS

BUTRIMONYS MUSEUM
Website
Located inside the local secondary/high school. It's worth mentioning school museums in general somewhere (although probably not in the directory, perhaps as a small feature instead), as, just like this one, they're sometimes run by teachers who are enthusiastic and often extremely knowledgeable amateur historians who occasionally receive as gifts/donations old artefacts that people 'find', including old Jewish photographs. In the 1897 Russian census, the Jewish population of Butrimonys, or Butrimants as it was known in Yiddish, was recorded as being 1,919, or 80 percent of the town's total population. See Senda Berenson Abbott.  

DRUSKININKAI CITY MUSEUM
Website
Nothing about Jews on display inside the museum the last time that I visited in (I think) 2018. It's quite a big museum and there are undoubtedly some interesting artefacts in their archives. Home to a large Jewish community before the Second World War, Druskininkai was the birthplace of the 'French' Cubist sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973).

LAZDIJAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Nothing currently known. Studio photographers included Z. Tezba, Š. Idovičius and Ch. Markas.

MERKINĖ REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Have been in contact with the director, Mindaugas Černiauskas (+37061652907), several times. The museum is active in local Jewish memory projects, but I don't have any information about what they have in their archives. Studio photographers included Judelis Mileras.

VEISIEJAI REGIONAL MUSEUM

Website
Nothing currently known. Aformer wooden synagogue survives. Ludwik Zamenhof worked as a doctor here over a century ago.

KAUNAS

KAUNAS

Hundreds of Jewish studio (and other) photographers in the decades leading up to the Second World War. Where did everything go?

KAUNAS CITY MUSEUM
Website
Several different branches. Nice people, but chaotic archives staffed by people who don't know as much as they probably should. Needs thoroughly investigating.

KAUNAS COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
Website
Recently reopened (January 2024) after major modernisation. Need to check if they have photographs.

KAUNAS NINTH FORT MUSEUM
Website
All of their archives are temporarily stored at the Lithuanian Energy Institute in Kaunas. I have a good contact, and need to use this person to help me get access to a generally unfriendly and unhelpful museum. Insider stories mention examples of pure chaos, and a total priority towards the 'Lithuanian' history of the place. There are records of the Red Army and the first staff at the museum during the late 1950s discovering family photographs on the bodies of the victms in the mass graves. What happened to them?

KAUNAS REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES
Website
If you asked a member of staff at the Kaunas Regional State Archives whether they had any photographs among their collections as I once did, the answer would almost certainly be a negative one. Although this is technically correct, it's also not correct at all. Hidden away inside the building, which was built on the ruins of a prewar synagogue whose original cellar still exists, are thousands of photographs, all of them of people, and all of them attached to, and consequently categorised as, documents, which, unlike so many other surviving pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish photographs that are held among the collections of Lithuanian museums, archives and libraries, have the advantage of containing information about each individual featured in each photograph. Among the thousands of photographs that are kept here but that very few people know about are those that can be found on surviving internal Lithuanian passports, teachers' diplomas and the extraordinary Cantonist Lists. 

KIPRAS & MIKAS PETRAUSKAS MUSEUM
Website
Along with his wife, Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė (1900-1986), who was almost certainly the main hero of the story, in 1999 the Lithuanian opera singer Kipras Petrauskas (1885-1968) was posthumously recognised as Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing Dana Pomeranz, the six-month-old daughter of the well-known interwar violinist, Daniel Pomeranz, whom they ended up hiding in Berlin, and who was united with her parents after the war. The museum, which is inside the large house that Kipras and his composer brother, Mikas (1873-1937), built and lived in together, features an extensive family archive, including several original family photo albums that I briefly looked through in 2020, and that almost certainly contain informal, never-before-seen photographs of Lithuanian Jewish cultural figures during the interwar period.

LITHUANIAN EDUCATION HISTORY MUSEUM
Website
Possesses an original photo album from the Jewish Children’s Home that was located inside the former Bikur Cholim Jewish hospital in Kaunas. The museum also has a large photographic print that the staff member who I met claimed to be of students and teachers at the Jewish Gymnasium that taught in the Lithuanian language. The photograph is dated 1932, which doesn't make sense, as the school in question didn't open until 1933, the same year that most of its students were thrown out of Kaunas' German high school. Where did these photographs come from? Is there anything new that can be learned from them?

M. K. ČIURLIONIS NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ART
Website
Arguably the leading cultural institution during the interwar period when the Vilnius region was part of Poland, my visits to the various departments/archives at the museum revealed a huge institution with what seemed like hundreds of staff, of whom none that I met appeared to know much about pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish history and culture, or photography for that matter. Of particular interest when I visited the last time were a small collection of negatives that were taken by the artist and Kovno Ghetto survivor, Esther Lurie, that were taken when she was studying at the Kaunas Art School during 1939 and 1940 and that have never been seen by anyone before, and various original photographs of long-vanished Jewish cemeteries and synagogue interiors. I have a strong feeling that there are other original photographs (prints and negatives) in the museum's archives, which for one reason or another remain hidden away and off limits to all outsiders.

SUGIHARA HOUSE
Website
Since the death of its  Lithuanian Jewish director, Simonas Dovidavičius, in 2019, the institution has gone rapidly downhill, and is now even more obsessed with raising money than it ever was. I don't believe that it holds anything of interest, but it needs to be checked anyway.  

AROUND KAUNAS

BABTAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
+37061253314
Nothing currently known.

BETYGALA MUSEUM
+37065235803
Nothing currently known.

BIRŠTONAS MUSEUM
Website
When I visited in 2018 during the research phase of the Lost & Found exhibition in New York, the director was certain that there were no Jewish photographs in the museum archives. He's probably right, but it needs checking, because I sometimes get the distinct impression that I'm not always being told the truth.

JONAVA REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
The Jonava Regional Museum has carried out an extensive amount of research into the town’s former Jewish population. Find out what they have in their archives. Studio photographers included Boruchas Kiršteinas, Fevelis (Tevelis/Tuvia) Joffė and Epštein.

KAIŠIADORYS MUSEUM
Website
The Kaišiadorys Museum is currently a museum without a public space, and functions just as an archive and research centre. In 2016, its director, Olijardas Lukoševičius, published a photo book about prewar Žiežmariai, featuring many amazing photographs whose provenance requires further investigation. The museum is also known to have carried out a considerable amount of research into the former shtetl of Rumšiškės, that now lies at the bottom of the Kaunas Reservoir.

KAUNAS REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Not much is known. The Jews from Raudondvaris were taken to the Kovno Ghetto.

KĖDAINIAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
The museum also operates Kėdainiai’s Multicultural Centre, which is located inside a former synagogue and features an exhibition upstairs in the former women's section that were taken in and around the city, and which include many photographs, of which none are original. The museum itself has a couple of original prints, whose provenance is currently unknown (by me). Rimantas Žirgulis, the museum's director, used an old photograph to identify a Holocaust victim. This story needs following up, and I completely forget the details.

OPEN AIR MUSEUM OF LITHUANIA
Website
New name? All sorts of things in the archives that remain unexplored. Eleven of the buildings in the 'miestelis' (shtetl) are/were Jewish.

PRIENAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Nothing currently known.

RASEINIAI REGIONAL & HISTORY MUSEUM
+37042851892
Nothing currently known. Studio photographers included Dovydas Žolinas, M. Liudginas and Mauša Rubinšteinas.

ŽASLIAI CULTURAL CENTRE
+37065098858
Nothing currently known. Inside a former synagogue. Studio photographers included Riva Tuvecaitė and J. Turecas.

KLAIPĖDA

KLAIPĖDA

LITHUANIA MINOR HISTORY MUSEUM
Website
Framed photograph on a table in the window? The museum owns two official address books, one from 1929 and the other from 1935. The chief archivist, Regina Mečinskienė, showed me the two original photographs that the museum has, one featuring the former beit tahara (which is today the building of the city's Jewish community), and the other featuring a group of Jews leaving the train station in November 1938. The provenance of both remains unknown. Both of the photographs are on LIMIS and Europeana. Note to self to check the images' metadata on these sites.

KLAIPĖDA REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES
Website
Doesn’t have any Lithuanian Jewish photographs that they’re aware of. Two albums of prewar postcards, a few of which depict old scenes from the market. Also some prewar directories that are turning to dust that feature addresses and names. The fact that nobody has thought about digitising these disintegrating sources of potentially valuable information speaks volumes about the general situation in the country.

AROUND KLAIPĖDA

AMBER MUSEUM
Website
If I remember correctly, a Lithuanian business directory from (I think) 1931 lists all of the amber-related businesses in Palanga, of which every single one is Jewish-owned. It seems that the town's amber industry was always Jewish, and yet its large and 'informative' Amber Museum, a branch of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, gives the impression that this fact isn't true. Maybe they have photographs in their archives that tell a different story? Studio photographers included J. Blokas.

GARGŽDAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Impressive exhibition about Jewish life in the town before the Second World War. Needs following up. Studio photographers included 'Barkan' (L and Ch.?).

HUGO SCHEU MUSEUM
Website
Claims to have nothing.

KRETINGA MUSEUM
Website
Nothing currently known.

NERINGA MUSEUM
Website
Nothing currently known.

SALANTAI CULTURAL CENTRE
+37044558245
Inside a former synagogue. Several cultural centres (name them) are located inside former synagogues. The cultural centre in Ramygala has a small collection of prints that have been donated. All should be contacted, and inlcuded in the final directory if they have material.

SKUODAS MUSEUM
+37044073638
Nothing currently known. Studio photographers included Ch. Goldbergas, Boruchas Michelsonas and Hirša (Girša) Šneideris

ŠVĖKŠNA EXPOSITION
Website
Speak to Monika.

ŽEMAIČIŲ NAUMIESTIS EXPOSITION
Website
Studio photographers before the war included Preida Blumbergas, whose son, Mark, lives in Israel.

MARIJAMPOLĖ

MARIJAMPOLĖ

Studio photographers included Judelis Fridbergas, Izraelis (Izis) Bidermanas, Movšė Buchalteris, Jakobas Vindsbergas, Judelis Fridbergas, M. Frizinskis, Leiba Lepoladskis, Abramas Pimšteinas, Zalmanas Tezba and (Chaim) David Ratner. Ratner, a professional studio photographer before the war, was a member of the Kovno Ghetto underground. Murdered in 1944,  it's likely that he was the author of some of the photographs that were taken inside the Kovno Ghetto that have been credited to Zvi Kadushin/George Kadish.

KAUNAS REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES IN MARIJAMPOLĖ
Website
The director has his own small collection of old prints (all copies) in his own personal archive. This is quite common, when staff meet and communicate with Litvaks living abroad.

MARIJAMPOLĖ REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
More information can be found here.

AROUND MARIJAMPOLĖ

KALVARIJA REGIONAL MUSEUM
+37068585090
Don’t have any original photographs, although this small museum does have a section dedicated to Jewish history which includes several photographs from other sources. The museum’s director, Alvydas Totoris, doesn’t speak English, but he’s one of the best sources of information in the region. His assistant, Aistė Čerkauskienė, speaks English. No website. Not on LIMIS. Studio photographers included Motiejus Kazlauskas, I. Mirlinas, Z. Rozentalis, Š. Sideris and Manuelis Vigdoravičius/Vigdorovičius.

PANEVĖŽYS

PANEVĖŽYS

Studio photographers included Icikas Fridas/Icik Fried, Leiba Greiseris, A. Gutneras, A. Kerbelis, H. Spingis, Jankelis Trakmanas, Leiba Slonimskis and Sara Traub.

PANEVĖŽYS COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
Website
Owns the Irena Moigytė Collection (Irenos Moigytės Fondas). Moigytė was a teacher who died in 2001, and who donated her family archive to the library, including a large collection of original photographic prints, all from the studio of Leiba Slonimskis.

PANEVĖŽYS JEWISH COMMUNITY
Website
Holds a huge collection of photographic prints, all of them copies. The head of the community, Gennady Kofman, doesn't speak English.

PANEVĖŽYS REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Over 30,000 photographs in all formats, the oldest dating back to 1863. Original photographic prints from studio photographers including Leiba Slonimskis and Jankelis Trakmanas, and a large collection of photographs of soldiers in uniform, some of them Jewish, that were taken during the interwar period. They also hold quite a lot of glass plate negatives, including over 1,500 (some of these are prints I think, it's never quite clear without seeing for yourself) from the studio of Vincas Firinauskas (1892–1975) from Miežiškiai. It's believed that most of these images are portraits of the local people, which must include Jews. Never seen the photographs. No information about the provenance of anything is currently known. The museum also holds a collection of pre-Second World War prints on the subject of education, which also needs investigating. Zita Pikelytė, who works at the museum, wrote her PhD thesis (in Lithuanian) on Lithuanian interwar provincial studio photography.

ŠIAULIAI REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES IN PANEVĖŽYS
Website
Nothing currently known.

AROUND PANEVĖŽYS

BIRŽAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
According to a member of staff at the museum, 'Boruch Michelson was born in Biržai in 1872 and died in Biržai in 1939. We are preserving around 200 quality photographs that were mainly taken in a studio.' This person also mentions photographs by Girsh Schneider (Hirša Šneideris), who was operating in the city at the beginning of the 20th century. Also a few photographs by the women photographers, F. Michelsonaitė and C. Šneiderytė. The member of staff also writes, 'We have several photos that were taken by the Lithuanian photographer Petras Ločeris. He depicted Jewish prayer houses...' Everything appears to be extremely disorganised, and the museum mentions nothing about provenance. Other studio photographers include. Joselis Goldas,

KUPIŠKIS ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM
Website
Nothing currently known, although one of the staff members is a specialist in pre-Second World War Jewish life and culture in the town. Needs following up. Studio photographers included H. Kėrbėlis and Joselis Šapiro.

KUPIŠKIS PUBLIC LIBRARY
Website
Inside a former synagogue. Nothing currently known.

PASVALYS REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Never visited, but I know the museum ran a project encouraging the local population to bring old photographs to the museum. Studio photographers included Icikas Chaitas and H. Kerbalas.

ROKIŠKIS REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
The building and its contents were nationalised during the first Soviet occupation. Does anyone know anything about this? Do documents exist? They have a few original prints from Jewish studios. Studio photographers included Sara Finkel, Ch. Finkelis, Mordechai Germanas, Reiza/Raisa Germanienė, Ch. Šneidermanas, Leizel Šneiderman and Leiba Vinokuras.

VABALNINKAS MUSEUM
+37062638555
Nothing currently known. SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF Juozas Daubaras.

ŠIAULIAI

ŠIAULIAI

Hundreds of studio photographers, including Elijošius Lipšicas, M. Tydmanas, Berelis/Bero Abramavičius, Jankelis Girša Arnsonas, A. Blecher, Girša Chabas, Mordchelis Chotimlianskis, M. Bakas, Abel Girša, Chackelis Eidelstein, Girša Beras Feldmanas, B. Faivušas, Mauša Fligelis, Govša Glezeris, M. Gutmanas, Joselis Kaganas, Mejer Kanas, Pinchusas Šeras, Girša Rivkindas, Morduchas (Maksas) Jokūbas Rubinšteinas, M. Tydmanas, R. Šreiberis, Šošana Zaksaitė, Chaimas Izraelis Zaksas and Geršonas Zilbermanas..

AUŠROS MUSEUM
Website
The Aušros Museum was founded in 1923. It became part of the Šiauliai Regional History Society in 1928, and eventually fell under the ownership and control of the city municipality. Its first major activities included several ethnographic expeditions, of which there were between 15 and 30 every year during the 1930s. These expeditions were responsible for the acquisition of the majority of the museum’s exhibits before the war. Nationalised in 1940, the museum participated in the plundering of artefacts from the region’s manors. The Aušros Museum, whose HQ is in the former villa of the Jewish industrialist Chaim Frenkel, is spread out over several different buildings in Šiauliai. It's a known fact that the museum holds a lot of Jewish material, although their general hostility has meant that visiting their archives has been impossible. A classic red flag institution that needs thoroughly investigating.

PUBLIC PHARMACY MUSEUM
+37041433774
One of many institutions in Lithuania that ignores emails for reasons that may or may not be suspicious. The museum is privately owned, and is part of the Valerijonas pharmacy,m which is located in the same building. Before the Second World War, the pharmacy was owned by the Volpė family, who, with the exception of Ilja Volpė ( who emigrated in the 1930s?), were murdered during the Holocaust. Photographs of the family are on permanent display in the windows of the pharmacy. The telephone number is for the pharmacy.

ŠIAULIAI COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
Website
No information currently known.

ŠIAULIAI JEWISH COMMUNITY
+37041426796
Located inside an Art Deco building that was supposedly designed by Erich Mendelsohn, they have no original photographs, but they do have many copies, including photographs that were taken by Šošana Zaksaitė, the city's first female photographer, about whom the head of the community (who doesn't speak English) is an expert.

ŠIAULIAI PHOTOGRAPHY MUSEUM
Website
More information can be found here.

ŠIAULIAI REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES
Website
Like all public archives in Lithuania, the Šiauliai Regional State Archives hold a number of interesting documents relating to Jewish life in the city, although there are no Jewish-specific records held at the site. No serious research has ever been conducted on the subject of prewar Jewish photography studios in the city, although a small file containing Soviet-era business tax records dating from January and February 1941 suggest that the city’s Jewish-owned photography studios had already been nationalised by the time of the Nazi invasion. In other words, all of Lithuania's State archives are good sources of information on Jewish photography studios before the Second World War. When I visited, I was told that they have no photographs. See Kaunas Regional State Archives to find out why that this might not be entirely true.

AROUND ŠIAULIAI

AKMENĖ REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Nothing currently known.

JONIŠKIS MUSEUM OF HISTORY & CULTURE
Website
Also responsible for the so-called Joniškis White & Red Synagogue Complex. Nothing currently known. Studio photographers included Elias Abramas Šapočnikas, Jankelis Fišeris, Chaja Goldmanytė and M. Rubinšteinas..

KELMĖ REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Nothing currently known. Studio photographers included A. Kačerginskas, Lazaris Daninas, H. Jovelis and V. Giršovičius.

LOST SHTETL MUSEUM
Website
A private museum that's been planning to open to the public soon for the last five years. I worked with them a few years ago. They have no idea about photography, and have told me that they plan to keep the photographs that they've collected to themselves, and they won't be sharing them on the internet. Studio photographers included Leiba Cyganas.

PAKRUOJIS PUBLIC LIBRARY
+37042161687
Inside a former synagogue.

PAKRUOJIS REGIONAL MUSEUM
+37065746430
No information currently known.

ŠIAULĖNAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
+37067224901
No information currently known.

TAURAGĖ

TAURAGĖ

Studio photographers included E. Šereševskaitė, Hirša Grinbergas and S. Zolinas.

KLAIPĖDA REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES IN TAURAGĖ
Website
No information currently known.

TAURAGĖ REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
I visited and spoke with staff several years ago. Absolutely clueless.

AROUND TAURAGĖ

JURBARKAS REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
No information currently known. Studio photographers included Chanonas Levinas and Motelis Abramsonas.

SKAUDVILĖ REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Branch of the Tauragė Regional Museum. No information currently known.

TELŠIAI

TELŠIAI

Studio photographers included Fišelis Boruchovičius, Feitska Kaplanskaitė (see Proposal), Chaimas Kaplanskis (see Proposal), Hirša Leibovičius, Volfas Šabselbanas/Šapzelbonas, F. Milevičius and E. Treimanas.

ALKA MUSEUM OF SAMOGITIAN HISTORY
Website
WRITE THE WHOLE STORY HERE

KLAIPĖDA REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES IN TELŠIAI
Website
Apparently no interest whatsoever in answering my emails.

AROUND TELŠIAI

MAŽEIKIAI MUSEUM
Website
No information currently known. Studio photographers included Hiršas/Girša Gurvičius.

RIETAVAS OGINSKI CULTURAL HISTORY MUSEUM
Website
No information currently known. Studio photographers included Aronas Epelis, Volfas Ipelis and J. Ržešanskis (Rzešauskis).

UTENA

UTENA

Studio photographers included S. Choras and Tevelis/Fevelis Milas/Milis.

UTENA REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
No information currently known.

VILNIUS REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES IN UTENA
Website
No information currently known.

AROUND UTENA

IGNALINA REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
No information currently known.

MOLĖTAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
No information currently known. Studio photographers included Judelis Ibedas.

ZARASAI REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
The Jewish studio photographer, Moisiejus (Mauša) Botvinikas (1901-1984), survived the war and continued running his studio for several decades. The museum told me that they have his archive, but they haven't been specific.

VILNIUS

VILNIUS

Surely thousands of studio photographers.

JUDAICA RESEARCH CENTRE
Website
Massive and mostly unresearched collection of photographs and I.D. documents. A huge and almost completely neglected resource. Seriously underfunded.

LITHUANIAN ARCHIVES OF LITERATURE & ART
Website
Follow up on visit.

LITHUANIAN CENTRAL STATE ARCHIVES
Website
Possessing close to half a million photographic prints and negatives dating from about 1860 onwards, the Lithuanian Central State Archives’ Photo Documents Department holds approximately 2,000 photographs in its Jewish Collections, as well as many other photographs of Lithuanian Jews on ID and other documents,  including the extraordinary collection of formal portraits of young Jewish conscipts in the so-called Canonist Lists. Unlike any other institution in the country, the Lithuanian Central State Archives claims that it’s digitised every photograph that it possesses, of which all can be viewed on the institution’s internal database. A model institution that no doubt receives the kind of budget that most institutions in Lithuania can only dream of, it remains unclear as to why nobody has thought about connecting the internal database to the internet. 

LITHUANIAN CULTURAL HERITAGE RESEARCH CENTRE
Website
Nothing currently known.

LITHUANIAN MUSEUM OF THEATRE, MUSIC & CINEMA
Website
Although it focuses on 'Lithuanian' culture, it also holds other material. An investigation of their archives would almost certainly reveal some new discoveries.

LITHUANIAN SPECIAL ARCHIVES
Website
Many NKVD and KGB files that are kept on individual citizens (including a lot of Jews) here have photographs inside them, including family photographs that once belonged to the people who were being investigated and/or arrested.

MARTYNAS MAŽVYDAS NATIONAL LIBRARY OF LITHUANIA
Website
Very few photographs, but millions of documents, magazines, books etc. with relevant photographs inside.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF LITHUANIA
Website
The National Museum of Lithuania’s Iconography Department holds a large archive of the prewar Lithuanian photographer Juozas Daubaras from Vabalninkas, including an amazing collection of glass plate negatives featuring portraits of ordinary 'shtetl Jews' in their everyday clothes. Also a few other relevant photographic prints and negatives, many of them from Jewish photography studios in Warsaw. In the case of the argument against LIMIS, the staff here admit that it's awful, and that it's so difficult to use that they only upload photographs when they absolutely have to. This will be reflected in other institutions around the country.

VILNA GAON STATE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HISTORY
Website
The photographs in their collection come from several different sources, almost all of them from the short-lived Jewish museum that operated in Vilnius between 1944 and 1949 (see my notes), photographs that were discovered within the territories of the Vilna Ghetto and the Kovno Ghetto, and photographs donated by families. Everything has been digitised, although it's not clear about the accompanying metadata. It's also not exactly clear how much of their photography archive is available online.

VILNIUS COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
Website
Nothing known at the moment.

VILNIUS REGIONAL STATE ARCHIVES
Website
Nothing known at the moment.

VILNIUS UNIVERSITY MUSEUM
Website
Many photographic treasures are almost certainly waiting to be discovered here.

WROBLEWSKI LIBRARY
Website
A large resource of material, including photographs, that no-one has yet examined and made public.

AROUND VILNIUS

NALŠIA MUSEUM
Website
No information currently available.

TRAKAI HISTORY MUSEUM
Website
No information currently available.

UKMERGĖ REGIONAL MUSEUM
Website
Jolanta Petronytė, Archive Custodian. About 40 original prints, plus digital copies from other places. Jewish photographs kept in general archives, i.e. no specific Jewish collection. They have a record of provenance dating back to the Soviet period. Only 12 images in total on LIMIS, although everything has been scanned. They also put digital copies on their own website. Everything is stored in two metal filing cabinets. There are other photographs that they suspect are Jewish (e.g. in the style of Levi), but they can’t say for sure. On the day that I visited (September 8, 2022) there were five family photo albums plus a small box of prints and some original negatives that had just been donated by the daughter of their original owner, a former Lithuanian soldier who served before the war and who recently passed away. When they find the time, they’ll scan everything, although they won’t scan the albums as they are, as this is something that they hadn’t considered before (reading the narrative of an album).They think that there might be some Levi photographs in the albums, and it makes one wonder how many more donated albums are sitting in institutions that are waiting to be scanned/researched. Studio photographers included Baer & Levi (Mauša Levis) and Perecas Perkas.