Tullio Ilomets ja fotograafia

Tullio Ilomets and Photography

Abstract

In addition to being a chemist, heritage conservationist and science
historian, Tullio Ilomets was also an avid amateur photographer
and historian of photography. His love for photography started when
he was a small child living in Koeru, where his parents worked as
teachers. Tullio himself started to take photos when he went to study
at the University of Tartu at the end of the 1940s. His most fruitful
years as a photographer were in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As he
was living in Tartu, he took many photos of people living in Tartu
and people working for the University of Tartu, but mostly he photographed his family and relatives.
Tullio Ilomets also worked for the University of Tartu newspaper
as an unofficial photographer, both taking photographs and writing
articles. For years, if something newsworthy was going on regarding
the University of Tartu, Tullio Ilomets was always there with his camera. For example, he managed to take photos of the fire at the main
building of University of Tartu in 1965.
Tullio Ilomets not only took photos, but he was also a historian of
photography and a collector of old photographs. He was not interested in keeping these pictures to himself; by donating them to various
museums he was always making sure that the maximum number of
people could see the photos he had found. During his lifetime, Tullio
Ilomets helped to organise several exhibitions on the history of photography in Tartu. He also gave lectures at the University of Tartu
regarding the history of photography and wrote articles about photographers who had worked at the University of Tartu. In 2016, on the
occasion of his 95th birthday, he published his last book The Collection of Photographs and Photogravures by William Henry Fox Talbot
in the University of Tartu Library.
When Tullio Ilomets died, his family found almost a thousand
photos taken by him that had never been seen.