[MOUNTAINS - Carpathian Mountains - Tatra Mountains - Zakopane (?) car race in winter season - situational photograph]. [not before 1929?]....

[MOUNTAINS - CarpathianMountains - Tatra Mountains - Zakopane (?) car race in winter season - situational photograph]. [not before 1929?] Photograph form. 8.9x14 cm, by H[enryk] Schabenbeck in Zakopane.
Competitors of a winter race in cars in front of a grandstand with numerous spectators. In the lower right corner an impression: "H. Schabenbeck Zakopane", next to it the photographer's handwritten signature. Good condition.
H. Schabenbeck (1886-1939) - photographer, filmmaker - pioneer of Tatra film and social activist. In 1906 he settled in Zakopane and founded the first permanent photographic establishment in the city, "Stefa". He then established a branch in Nowy Targ. In 1914 he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. At that time the establishment was run by his mother Karolina. During the war, he was taken prisoner by the Russians and ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia, from where he escaped to Barnau nad Obem in the Tumsk governorate, where he opened a photography business. He returned to Zakopane in 1920 or 1921 and took up photography again. In the interwar years he was considered one of the most outstanding mountain photographers. From 1931 he was president of the Photographers' Club in Zakopane and an active member of the Polish Photo Club. He showed his works at numerous exhibitions and reproduced them in magazines and publications. He was also involved in publishing Tatra postcards.