This family portrait captures what appears to be three siblings posing in a studio located in an eastern European country. I would guess that this photograph is of Bulgarian origin but I am uncertain. Hopefully, cabinet card gallery’s reliable and knowledgeable research department (consisting of the sites interesting and informative visitors) will be able to decipher and translate the studio’s address listed on the bottom of the photograph.
PORTRAIT OF A FAMILY WITH LOTS OF UNKNOWNS

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The letters in the right corner – София – translates as – Sofia – the capital of Bulgaria. Pretty children.
Under the following link you can see a photo and its backside which seems to be of the same photographer. Except, that the initials are the other way around, so I am not 100% sure. Please look for yourself.
The name is stated in Russian and French: Atelier Photographique,
S. M. Popoff, Sofia. The list above the foto says: Details about the photographer (‘Detailangaben über den Fotograf’); place (‘Ort’): Sofia, S. M. Popow, remarks (‘Bemerkungen’): Photographic Studio (‘Fotografisches Atelier’), collection (‘Sammlung’): Thiel-Melerski.
The website is in German and Polish and is managed by Mrs. Danuta Thiel-Melerski. From what I read on her site, she is collecting and archiving information about the different photographers in Europe or elsewhere. There is the possibility to leave comments or to contact her by e-mail (under ‘Kontakt’).
http://www.fotorevers.eu/de/ort/Sofia/4063/
Danuta is also involved in genealogy. There is a site she helped to build up. It is under the Society for Computergenealogy (Compgen). It has a grand database of photostudios, mainly in Europe. The aim is to make the info available to researchers in order to help dating old photos.
http//wiki-de.geneaology.net/fotostudio
By the way, the Compgen has also pages in English, including a Meta Search function and a forum.
http://wiki-en.genealogy.net/
I’ve often used the Lexicon der Forotrafen – http://www.fotorevers.eu/de/
Just like this great website, it is an amazing compendium of forgotten people and neglected photographers. The biggest challenge with antique European photographs is that many nationalities and languages were very different in 1900 from those on today’s modern map. I find that using the foreign language typewriter inside Google Translate, which I did for София \ Sofia, will usually pull up the proper English name spellings.
Thanks for the tip with the typewriter inside Google Translate!
I find this quite helpful, when it comes to maps in Eastern Europe:
http://www.igrek.amzp.pl/mapindex.php
Found that at the website of The Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe – SGGEE among alot of other information/links on villages and maps in mainly Eastern Europe:
https://www.sggee.org/research/villages_maps_html#top