The photograph was taken by Juliusz Dutkiewicz in his photographic studio in Kołomyia in the 1870s or 1880s . Little is known about the photographer himself. He operated his studio successively in Suceava (Polish: Suczawa), Ivano-Frankivsk (Polish: Stanisławów), Lviv (Polish: Lwów), and Kołomyia, engaging in both indoor and outdoor photography. Some of his most renowned works include photographs documenting the landscapes and people of Hucul Region and Pokuttya (Polish: Pokucie). Dutkiewicz featured photographs of folk types from these areas, alongside landscapes of the Chornohora (Polish: Czarnohora), at the 1880 "Ethnographic Exhibition of Pokuttya" in Kołomyia.
The photograph shows a Jewish shoe repair shop arranged inside the studio. Three men are working at the shop placed on a wooden platform and lit by a paraffin lamp, successively (from left): an old Jewish man with a beard, wearing eyeglasses, a yarmulke and a gaberdine (looking at a finished shoe), a boy wearing a kaftan and a yarmulke, looking at the lens of the camera (raising his arm in a sewing gesture), and a young man wearing a waistcoat, a short-sleeved shirt and a hat (holding a raised hammer). Below the platform, two boys in work kaftans and hats are sitting on wooden boxes and polishing shoes. One of them is barefoot. On the left side of the frame there is a woman wearing a striped dress and apron, standing and looking at the work of the shoemakers. The background is a six-pane window, against whose frame hangs a pair of ready-to-wear high boots. Next to it, there are shoe trees on the wall.
Shoemaking, along with tailoring, was one of typical professions of the small-town Jewish population, and was dominated by them both in Galicia and in the Kingdom of Poland. The genre scene depicted in the photograph illustrates the hierarchical structure of craft workshops, where journeymen and apprentices were trained under the supervision of a senior master. The former already had the skills necessary for independent work, and their position is symbolised by being placed on a raised platform, at one workshop with the master. The second group, occupying the lowest position in the photograph, also held the lowest status and performed auxiliary tasks.