The photograph was taken by Juliusz Dutkiewicz in his photographic studio in Kołomyia in the 1870s or 1880s . Little is known about the author. 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 is a seated portrait of a middle-aged Jewish man sniffing snuff. The man, shown from the left side, is looking straight into the lens of the camera. He is dressed in a dark gaberdine (Yiddish: kapote), fastened to the left side and tied at the waist. Beneath the coat, you can see the trouser leg and leather high boots. The man has a beard, eyeglasses, and a traditional fur-trimmed hat (shtreimel). The attire shows clear signs of wear (abrasions on the sleeves and cuffs), and instead of wire temples, the eyeglasses are held in place by fragments of light fabric. The Jewish man is holding a wooden (?) snuffbox with a lid in his left hand, and his right hand is raised to his nose in the gesture of snuff taking. In his lap rests a piece of bright fabric and a pipe that is long to the ground. The photograph was taken inside the studio on a ground imitating grass and against a background in the form of a canvas screen painted in floral motifs. In the lower right corner of the photograph, there is a photographer's handwritten catalogue number "82.", indicating that the photograph was taken for commercial purposes and was likely available for broad distribution. The same man was also captured in another photograph preserved in the collections of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, implying that he posed for Dutkiewicz in multiple shots.
