Paris Studio

Levitsky travelled to Rome and Venice in Italy in 1845 before undertaking a course in physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne in Paris but is not listed as working as a professional photographer.

He had returned to Russia by 1849 when he opened a studio in St Petersburg.

It is in Paris in the 1840s that Sergei Levitsky would study photography, meet with Daguerre personally and distinguish himself in the technical sphere of photographic development. Daguerre who had heard about the talented Russian photographer met with Levitsky cordially and with great interest.
In 1847, Sergei designed a bellows camera which significantly improved the process of focusing. This adaptation influenced the design of cameras for decades and is still found in use today in some professional cameras.
While in Paris, he would become the first to introduce interchangeable decorative backgrounds in his photos, as well as the retouching of negatives to reduce or eliminate technical deficiencies.

Levitsky was also the first photographer to portray a photo of a person in different poses and even in different clothes (for example, the subject plays the piano and listens to himself).

In 1849, the images of the Caucasus, Pyatigorsk (large Daguerreotype landscape views made on plates 30x40cm and 24x30cm in size) captured by Levitsky, were exhibited by the famous Parisian optician Charles Chevalier at the Paris Exposition of the Second Republic, also known as the Exposition Nationale des produits de l’industrie agricole et manufacturière, as an advertisement of their lenses. These photos would receive the Exposition’s gold medal; the first time a prize of its kind had ever been awarded to a photograph.

Between 1859 and 1864 Sergei Levitsky operated a photographic studio at 22, rue de Choiseul in Paris formerly the address for American daguerreotypist Warren Thompson [aka Warren-Thompson] and joined the Société Française de Photographie (SPF).

Levitsky and Warren-Thompson were associated 1847-49 both making large format daguerreotypes. Thompson opened a studio at 22 rue Choiseul in 1853
(Quelle: https://sparismus.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/sergey-levitsky-le-jeune-succ-r-photograph-paris-22-rue-de-choiseul-17-12-1867-kaiser-franz-joseph-i/)