Rare photo of Chopin surfaces _ but is it real?

WARSAW, POLAND (AP) - Chopin experts are trying to determine whether a photo that has surfaced in Poland is really of the 19th century composer.

If authentic, it would be only the third known photograph of Frederic Chopin, who lived from 1810-1849.

Wladyslaw Zuchowski, a photographer and gallery owner in Gdansk, said Thursday that he bought the daguerreotype, the earliest type of photograph, from a private owner in Scotland. The framed copper and silver image bears the date 1849, when Chopin died in Paris, and the stamp of Louis Auguste Bisson, a French photographer who took another photograph of Chopin.

Alicja Knast, curator of a Warsaw museum on Chopin, said she couldn’t immediately say if it is authentic because she hadn’t seen it.