A Museum On The French
Photographic Heritage
Anne-Laure Bell, France
France, the birthplace of the photographic
process, boasts a museum presenting the history of the technique. A collection of rare
objects born of a modest club of photography buffs ...
It all started with an association in
Bievres, a small town south of Paris, where photography enthusiasts got together with Jean
Fage to share their finds with as many people as possible. Jean Fage already had a
collection of some fifty pieces covering the development of the art of photography. In
1968, driven by the desire to show his marvels, he opened a first museum in a small
gallery in the town. He quickly found himself calling on the cultural institutions to help
him as interest grew in his exhibition and new pieces were added to it daily. He joined
forces with the departement of Essonne to take up this task. Jean Fage and his association
agreed to give their collection to the State in return for an appropriate setting for the
treasures in his possession. Hence, 1972 saw the inauguration of a building devoted to the
history of photographic processes.
Interested in the exhibition’s
scientific and cultural project, the government also got involved by way of the Ministry
of Culture, which granted the building the title of "Museum of France" in 2003.
The French Museum of Photography receives scientific aid, mainly to preserve and restore
the pieces, and subsidies to expand the collections.
Nicephore Niepce and Louis-Jacques Mande
Daguerre were pioneers of the first photographic processes, making France the cradle of
photography. These processes were developed and improved by the discoveries of a whole
host of inventors. The exhibition presents the entire evolution of photography from the
design of image recording equipment to the processes of developing and fixing the exposed
image. In addition to the "magic lanterns" and the camera obscura of the
prephotographic era, the museum shows some extremely rare pieces such as a Daguerreian
chamber. You can admire examples of the Velocigraph designed by Joseph Lacroix in 1889 to
take instant photos, one of the first cameras used by journalists; stereoscopic devices
for taking 3-D photos using a twin-lens technique based on the normal separation of human
eyes; weird equipment from the beginning of the 20`h century designed to take photos
surreptitiously: cameras in the shape of walking sticks, tiepins, hats and so on predating
the fist spy cameras in 1940; and entire ranges of different makes through the ages. All
of these objects have been preserved with their instructions for use so we can still see
how they are put together and how they work.
The museum is filled with mechanical marvels
such as the extremely rare Melano-chromoscope by Louis Ducos du Hauron, inventor of colour
photography, and the first macrophotography camera specially designed by Francis Delvert
to be sent into space on board the Russian Photon spacecraft. Delvert, one of the
museum’s pioneers, has also designed the largest camera in the world: the Essonnian.
It takes photos measuring two metres by three metres. The camera is so big that over a
dozen people can get inside it to understand the workings of a camera from within. The
public can hence learn the details of photographic processes right from the outset.
Workshops are also held to show hands-on just how true certain optical rules are.
And visitors are bowled over. A Belgian
collector recently enthused that the collections "are among the most beautiful in
Europe." A Japanese television station made the long journey to the museum for its
documentary on light. Although this might have something to do with the fact that the
Tokyo Fuji Art -20
Museum showed 129 pieces from the French
Museum of Photography a few years ago in an exhibition paying tribute to the Conquerors of
Images.
Bievres also holds an annual photography fair
that attracts 10,000 to 11,000 people from the world over on the first Sunday of June
every year. This secondhand market is a treasure trove of rare cameras and spare parts
that are no longer manufactured.
Although the museum has built its name on
early cameras, it also houses a number of photos such as the first aerial shot taken by
Nadar in 1858. In addition to work by Balthus, Salzman, Orlan and Atget, it contains a
wide range of Russian, Italian, German and other foreign magazines. All of these treasures
are gradually being put online and a selection of photos can already be viewed.
Today, the French Museum of Photography
boasts two million images and 15,000 pieces of equipment covering photography in all its
forms. The building, granted by the State over thirty years ago, is becoming cramped,
especially with the recent development of digital cameras. And the museum is facing new
challenges and looking into preserving cameras that will become historical artefacts of
the future. A new museum is therefore in the pipeline to house 1,600 m2 of permanent
exhibitions and 300 m2 of temporary exhibitions. With this, the museum team and the
original association, ever present and ever watchful, hope to improve their account of the
invention of photography and its developments from the 19th century through to the present
day, and share this wonderful moment in history with an ever-growing public.
Courtesy : Actualite En France,
Series No. 62/08, Embassy of France
Half-Full or Half-Empty?
By Peter Hintereder, GERMANY
Intelligent people have often racked their
brains over the relationship between economics and psychology. The received wisdom is that
the two are indeed closely related. After all, once the music of a nation’s psyche
has fallen into a dark, minor key, its economy is unlikely to rejoice in a radiant major
chord. And the eagerly traded flood of bad news has left many people in Germany feeling
very dejected. So is the mood worse than the situation – or the situation worse than
the mood? Lately, the somewhat despondent domestic angle on things has been increasingly
challenged by a far more positive outside view from top international managers. As
recently as the summer, management consultants Ernst & Young rated Germany as the
third most attractive investment location in the world. And now the analysts from Boston
Consulting have backed this view. The overall tenor of a study entitled "Germany
– A Change In Prospects" is that Germany can still score points with its
traditional virtues of quality, hard work, efficiency and precision – in spite of
structural problems, a weak level of growth, strikingly high labour costs and a labour
market balking at the globalization-driven pressure for greater flexibility. The
"made in Germany" seal of quality is still regarded worldwide "as a real
strength that has positive effects on purchase decisions", the study says. Fred B.
Irwin, President of the US Chamber of Commerce in Germany, also suspects that the
admittedly difficult economic situation is in part due to a deterioration in people’s
self-perception. "Germany’s biggest mystery – and its main asset – are
the Germans themselves. The only trouble is they don’t know it." What direction
is the German economy moving in? Are we really witnessing the "fall of a
superstar", as a best-selling book would have us believe, or are we an "agile
giant with prospects", as suggested in our Main Theme on Economics by Klaus-Peter
Schmid, economics editor of the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit".
Negotiations on the reform of the United
Nations will be on the agenda of high diplomacy over the coming months. Germany, as the
second-largest provider of troops for UN-mandated missions and the third-biggest payer of
contributions to the world organization, is hoping that the reform of the Security Council
will give it a permanent seat on the UN’s most important bodies. Gunter Hofmann,
connoisseur of the Berlin political scene, weighs up the arguments.
2005 will also be an important date for the
world of physics. Exactly 100 years ago, a young German-born man revolutionized the
science by reinterpreting space and time: Albert Einstein. Germany is celebrating Einstein
Year to mark the hundredth birthday of the most famous of all formulas and in memory of a
great scientist, pacifist and human being. We wish you an enjoyable read.
Peter Hintereder is editor-in-chief
of "Deutschland" magazine; November 15, 2004, Embassy of Germany, Deutschland
Magazine. |
