Right From the Start – The First 1,000 Positives of the Photo Collection
The origins and early history of the photo collection are best and most impressively shown when we look at positive inventory numbers pos/1 to pos/1000 (see Hammer 2020). The photographs in this collection were acquired in the first ten years after the museum was founded, i.e. between 1895 and 1905.
Collecting these photographs was important to the museum from the very beginning. After all, photographs were seen as witnesses to a ‘disappearing’ culture as well as a medium for depicting or ‘collecting’ what was intangible or too bulky for the collections (see Haberlandt 1896), e.g. small monuments or houses.
Call for collections
The museum’s founding directors Michael Haberlandt and Wilhelm Hein actively solicited photographs from collectors and amateur photographers within the ethnology community. They specially turned to a number of clubs and associations (Vereine) that were forming at the time, such as Skioptikon (see album “Die ersten 1.000 Dias” (The first 1,000 diapositives)), the Vienna Camera Club, the Alpine Association (Alpenverein) or the Architects' Association (Architektenverein).
In 1896 and 1898, they published calls in the Austrian Journal for Folk Life and Folk Art (see Haberlandt 1896 and n.a. 1898), asking amateur photographers for their ‘relevant works’ of ‘country and people’ (mostly from the countryside, rarely from the city), hoping that they would ‘want to support ethnology through diligent photographs of ethnological objects’. This already indicated the focus of a research area that was in the process of emerging at the time and the increasingly popular field of folk like and folk art. They asked for photographs of type, settlement and house research, agriculture, customs and landscapes of the regions of the former Habsburg Monarchy, as evidenced by the first inventory numbers from the positive inventory book containing 36 photographs of village and house views, folk types and street scenes from Bukovina, taken by Custos Josef Szombathy in the summer of 1894 (“36 Aufnahmen von Dorf- und Hausansichten, Volkstypen und Straßenscenen aus der Bukowina, aufg. von Herrn Custos J. Szombathy, Sommer 1894”) (see n.a. 1895; Josef Szombathy was a colleague of Michael Haberlandt at the k.k. naturhistorischen Hofmuseum).
Network
The large network of researchers, photographers as well as clubs and associations, primarily from the Cisleithanian part of the Habsburg Monarchy, can be surmised when leafing through the first inventory book of the photo collection. It contains countless names from photo studios and members of the Association for Austrian Folk Life (Verein für Volkskunde): professional photographers Eduard von Schiller from Czernowitz and Julius[z] Dutkiewicz from Kolomea; Fotografischer Kunstverlag Otto Schmidt from Vienna; more than 20 (founding) members, such as teachers Karl Reiterer from Weißenbach bei Liezen and Josef Taubmann from Krausebauden, Bohemia; photographing scientists such as Wladimir S[z]uchiewicz from Lemberg and ethnologist Marie Eysn; doctors and architects such as Carl A. Romstorfer; and wealthy amateurs who shared a common interest in ethnology.
They spread over extensive geographic areas, with producing and collecting taking place everywhere, whether in Ragusa, Innsbruck, Czernowitz or the Giant Mountains. The museum of course also benefited from the enormous advances in photographic reproduction techniques and increasing circulation, even though photography remained an expensive, elitist, class- and gender-specific affair at this time.
Origin and use of the photo collection of the Austrian Museum for Folk Life and Folk Art
The names of the donors and the mode of acquisition, i.e. donation or purchase via the museum’s founding directors (a roughly equal split), changed continuously. This suggests that the photographs were inventoried in the first few years as they came into the museum, i.e. less systematically than chronologically. This tells a lot about the early collection work and museum activities, which influences the way these holdings are worked with and handled to this day. Information on pictures in the inventory book is often sparse and limited to what is most obvious or what the people making the entries (in those years probably primarily Michael Haberlandt as director and Julius Thirring as librarian) wanted to see. This requires ongoing research to this day. Until 1900, the year of inventory was forgotten to be recorded. However, the first photo collection inventory book is also quite ‘lively’ with its many changes and additions, crossed-out and overwritten parts. It is easy to imagine the founding times to be exciting; a period of constant reconsiderations, but also one that left no time for anything more profound.
It is important to consider the allocation and function of the photo collection as well: for a long time after the museum was founded, it was managed as part of the library, as evidenced by the library stamp on many of the pictures. The museum was not given its permanent location until 1917 when it moved into the Schönborn Garden Palais. Therefore, like everywhere else in the museum at the time, there was a lack of space, and photograph storage was far from professional by today's standards. The museum's librarian at the time, Julius Thirring, considered these conditions to be ‘untenable’, despite the fact that the photo collection was strictly speaking not a collection in the contemporary sense, as photographs were not yet seen as objects worthy of protection. They were for use and illustration, and the ‘material’ was handled quite ‘liberally’. Many traces point to intensive handling for reproduction purposes for publications and lectures: losses to the supporting cardboard, creases, fingerprints, bumped edges. The images are faded, wavy, have foxing, abrasions on the gelatine layer (pos/1 to 42, pos/106/001-037) or stamp impressions in the image (pos/214). They were heavily retouched, conspicuously manipulated (pos/106/019), and instructions for publication were written directly onto the image (pos/482).
The 1950s saw a profound change in the way the photo collection was organised and stored: as part of new archiving structures, photographs were glued onto A4 archive cardboard and stored in binders in increments of 100. If the supporting cardboard took up too much space, i.e. depth, they were split off at the back. In addition to the loss of material, this meant a considerable loss of information. As much as these practices have damaged the photographic objects, they also provide information and indications as to how work and research was carried out in and with the photo collection during these years.
What was collected and why?
The most common format is the Carte de Cabinet (14.5 x 10 cm), followed by the Carte de Visite (9 x 5.5 cm). There are only a few large formats and elaborately designed portfolios in this collection, such as Marianne Strobl's "Typen der Landesfuhrwerke aus der Internationalen Ausstellung Wien – 1894" (Types of Provincial Carriages from the Vienna International Exhibition) (pos/108/000) or Wilhelm Exner’s photo album from the Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition in Lviv in 1877 (pos/105/000). Remarkably, the daguerreotype does not appear once in the early photo collection inventory numbers. It was probably because of the plasticity and material of the photographic object (silver-plated copper plate) that it was treated as a unique specimen and was part of the museum's main collection at the time. A collection of Bohemian house photographs (pos/1037-1048) in cyanotype technique was also incorporated into the museum’s holdings. Compared to later inventory numbers, postcards and prints play almost no role in the early positive collection.
As with other collections, the photographic objects were collected with the intention of capturing what was typical of a region or ethnic group. The increasingly scientific nature of ethnological and ethnographic research is also reflected in typification and categorisation. Territorial classification – when photographing, collecting or, at the latest, when publishing – meant that those involved played a considerable part in the construction and later popularisation of the ‘own’ and the ‘other’ in this period, and exerted influence on its related perception (see album "Positive aus Galizien und der Bukowina" (Positives from Galicia and Bukowina) and the exhibition catalogue "Gestellt. Fotografie als Werkzeug in der Habsburgermonarchie“ (Photography as a Tool in the Habsburg Monarchy)). Half of the positives up to 1905 are typecast depictions of people, either from the studio or from field photographs from Eastern and Central Europe, 60% of them from Galicia and Bukovina (photographers Julius Dutkiewicz, Eduard von Schiller and Carl A. Romstorfer). Other such depictions came from Tyrol (Tyrolean Trachten (traditional costume) pictures by photographers Friedrich Bopp and C.A. Czichna, as souvenirs and collector's items for scrapbooks), but also from Moravia, Upper Austria, Dalmatia and Istria. It often happened that the same ‘type’ depictions were incorporated into different contexts. This was possible because the photographs, as can be seen in the holdings, were heavily retouched, with the background covered with white colour and the person shown isolated and separated from the surroundings (pos/310, pos/416). Only a small part of the holdings are portraits with surviving names of the persons shown (pos/167, Georg Strobl and six others).
Members of the Verein für Volkskunde, the association behind Volkskundemuseum Wien and owner of the collections to this day, used the advantage photography offered to capture what could not be taken away or collected. These included immaterial culture (customs, festivals) but also topographies and images of houses. Examples of ‘folklore events’ (Volksschauspiele) include 30 photographs (especially between pos/120 and pos/501) taken by Karl Reiterer from Weißenbach bei Liezen of re-enacted peasant weddings, shepherd and St Nicholas plays in the Ennsthal region and carnival (Fasching) scenes from Aussee (photographer Michael Moser). We also need to consider that at the time, publications used photographs either directly as a print or as a template for a drawing to illustrate text. After all, drawings were still considered to be more credible than photographs at this time. One example for this is pos/482, which was used for a publication by Karl Reiterer. The instructions for making the drawing were written on the picture and the backside.
Good examples of house photographs are those of the Alpine regions from Kunstverlag Otto Schmidt (pos/639-674). As for house photographs from Galicia and Bukovina, they frequently alternate in series with the above-mentioned typecast depictions of people (pos/1-42, pos/682-787). Images of wayside monuments (Flurdenkmäler) and fences can be found in pos/327/001-347/002 (Tyrolean fence images by Marie Eysn).
In comparison to later positive numbers, photography of objects from the museum’s collections are found only few and far between: examples include masks (pos/368), Bohemian ceramics (pos/398-404), Bohemian Forest lace and Dalmatian distaffs (pos/1009-1032). There are also object photographs from other museums (Museum Francisco Carolinum, Linz) or from private individuals (pos/137-164). Only one photograph shows the inside of the museum, at that time in the building of the Vienna Stock Exchange, Wipplinger Str. 34 (pos/367).
The social life of the Verein für österreichische Volkskunde is also shown in these first positive numbers. The Wanderversammlung (‘travelling meeting’) to Gloggnitz on 10 May 1896 documents the very first excursion of the Association in a long series of diverse activities (pos/181-188).
Cross-references between the positive numbers and other objects from the photo collection result from multiple uses in different formats, which have come to light during detailed research into the genesis of the collection. From 1905 or even earlier, many of the early positive numbers were reproduced using negatives and slides and were used for publications and slide shows at Volksbildungshaus Urania in Vienna (see albums "Die ersten 1.500 Negative" (The first 1,500 negatives) and "Die ersten 1.000 Dias" (The first 1,000 slides)).
Astrid Hammer
Curator of the Photo Collection
8 December 2024
References:
Hein, Wilhelm: Das Huttlerlaufen. In: Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 9/1899, S. 109-123, hier S. 117, Abb. 3.
Justnik, Herbert (Hg.): Gestellt. Fotografie als Werkzeug in der Habsburgermonarchie. Wien 2014.