Between Documentation and Staging: Photographs from Galicia and Bukovina in the Photographic Collection of the Volkskundemuseum Wien (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art)
The first catalogued object in the photo collection of the Volkskundemuseum Wien, pos/1, was taken in 1894 in Bukovina by Josef Szombathy (1853–1943). It depicts Austriaplatz in Czernowitz. Further photographs from the then Austrian crown lands – the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and the Duchy of Bukovina – entered the collection from 1896 onwards. At the time, the photo collection was still part of the library of the Museum für österreichische Volkskunde.
The term Galicia refers to a historical region that extended across what is now southern Poland and western Ukraine. At the eastern edge of Galicia lay the smaller historical region of Bukovina, which today is part of Ukraine and Romania. The former territory of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was divided among Prussia, Russia, and Austria in three partitions (1772, 1793, and 1795) following military conflicts. The areas assigned to Habsburg rule became known as Galicia and Bukovina.
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