#Exhibit of the Month

The main parts of the camera include the body, bellows, lens, and viewfinder system. The body consists of two lacquered walnut wood frames, joined by a folding black textile bellows that allows the necessary extension for focusing. On the front panel is the Agfa anastigmat lens, mounted in a Compur-type shutter produced by F. Deckel in Munich. It features a foldable "brilliant" viewfinder for both portrait and landscape orientation. It uses glass photographic plates coated with a photographic emulsion, mounted in walnut wood holders, with a frame size of 9x12 cm.
The walnut wood model, considered the flagship "Agfa Isolar Luxus," was designed by the A.H. Rietzschel factory in Munich, acquired by AGFA in 1925, which continued producing this type of camera under its own name until the late 1920s.
The piece was restored by Mihail Culașco, Restoration Department of NMHM.
Brief History of the Camera
The history of the camera spans 200 years, evolving from the camera obscura to today's digital devices. Key milestones include: the first permanent photograph in 1826 by French physicist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, using a wooden box and a plate coated with bitumen of Judea; the invention of the first photographic process - daguerreotype - in 1839 by Frenchman Louis Daguerre, marking the official birth of photography; the invention of calotype, based on the negative/positive principle, by British physicist and chemist Fox Talbot; the invention of wet collodion plates by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer and dry glass plates by Richard Leach Maddox and John Huds Bennet; the introduction of flexible roll film and the launch of the first Kodak camera by American inventor George Eastman; the release of the first 35 mm film camera by German company "Leica"; the launch of the first instant camera "Polaroid," invented by American Edwin Land. Finally, starting in 1975, this path led to the digital photography revolution. Each successive step made cameras smaller and faster, significantly improving image quality.
The first photographic studio in Chișinău was opened in 1854 by Eduard Glewski, and before World War I, there were already about 100 photography studios in Bessarabia.
The collection of the National Museum of History of Moldova includes over 30 cameras, made in Austria, Germany, France, USSR, Japan, and China, dating from the late 19th century to the 2000s. Among them are folding bellows cameras, BOX-type cameras, single-lens reflex (SLR) and twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras, as well as digital (DSLR) cameras.

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Exhibitions

"Memory of an Undeclared War" (2012)

On March 2, 1992, when the President of the Republic of Moldova Mircea Snegur was speaking at the plenary session of UN General Assembly the speech of thanks on the occasion of receipt of Moldova to the United Nations, groups of guardsmen and Cossacks armed with submachine guns and armored cars stormed the district police department headquarters at Dubăsari. The first victims were killed. To the south, in Vulcănești, another armed group attacked the police district headquarters. The same happens simultaneously to Bender, Grigoriopol, and Cocieri... Mentions and more detailed reviews of those dramatic events can be found in various sources: albums, books, collections of documents, memoirs, newspaper accounts. The commemorative exhibition "Memory of an Undeclared War" offers us a photo-documentary chronicle of this war.

It was conceived as a tribute to all participants in the struggle to protect the integrity and independence of the Republic of Moldova and, above all, those who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of the motherland. The exhibition brings together over 250 museum objects: photographic images, fragments of arms and ammunition collected from the battlefield, documents and personal objects of the combatants fallen in the fighting on the Dniester, books and newspapers that depict cruel realities of the war.

Stunning images made by photographers N. Pojoga, M. Venger, T. Iovu, A. Mardare, S. Voronin, T. Anghel and some others reflect the ordeal the defenders of Moldova have gone through in the battles of Dubăsari and Tighina, on the plateaus of Cocieri and Coșnița, they immortalized heroism and courage of the Moldavian policemen and volunteers and showed hardships and humiliations of the war, destroyed families, homes and villages in ruins, faces of women and children distorted with pain of loss of those they loved.

A separate section of the exhibition is dedicated to police officers killed in the fighting for the independence and integrity of the Republic of Moldova.

The content of the exhibition is complemented by a collection of papers and memoirs about the armed conflict on the Dniester signed by researchers, participants and eyewitnesses of the events: Valentina Ursu, Ilie Ilașcu, Mircea Radu Iacoban, General Ion Costaș, Colonel Anatol Munteanu, Anatolie Moraru, Nicolae Ciubotaru, Gh. Budeanu, Vlad Grecu, and others.

The exhibition "Memory of an Undeclared War" is organized in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the armed conflict on the Dniester and is dedicated to all defenders of the integrity and independence of the Republic of Moldova.

#Exhibit of the Month

Folding bellows camera, “Agfa Isolar Luxus”. AGFA Company, Munich, Germany, 1928

"Memory of an Undeclared War" (2012)

#Exhibit of the Month