#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.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

The compartment of World War II and Stalinist repression

(Permanent Exhibition „History and Civilization”)

The department presents documentary evidences about World War II and political repression during the Stalinist dictatorship.

Numerous photos, documents, military clothing items, letters from the front, personal belongings of soldiers recreate the ordeal of war, which caused millions of deaths and immeasurable economic losses.

The compartment of World War II and Stalinist repression

Among the relics presented in the showcases you can see a photograph of the commander of the 12th gendarme regiment G. Niculescu, who was the first Romanian colonel fallen in the battles of Tiganca on July 9, 1941; letters from the front written by E. Filatov, soldier in the Romanian army, to his wife; military ID that belonged to V. Sava, a native of the village of Bardar, Lapusna District; photograph and flying helmet of S. Harhalup who’s aircraft was shot down on 30 June 1941 during a fight over his native village of Valea Adanca, Camenca District; sailor’s shirt of I. Caimacan and shoulder straps of Colonel L. Grecu, who participated in the war in the ranks of Soviet troops and navy.

A number of exhibits remind of the horrible concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 4 million people, representatives of 27 nationalities, were killed Nearby you can see the clothes of a prisoner of the Soviet forced labor camps and a certificate on the name of Vasile Cojocaru, a former political prisoner, as well as a certificate stating that Peter Cojocaru was shot in 1942 at the camp in Mariinsk, Kemerovo Region.

Such a fate befell tens of thousands of Bessarabians who were in the Soviet Gulag. During the 11 years, from 1940 to 1951, the MSSR there were carried out three large-scale deportations and dozens of arrests and deportations at the local level. In June 1941 there were deported 3470 families of "anti-Soviet elements" (22 848 persons). On the night of 5 to 6 July 1949, 11 293 families (over 35 thousand people) of hardworking peasants were forcibly sent to the suffering and death in Siberia and other remote areas of the Soviet empire. In 1951, as a result of the operation "North", 723 families of Jehovah‘s Witnesses (over 2,600 people) have been forcibly relocated.

The exhibition includes photographs, letters from the camps, lists of confiscated property, personal belongings of the deported, and other documentary evidence about the fate of people who have experienced the deportation ordeal, such as poet Nicolae Turcan, scientist Alexei Barladeanu, teacher Catherine Dementieva, the Buiuc family from Chiperceni (Orhei District), the Baciu family from Mereni (Anenii Noi District), the Berezovschi family from Chisinau, Xenia Botnaru from Straseni, Alexandra and Gregory Scafaru from Ciuciuleni (Nisporeni District), and many others.