#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

“The Great War. Photo-documentary evidences”

July 31 - September 22, 2014

The conflict that started after the assassination of Sarajevo (July 28^th, 1914) was an unprecedented historical event by the number of countries involved, the military effort, and the extent of sacrifice. The military conflagration between the years 1914-1918 is cataloged as the first mass war that changed the face of history of the 20^th century. World War I (labeled as such after the war), called at the time the Great War or the War of Nations, made history as it changed not only the world, but also because it as a "new kind of war." For the first time warring countries have resorted to total mobilization of men while women participated in the battlefield as sisters of charity. The progress of military industry has enabled modern destructive technologies such as fighting in the trenches, in the air, on the water; it was the time of the first tanks, armored vessels, heavy guns and chemical weapons.

Exhibition “The Great War. Photo-documentary evidences”

The exhibition is part of an international commemoration of the centenary from the outbreak of World War I and aims at the valorification of the photo-documentary heritage of the National Museum of History of Moldova. The message of the exhibition is informative and documentary with photographic images documenting life on the front line from combatants to the upper echelon. Selection of original photographs from war albums, newspapers, maps, postcards reveal scenes of war, weapons and ammunition, the soldiers life in hours of respite, medical personnel on the battlefield and behind the front lines, also the horrors left by the military conflagration.
The exhibition is channeled in two directions:

a. Aspects from the battles on the Western front (German armies acting against French, British and Belgian armies), on the Eastern front (German and Austro-Hungarian army fighting against the Russian army) and on the Balkan front where part of Austro-Hungarian army fought against Serbs. War battle scene is completed by Romania's involvement in World War I in 1916, which inscribed a separate page in the war history with the battles from Mărăști, Mărășești and Oituz (1917).

b. Bessarabia and the Bessarabians in World War I. Incorporated into the Russian Empire, Bessarabia had an important contribution under economic and social aspects, the human dimension being most valuable. A big part of future members of Sfatului Ţării and other well-known personalities are found among the participants of the Great War; or common solders called to duty found their rightful place in the exhibition. The research and the valorification of the photographic heritage has allowed us to discover a range of Bessarabian soldiers, participating in that hellish carnage, complementing the list of Bessarabian soldiers. Among them we mention Simion Murafa (v. Cotiujenii Mari, Soroca), who led a sanitation team on the Romanian front, Onufrii Şerevschi (v. Sofia, Drochia), Petru Cebotari (v. Moșeni, Râșcani), Ion Tcaciuc (v. Ivancea, Orhei), Gheorghe Beschieru (v. Samașcani, Orhei), Ion Spătărel (Chișinău) etc. A special page in the history of war was signed by the sisters of charity, including the Bessarabian Iulia Dicescu (one of P. Dicescu' daughters), Sofia Cantacuzino, Elena Ivanov-Spătărel, Eugenia Colodiev, Zinovia Radu-Maiorova etc.

The exhibition message is also conveyed by the newspaper „Iskry" (supplement of „Russkoe slovo") from 1915, with reportages from the battlefield and from behind the front line, a mini-collection of postcards and war map.