#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

August 2021

Icon of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin

Russia, 1885, engraver V. Savinkov, tempera on wood

The Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos is considered a Great Christian Feast, when the Mother of God, upon her earthly demise, entered into heavenly glory. This feast, constituted with the evolution of the cult of the Virgin, is one of the earliest. The feast originated in Jerusalem, probably in the 4th century, and spread to the West in the 5th-6th centuries. The establishment of this feast strengthened the veneration of the Mother of God, as well as her Dormition, condemning some of the excesses of the cult of the Virgin, especially those associated with the delusions of the Collyridian heretics, who denied the human nature of the Most Holy Theotokos, including her worldly death. Originally celebrated on January 18, the Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos from 582 began to be marked on August 15 and was considered "the Easter of the Summer". Emperor Flavius Mauricius (c. 539-602) established that the day of August 15 be celebrated everywhere.

The Holy Gospel is silent about this event, information about the circumstances of the Dormition of the Theotokos and the feast of the Virgin being preserved by popular tradition or related in the apocryphal writings. These sources, which convey the central moments of the event, also mentioned various details, suggesting different interpretations, the iconographic schemes evolving from one period to another. The initial compositions dedicated to the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin were laconic, with a small number of characters, but from the 10th-11th centuries, complex scenes with multiple characters appeared. The iconographic schemes were lined up both horizontally and vertically; in the first, the characters were located either to the left and right of the bier of the Virgin, or in a semicircle, in the second, the characters were depicted in large numbers behind the bier of the Virgin or (and) surrounding Jesus Christ, and the upper part of the icon was loaded with many images and details. Traditionally, the Blessed Virgin was depicted lying on a bier in the middle of a house, with her arms folded to her chest. On either side of her bed are candlesticks with lighted candles. At her feet the Apostle Peter is depicted with a censer, and at her head are the Apostles Paul and John the Theologian, who kisses her. Other apostles gathered around her, except for the Apostle Thomas, who was late. Above, to the left of the bed, Christ is shown in white robes, with a halo, in a shining mandorla or a clypeus, holding a swaddled baby in his arms, symbolizing the soul of the Mother of God.

The theological meaning of this iconographic subject reflects the relationship between death and life, between the limited and the infinite, between the end and the beginning. In the schemes of the icons, these hypostases are symbolized by a horizontal line and a vertical line, personified by the lying body of the Virgin and by the image of the Savior with the baby in His arms.

The iconographic model of the icon presented here resembles the famous icon from the Dormition Church in the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, brought there in 1073, probably from the Church of the Virgin of Blachernae in Constantinople. It is known that on these models, which probably reproduced the composition of the original icon, a silver door was installed or depicted on the left of the bed, which, decorated with a cross in the center, could be confused with a closed Gospel. At the same time, this decorative element on later copies could suggest that the specimen brought to Kiev in the 11th century belonged to the so-called reliquary icons, in which special recesses with silver doors were made for fragments of the relics of saints or their garments.