#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

Branch Museums

Museum of Victims of Political Repressions and Deportations

Museum of the Victims of Deportations and Political Repressions was created by Government Decision no. 605 of July 2, 2010 as branch of the National Museum of History of Moldova.

On June 13, 2012, in an exhibition space in the basement of the National Museum of History of Moldova, was opened the first exhibition of the Museum of the Victims of Deportations and Political Repressions entitled "Soviet Moldova: between myths and gulag".

Exhibition "Soviet Moldova: between myths and gulag" presents the totalitarian phenomenon in the overall history of the Soviet era. By using specific museological techniques, the authors of the exhibition have tried to present to the public the two components of Soviet society: the illusory world of those who embraced the "Soviet dream", believing naively in the ideals of freedom and justice, the "bright future" shaped by Soviet propaganda and the world of people who lived through the hell of communist camps and prisons. The exhibition brings together about 700 museum pieces: photographs, documents, letters from Siberia, vintage posters, personal belongings of former deportees and political prisoners, lists of confiscated property, memoirs written by witnesses and survivors of the Soviet gulag. For the first time are exhibited materials and documents from the archives of the former KGB with reference to the repressed people for their political and religious beliefs.

According to some incomplete data, 31 677 persons were sentenced for "political crimes" between 1920-1951 in MASSR and MSSR, of which over 5000 were sentenced to death. Other 3000 died in prisons and isolators. About 60 thousand people were deported during nationwide deportations: in June 1941, July 1949 and 1 April 1951. Museum materials presented in the exhibition "Soviet Moldova: between myths and gulag" speak about the drama of these persons with incredible destinies.

This is not a usual exhibition, it is a small memorial of sorrows and humiliations of the victims of the red terror, an exhibition that recalls contemporaries of communist totalitarian past that needs to be known, but must remain in history and never repeat again.