#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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Events Archive

Presentation of the cartographic album „DESCRIPTIO BESSARABIAE"

June 20, 2017

On June 20, 2017, in the Blue Room of the National Museum of History of Moldova was presented the cartographic album "DESCRIPTIO BESSARABIAE". The event was organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute "Mihai Eminescu" in Chișinău, in partnership with the National Museum of History of Moldova.

The album presentation event was attended by Mr. Valeriu Matei, the director of RCI "Mihai Eminescu" and dr. hab. Eugen Sava, the director of the National Museum of History of Moldova. Among the special guests was dr.hab. Gheorghe Postică, Deputy Minister of Culture; academician Demir Dragnev and the authors of the album: univ.prof. Adrian Năstase, coordinator of the volume; dr. Mihai Gribincea, Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova to Romania and researcher Ovidiu Dumitru.

The event was attended by Moldovan officials, researchers, museographers, teachers and scholars, representatives of the press, as well as members of the diplomatic corps accredited in Chișinău, including the Romanian Ambassador to Moldova, H.E. Daniel Ioniță.

Written in two languages, Romanian and English, the album "Descriptio Bessarabiae" presents 120 maps in an exceptional visual conception, rare pieces found in the collections of the National Museum of Maps and Old Books in Bucharest and in the private collections of the album authors. The presentation of the maps in the album structure respects the historical evolution of cartographic achievements related to the Bessarabian territory during almost five centuries of cartography.

"Bessarabia is not a myth. It is a reality. Emerged on the map by a game of history, this territory disappeared through an equally unexpected event. But as astronomers know to see comets only of their knowledge, they know how to comment and accurately calculate the trajectories only by their suspects; therefore historians should master the skill of honoring the most unseen truths. Compared to astronomy (if you want, they can also be related with the time), the maps are just regular charts that unseen hands of sovereigns of the moment show their own ambitions. And it is our duty not to take them as absolute truths, even if they are signed with names of Christian emperors like Alexander I or names of communist tyrants like Joseph Stalin ... The axiom of the existence of this earth are the very people who passed rapidly through the hourglass of time, but did not want to have a destiny similar to that of sand. Their purpose was to leave a trace. The supreme argument of their existence is the follow-up. Reading the traces of the generations that have gone down in our history, we affirm with deep conviction: Bessarabia is not a myth. It is a reality." (From the preface „Basarabia. Miza geostrategică"(Bessarabia. Geostrategic Stake))

An essential argument put forward by the authors in favor of the album "Descriptio Bessarabiae" is that in the Romanian Principalities from the medieval period there were no native concerns relevant to cartography, the maps being made more by foreign travelers, often accompanied by plastic artists to write down field information. These works were documentary studies that had, over time, a special, even restricted, regime. The cartographic atlases were used to educate the children of princes, helping to understand the changes of territory.

The cartographic album released at the National Museum of History of Moldova is part of a larger project, developed in collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute Publishing House and the National Museum of Maps and Old Books in Bucharest, a project from the series of albums containing maps of the Danube, Black Sea, Bessarabia. The series is wanted to be completed with the presentation of the old Transylvanian maps as part of the Program that marks the Centenary of the Great Union in the spring of next year.