#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

Scientific Symposium "Works of Architect Valentin Voitsekhovsky"

August 10, 2012

The Scientific Symposium "Works of Architect Valentin Voitsekhovsky" held on August 10, 2012 at the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova, along with the opening of the exhibition with the same name, was organized to commemorate 35 years from the death of architect V. Voitsekhovsky, who has greatly contributed to the reconstruction of postwar Chisinau and the urban construction in the country.

The symposium was attended by about 30 people from different state institutions: Academy of Sciences of Moldova, "Urban Proiect", City Museum, National Library of RM, National Archives of RM, etc.

The symposium was conducted by Ms. Ludmila Nastase, Head of the A. V. Shchusev's House Museum, and Ms. Tamara Nesterov, architect, Doctor of Arts. The program included the following reports:

            „In memoriam" (Grigory Bosenko)
            „Works of Architect Valentin Voitsekhovsky" (Tamara Nesterov)
            „Some aspects of the work of architect V. Voitsekhovsky" (Veaceslav Regep)
            „Architect V. Voitsekhovsky and his students" (Mariana Şlapac)
            „Remembering V. Voitsekhovsky" (Aurel Marinciuc)
            „Pieces of biography of my father" (Nina Grosul-Voitsekhovsky)

Materials presented in the reports aroused great interest, in particular because of the fact that in the architecture of the Soviet period there are still many „white spots" about the work of architects who have contributed to Chisinau postwar reconstruction. As to the works of architect V. Voitsekhovsky, there are still many unidentified projects related to the construction of many churches in Bessarabia and buildings in a number of cities in Romania - Bucharest, Pitesti, Brasov.

Materials of the symposium will be published in a separate booklet.