Photographs |
Collection of Raoul Korty
Author:
Margot Werner
Margot Werner
The collection: a piece of illustrated world history
“They are commonplace paltry photographs that I call my own and that are nothing more than pieces of illustrated world history” (Raoul Korty, c. 1920)
Raoul Korty’s photo collection consisted of as many as 250,000 pictures and was thus one of the largest European collections of its time. It contains portraits from well-known Viennese studios: actors, members of the Austrian imperial household, European nobility, politicians, artists and scientists, but also Viennese society. Today it offers a wide-ranging view of a lost world.
“Under the bed, on the tables, under the chairs, there were piles of photographs everywhere, the parlour maid gave her notice, my mother wrung her hands, in short it was bliss – but exasperating!” (Raoul Korty, c. 1920)
The rapid development of photography in the nineteenth century was due to two factors: the development of a cheap reproduction process, and the standard picture format. The collodion wet plate process, developed in 1851, and the 6.5 × 10.5 cm visiting card format helped the spread of photography. Korty collected portrait photos above all, which he loaned to print media to illustrate articles, much as photo agencies do today.
Korty is probably the only person who retained an overview of his thousands of photos and negative plates. Fragmentary lists exist for some packages, and many pictures have notes on the back, but there is no recognizable system. Korty collected according to various criteria based more on the iconographic value of the photos than their artistic merit.
Even during the Nazi period, it was known that the collection was not systematically recorded and that without the owner it would be difficult to process. This is probably one of the reasons why the collection remained untouched after its seizure in 1939.
During the preparations by the ÖNB for its 2008 exhibition In Memory of Better Times: Pictures from the Lost World of the Jewish Collection Raoul Korty, the collection was processed and partially digitized in 2007, making the historical photos available to the public.
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“They are commonplace paltry photographs that I call my own and that are nothing more than pieces of illustrated world history” (Raoul Korty, c. 1920)
Raoul Korty’s photo collection consisted of as many as 250,000 pictures and was thus one of the largest European collections of its time. It contains portraits from well-known Viennese studios: actors, members of the Austrian imperial household, European nobility, politicians, artists and scientists, but also Viennese society. Today it offers a wide-ranging view of a lost world.
“Under the bed, on the tables, under the chairs, there were piles of photographs everywhere, the parlour maid gave her notice, my mother wrung her hands, in short it was bliss – but exasperating!” (Raoul Korty, c. 1920)
The rapid development of photography in the nineteenth century was due to two factors: the development of a cheap reproduction process, and the standard picture format. The collodion wet plate process, developed in 1851, and the 6.5 × 10.5 cm visiting card format helped the spread of photography. Korty collected portrait photos above all, which he loaned to print media to illustrate articles, much as photo agencies do today.
Korty is probably the only person who retained an overview of his thousands of photos and negative plates. Fragmentary lists exist for some packages, and many pictures have notes on the back, but there is no recognizable system. Korty collected according to various criteria based more on the iconographic value of the photos than their artistic merit.
Even during the Nazi period, it was known that the collection was not systematically recorded and that without the owner it would be difficult to process. This is probably one of the reasons why the collection remained untouched after its seizure in 1939.
During the preparations by the ÖNB for its 2008 exhibition In Memory of Better Times: Pictures from the Lost World of the Jewish Collection Raoul Korty, the collection was processed and partially digitized in 2007, making the historical photos available to the public.
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