ReVision

This book offers for the first time an overview of the unique collection of photography and new media held by the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG). From the beginnings of photography to contemporary pieces, the collection includes more than 75,000 works.

The MKG, an arts and crafts museum, already began collecting photography towards the end of the nineteenth century and played a pioneering role as the first museum in Germany to open its doors to the medium. As early as the turn of the century, photography was already being acquired as a medium in its own right, and the first exhibitions devoted to it were held starting in 1911.

ReVision explores this extensive and multifaceted collection from various perspectives such as portrait, architecture and reportage photography. Central discourses such as the desire for a precise and documentary approach, or the nineteenth-century roles of photography as an aid to science and an archival medium are considered.

At the same time, the changing materiality of photographs, such as their frames, is examined, alongside different emphases of the collection including international pictorial photography and Japanese photography.

Texts by renowned international photo and cultural historians round off the theoretical aspect of the book.