Travel Tip: Art and Archaeology in Austria
A World of Pictures Unbound

The imperial art collection of the Albertina in Vienna first began including the then young and controversial medium of photography as early as the 1850s. The collection was primarily devoted to views of Vienna and photographs of engravings, i.e. art reproductions. These included the oldest preserved photographic view of Vienna, a Daguerreotype by the physicist and chemist Andreas Ritter von Ettinghausen taken in 1840.

The foundation of the Photographic Society in Vienna in 1861 was a crucial event within the beginning professionalization of the production of pictures which was to pervade all spheres of life. The members of the Photographic Society came from a wide range of professions and pursued many different objectives. Their regular meetings were not only aimed at an exchange of abstract technical knowledge, but increasingly at conceiving strategies for the enforcement of economic interests. This field of tension was also reflected in numerous exhibitions and the society’s magazine Photographische Correspondenz.

Presenting about 260 outstanding examples of Austrian photography dating from before 1945, the exhibition in the Albertina will shed light on both the range and quality of the pictures produced by the Photographic Society’s members.