The historian of photography Helmut Gernsheim (1913 – 1995) owned the largest photography collection in the world. For the first time in half a century, both its sections are being reunited for an exhibition: the historical part housed in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin and the contemporary collection in the Forum Internationale Photographie at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen.

Among the major pieces in the collection is the world’s first photographic image, taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. With this treasure, Helmut Gernsheim not only restored to photography its earliest preserved work, but was also able to set the »official birth date« of photography, formerly tied to the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, back to the year 1826.


Book
The Birth of Photography - Gernsheim's Collection
Editor: Alfried Wieczorek, Claude W. Sui

Authors: Barbara Brown, Christy Anderson, Claude W. Sui, David Coleman, Sheila Forster, Shin Maekawa, Stephanie Oeben
Hardcover 
24 x 30 cm, 
304 pages

ISBN 978-3-86828-330-3

39,90 Euros

Exhibition
The Birth of Photography - Gernsheim's Collection
09.09.2012 – 06.01.2013
Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim
Forum Internationale Photographie
Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen
Museum Weltkulturen D5
68159 Mannheim - Germany