THE SWISS CAMERA MUSEUM
by Michelle Bienias
The Swiss Camera Museum, located in Vevey, Switzerland, between Lausanne and Montreux, houses an interesting and informative collection of the history of, and technological advances in, photography. The Museum was founded 20 years ago and since then as accumulated a rich collection that is unique in Switzerland.
And if the website is anything to judge the physical museum by, it’s an extremely well organized collection that would be of interest to photography and history buffs, as well as children. And, like all things Swiss, the site is multilingual and available in English, French and German; and technologically advanced with a VR tour of the Museum available on its website.
The Museum makes a terrific effort to engage children in the art of photography with its “Atelier Clic-Clac”, a program sponsored by Kodak for schoolchildren that immerses them in the techniques of photograph development. Entitled “Dark Room Wednesdays”, the program offers a studio for children, up to 10 at a time, that is divided into two areas: one dry zone for the preparation work and exposure, one for developing, washing and drying.
The website is divided into chronological sections, similar to those in the Museum, with titles such as “Pictures in time exposure, 1820 – 1870” and “Pictures of the day-to-day, 1918-1939”, which chronicles the revolution of the commercialization of the Lecia camera and the electronic flash.
The Museum also holds regular exhibitions of both Swiss and foreign photographers. The site states that the Museum “has a fine collection of objects and documents relating to the art of photography: cameras, viewers and projectors, lighting and studio installations, laboratory equipment, optical devices, camerae obscurae and magic lanterns... The archives include iconographic documents depicting the actual taking of the photo, a vast selection of documents advertising and describing photographic equipment, various books and, of course, photos relating to a particular camera or process. Some of the objects date right back to the 18th century, when photography was just taking its first steps, whereas others are very recent newcomers to the scene fulfilling the demands of current technology”.
The collection has been built up over the years through private and corporate donations, the Kodak Lausanne collection, and exhibits from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Zurich. “As a result the collections are historically coherent and include a number of particularly interesting items. However, the Museum is constantly searching for more objects to complete its collection.”
Equipment:
Dominique Scholl, who shot the VR tour of the Museum that is available on the website, used a Nikon Coolpix 4500 with a wide-angle add-on lens WCE-63 and an old Kiwi-L Panoramic tripod head from Kaidan, supported by an aluminum Manfrotto 055 tripod, with 18 shots for each view. The software she used was: Apple QTVRAS 1.0.1, Vrtools conVRter 1.4, Squamish MapSaVR 1.0, and Vrtools deliVRator 1.2
Email:dominiquescholl@yahoo.com
Dominique Scholl is a freelance graphic designer living in Lausanne, Switzerland and has also done web design work for www.blancpain.com, www.tourisme-montreal.org, www.domtar.com and www.spotme.ch.
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