Jewish Museum in Prague

Česky

Photography Department

head of department:Jiří Tatranský

 The Photography Department is mainly responsible for photo-documentation which is necessary for the professional care of the Museum’s holdings. Its most important, long-term project is the documentation of the Museum’s individual groups of collections. With digital photo-documentation it is possible to limit the handling of the actual objects in the collections - in most cases the latter are presented in digital form for the purposes of registration, research and publication. The collection of children’s drawings from Terezín are now available in digital form, the digitization of the textile collection is well under way and work has started on the digitization of the silver collection. The ongoing digitization of the German Catalogue is of great importance for the purposes of managing the Museum’s collections.

In addition to ongoing digitization, the Photography Department carries out other documentation tasks related to changes in the condition and location of objects in the Museum’s collections.. This involves documenting loans, exhibitions and the state of objects before and after restoration. Documentation work is undertaken both in the studio and in the field (involving, for example, documentation of tombstones in Jewish cemeteries); other exterior pictures are taken for inclusion in the Museum’s publications.

The Photography Department has prepared illustrations for books published by the Museum - such as “Jewish Customs and Traditions” - the Klausen Synagogue guide, “History of the Jewish in Bohemia and Moravia” - the Maisel and Spanish synagogue guides, “Prague Synagogues”, “A. Kohn”, “Boskovice Synagogue”, “Textiles from Bohemian and Moravian Synagogues” and a number of other printed materials for exhibitions and the Museum’s publicity purposes.

The Photography Department also documents the Museum’s various activities. It has recently covered extensive building works in connection with the renovation of the Museum’s buildings and is now focusing more on exhibitions, important visits and other social events at the Museum.

The Museum operates two photography studios - the one in the main building is equipped with a Scitex digital camera, the other with a high-resolution Betterlight digital camera which is used mainly for photographing large textiles with many details. Flat scanners are used for taking pictures of small, flat items.

The images are then stored on CD-ROMs and placed in the Museum’s photo archive, which secures their care and presentation. Preview resolution photos are gradually being added to the Museum’s database.