Photography

Shortly after the patenting of the ‘permanent image’, as photography was called in its early days, Maria Vinzenz Süß (1802–1868), founder of the Carolino Augusteum Museum in Salzburg, recognised the importance of this medium for documenting works of art and cultural heritage. The collection therefore includes images of archaeological finds and an altarpiece from the early 1850s. Since its inception, the collection has also served to document Salzburg society, as demonstrated by a portrait of Johannes Panzl (1786–1862), a Landesverteidiger (member of the home guard), from 1853. The following decades were then devoted primarily to photographically documenting the city and province of Salzburg. The current collection has evolved from donations and bequests from Salzburg’s bourgeoisie, as well as from targeted acquisitions of individual pieces or entire collections to fill thematic or chronological gaps.

Thousands of portrait photographs constitute a culturally and historically significant part of the collection, with some daguerreotypes from the late 1840s representing the oldest part of the entire collection. However, the majority of the more than 160,000 photographs and glass plate negatives date from the second half of the nineteenth century and extend into the interwar period. The focus here is on the topography of Salzburg city and province, the mountains of Salzburg and Austria as a whole, images of Austrian and European art and architecture, and photographs of countless archaeological finds. Around 20 per cent of the items are picture postcards, mainly from the two decades before and after the turn of the century.

Due to the light sensitivity of historical photographs, they are only rarely displayed in their original form in exhibitions. Salzburg Museum is therefore endeavouring to digitise its collection in order to make it accessible to a wide audience via the internet platform online collection and to make it available for research, exhibitions, publications, and private use.