Collection

Value and commitment

The Museum of Photography structures its work around five fundamental strands:

Collecting / Conserving / Studying / Exhibiting / Educating

The collection department is responsible for managing the Museum’s first four strands. Its task is to sustain the heart of the institution: its collection. Its role consists of enriching it through the follow-up of gifts or one-off acquisitions. It has to ensure optimum conservation conditions meeting international museum standards. It needs to deepen its scientific knowledge through research and the publishing of catalogues. Lastly, the department is devoted to enhancing its collection through the permanent or temporary exhibition of its museum pieces.

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“To collect photographs is to collect the world”

Susan Sontag wrote in the first lines of a 1977 collection of essays “On Photography”.

Keeping evidence of our heritage and preserving the work of the creators who stand out as milestones in the history of the medium, with no concern for geographical boundaries, are the guiding principles of the collection of the Museum of Photography. In its early years of existence, the Museum was essentially enriched in the form of gifts of pictures related to the region and photographs of times past produced by photo enthusiasts or professional photographers. The collection is still composed on the basis of gifts, but also its own purchases or even works on loan, and continues to grow. Nowadays, it numbers 100,000 prints and 1,5 million negatives. The major collection of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and the collection of the Province of Hainaut are among the collections of photographs consigned to the Museum. They both complement the Museum’s resources and form essential landmarks in the history of photography. The collection selection criteria concern the interest and the quality of the pictures, their representation value today while bearing in the mind that the Museum’s role is also to retain evidence, for the future, of the different uses of the medium in the society.

Our missions

Storage areas

Reserves

The Museum of Photography has three storage areas and each of them has its specificity. Why three storage areas? The purpose is to provide optimum storage for the different phototypes that make up the collection. Each of the storage areas is air-conditioned and its temperature is monitored.

One is intended for archiving small and medium sizes of positive prints in a flat position. Its relative humidity is 45-50% and its temperature is 16-17°C.
One is for conserving large formats. The hanging system is a grid panel. Its relative humidity is 45-50% and its temperature is 16-17°C.
The last storage area is for conserving negatives. Its relative humidity is 35-40% and its temperature is 4-5°C.

These standards, established by international museum institutions, are essential for the proper conservation of photographs. The fragile medium is particularly sensitive to outside agents such as light or hygrometry. Its manufacturing process, the elements composing it (metal, organic substance, paper, glue, etc.) and its various formats require handling with care and conserving it in appropriate areas meeting stable and controlled climatic standards.

Loans and gifts

You wish to make a gift or photographs and/or photographic cameras to the Museum? Please get in touch by phone (at 071 43 58 10) or by e- mail (mpc.info@museephoto.be) with the collections department so as to communicate a description and, if possible, a visual, of the archives concerned. We will not fail to get back to you subsequently to consider arrangements for organising a meeting and making an assessment of such a gift. The Museum does, however, reserve the right to make a selection from the archives according to documentary, aesthetic and technical criteria.

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Scientific advice

The result of being in direct contact with the collection is that we have developed knowledge, working techniques and specific expertise regarding this medium. The collection department assumes the role of the Museum’s “scientific advisor”. It shares its experience of the collection internally and externally by assisting in research, documentation, identification of photographic processes, conservation of the medium, etc. It constantly complements this knowledge through varied professional contacts and various learning schemes inside or outside the Museum.

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Temporary exhibitions

The exhibition A Perfect World by Ruud van Empel, a Dutch photographer born in 1958, explores a fascinating universe where realism and idealism combine.