Josef Kunzfeld

Photography in 19th century Brno is one of the lesser known chapters in the local history of the medium although it embraces a number of remarkable photographers and their works. By picking one name that relates almost exclusively to this region the exhibition sets out to entice both the expert and the wider public.

The professional photographer Josef Kunzfeld (1842-1915) was undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy figures in Brno photography in the second half of the 19th century. Over the five decades during which he continually plied his trade of photographer, his studio produced both traditional portrait photographs and less usual photographic commissions for public institutions. A collaboration with the Moravian Industrial Museum resulted in photographs of collection items and exhibits, the Franz Josef Museum acquired photographs of architecture for its collections and for the Brno Council Kunzfeld documented, over more than two decades, changes in the city's urban planning and architecture. It is photographs from the latter that form the core of the exhibition.

Photographs from Studio Kunzfeld, in particular snapshots from the streets of Brno, surviving in hundreds in local institutions, serve many a historian as an extraordinary source of information on the appearance of the city at the turn of the 19th and 20th century and without them almost any publication on the modern history of the city would be incomplete. However, the name of Josef Kunzfeld and the circumstances of
the making of the photographs are usually ignored. The exhibition aims to remind us of the name of the photographer, highlight the complex nature and scope of his work and, last but not least, hint at the potential of the local photographic collections.