The Aristocracy Through the Lens

This exhibition, featuring items from the collection of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, will acquaint visitors with photographic portraiture work showing members of the nobility in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including the ruling dynasty of the Habsburgs. It will present standard studio production (visiting cards and card mounted photographs) and more representative photos in larger formats tracing the changes in style and technique of portrait photography in the period from the 2nd half of the 19th century to the 1st third of the 20th century.

Portrait photographs of Archduke Ludwig Viktor (youngest brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I) will illustrate the thematic alternatives of portraiture at the turn of the 1860s and 1870s - a time when the photographic portrait experienced its greatest boom thanks to the widespread use of visiting cards. Alongside prestigious portraits displaying a member of one of the most important ruling dynasties in Europe, the visitor will be able to see the possibilities of playing with one's own identity in portraiture at that time: dressing up into various costumes, staging live pictures or scenes, using entertaining motifs such as doppelgangers, changing in women's clothes, etc. 

The period of "visiting card mania" also brought in the new form of the gallery of one's ancestors. This social/historical aspect of portrait photography will be attested to by photographs from the property of the Merveldt family. The extensive web of family relationships of Octavie Merveldt in the period from the 1860s to the 1880s was captured in many albums with photographs of relatives, including all of the then living members of the Vinoře line of the Czerníns, the Kostelec line of the Kinskýs and their related Choteks.

New formal impulses in portrait photography appeared at the beginning of the 20th century spurred by the art photography movement. Studio portraits began to use larger formats than the visiting cards and card mounted photographs that had been common until then. Greater emphasis was placed on capturing the personal characteristics of the portrayed person and conveying mood. At the exhibition this aspect will be demonstrated using family photographs of the Medingers, a newly arrived noble family, settling in northern Bohemia at the beginning of the 20th century. Their portraits capture three generations between the 1870s and 1920s. Apart from traditional card mounted photographs the exhibits will also include photographs by renowned photo studios reflecting the new trends, such as F. Grainer (Munich), Hugo Erfurth (Dresden) and d'Ora (Vienna).