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Content:

Origins

 

Since 2015, OstLicht Collection resides at Depot for Photography on the premises of Vienna Brotfabrik, where also the sales stock of adjacent OstLicht Gallery is stored. The origins of the Collection are closely interlinked with the foundation of WestLicht in 2001. The formation of the Museum set a vital impulse for Peter Coeln to enhance his collecting activities, which from this point on was in constant interplay with the exhibition program at WestLicht and international cooperations, as well as occasionally with other agencies of the company like the auction house and the international vintage camera trade.

His passionate commitment to a variety of subjects in the medium’s history and in fine art photography made it possible to assemble a photographic collection of museum scope over a relatively short period. In the course of an operational reorganisation the holdings were passed over to OstLicht company, run by Peter Coeln, and renamed OstLicht Collection in 2014.

Inventory

 

The inventory consists of more than 120,000 photographs including all processes from metal-based photographs and glass positives to various types of paper prints. In total numbers gelatin silver prints and positives in general form the main part of the holdings, whereas negatives (as film materials) are only held in specific cases.

 

The collection covers the whole history of the medium up to the present day, with the earliest examples dating from the 1840s. The largest part dates from 1900 to the 1970s, the most prolific era of the so-called analogous photography, which is based on exposure by optical cameras and chemical image development.

Focus

 

Key areas of the collection include daguerreotypes, early international travel and press photography, war photography, international film photography, post-war photojournalism, space photography, Cuban photography, and the Polaroid Collection.
 

Austrian photography is represented in particular concentration on the subjects of early city and landscape views, studio portraits from the interwar period (as Trude Fleischmann, Dora Kallmus, or Studio Manassé), Vienna Actionism, and Thomas Bernhard (portraits and stage photography). Furthermore, the Collection holds larger bodies of work and estates of Austrian photographers as Walter Henisch, Inge Morath, Roland Pleterski, Franz Hubmann, Photo Simonis, Cora Pongracz, Friederike Pezold, Padhi Frieberger, or Ludwig Hoffenreich.

OstLicht.

Depot for Photography

BROTFABRIK, Staircase #7
Puchsbaumgasse 1C

1100 Vienna, Austria

 

Collection Administration Office

Mag. Marie Röbl

+43 1 996 20 66 15

roebl@ostlicht.org

PROFILE

SERVICES
HIGHLIGHTS

 

 

 Origins

 Inventory
 Focus

 Impulses

 Mission
 Contexts
 Conservation and Mediation

Impulses

 

The OstLicht Collection as it stands today did not emerge out of a predetermined concept. Nonetheless, the motivations and interests that have driven the collecting activity have become increasingly apparent in the profile of the collection’s holdings, as it has evolved over the past three decades. Indeed, a key impetus came from the 1990s when, against the backdrop of advancing digitisation, photography as an analogue process began to wane as the common practice – prompting Peter Coeln, then an advertising photographer, to give up his photo studio. Leading media theorists spoke of the »end of the era of photography«. At the same time, the exploration of the medium that had such an unprecedented influence on our visual culture did gain a huge amount of traction. It is clear today that, even as a digital process, photography not only remains relevant, but its potential uses have even expanded with the changes in technology, as it merged with new functions in the era of social media.

 

Both, the prerequisite for and the symptom of that lasting impact is the sheer diversity of the production and dissemination contexts of photography that appeared soon after the first practical processes and cameras were introduced. It has served as a technical documentation process, as a medium of both art and science; it has also shaped our everyday lives, as an individual occupation and as a commercial service – and since the early 20th century, also as a collective experience of reception via the print media. In the course of its history (which therefore includes contradictory stories), photography became a relay for interplays and transgressions between different social and discursive fields, the boundaries and self-conception of which began to shift with the emergence of the first technical image process.

Mission

 

Unlike many institutional photo archives with a dedicated collection mandate – e.g. as photo departments of art museums – and unlike private collections, which tend to focus on a much narrower remit, the OstLicht Collection is deliberately dedicated to the entire spectrum of diversity as a paradigmatic characteristic of the photographic medium. Not only does the collecting activity focus on artistic masterpieces, it also encompasses historical topics and motifs of relevance to pop culture, such as much-reproduced portraits of »iconic« personalities. Hence, the contexts within which photographs are received and the transgressive processes particular to the history of photography are also in the focus of OstLicht’s attention.

 

The awareness of the technical and apparatus-based prerequisites for photographic images, which goes back to yet another of Peter Coeln’s passions for collecting, also has a significant influence. This background is by no means as self-evident as it might seem, given that the study of historical photographs as cultural records and the knowledge of the relevant production technology are often the preserve of specific (and separated) circles of experts. It is rare enough for in-depth specialist knowledge of imaging processes and historical cameras to flow into the still flourishing exploration of the history and aesthetic of photography; conversely, classic specialism in vintage cameras hardly ever devotes itself to a closer look at issues that relate to the aesthetics of images, to art history or cultural studies.

Contexts

 

The outlined perspective on photography for instance is illustrated by OstLicht’s extensive holdings of 35-mm-format photography, which became a main vector of image culture. Technological innovations, as hand-held cameras and 135 film rolls, enabled image compositions capable of evoking authenticity in a new way. In the Cold War era e.g., photo reportages were put to the service of a propaganda whose credibility was founded on the (supposed) evidential character of photographic documents. Thereafter, it was these very concepts and effects of journalistic photography that artists were able to put to their own uses: Another focal point of the collection is given over to the photographic works of the Vienna Actionists, who commissioned press photographers to record their performative events. For art historians and, indeed, the art market, these photographs constitute Actionist’ works while the authors of the photographic images often remain uncredited.

 

Another category shift is that individual protagonists and movements of press photography, foremost among them Henri Cartier-Bresson, represent art photography par excellence after decades of its reception history. Such links are also apparent in the main topic area of Polaroid photography. The instant photography process with its specific aesthetic and pragmatic implications came into widespread use far beyond the field of artistic or professional photography; in fact, it became a forerunner of digital smartphone photography.

Conservation and Mediation

 

The Collection’s acquisition policy revolves around acquiring large groups of works, archives or »orphaned« collections, providing an insight into the broader contexts of trend and significance due to density of material. It includes incorporating estates, mainly of Austrian provenance, and a remit to preserve and convey their significance as a cultural legacy along with their complex contexts.

 

From the very outset, the collection activity has sought not only to preserve the objects from a conservation point of view, but also to open up the inventories to a wider audience. This is primarily carried out through exhibitions and publications. To provide deeper insight online, nine key areas are represented by means of four examples each, and discussed in accompanying texts.


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OstLicht.
Gallery for Photography

BROTFABRIK, Staircase #3
Absberggasse 27,
1100 Vienna, Austria


info@ostlicht.org
+43 1 996 20 66

 

GALLERY OPENING HOURS

WED-SAT, noon-6 pm and by appointment

 

OstLicht.
Collection for Photography

BROTFABRIK, Staircase #7
Puchsbaumgasse 1C
1100 Vienna, Austria





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