This book offers the first overview of the unique photography and new
media collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG). From
the beginnings of photography to contemporary pieces, the collection
includes more than 75,000 works. The MKG, an arts and crafts museum,
began collecting photography toward the end of the 19th century and
played a pioneering role as the first German museum to open its doors to
the medium.
ReVision explores this extensive, multifaceted collection through
genres such as portrait, architecture and reportage photography. Issues
such as the 19th-century roles of photography as an aid to science and
an archival medium are considered, alongside the changing materiality of
photographs and various emphases in the collection such as international
pictorial photography and Japanese photography. Texts by renowned
international photo and cultural historians round off the volume.