Collection

Left: Käthe Buchler, "Sinteza," 1914. Center: Käthe Buchler, "Children queuing to hand in gas cylinders," c. 1915. © Estate of Käthe Buchler – Museum of Photography Braunschweig, deposited at the Braunschweig City Archives. Right: Nikolaus Geyer: from the series "Neither Friend nor Foe – Stories from Beirut," 1997/98.

The photographic estates of the Braunschweig photographers Käthe Buchler (1876-1930), Hans Steffens (1915-1994), and Nikolaus Geyer (1968-2005) form the core of the collection and represent outstanding archives of photography within the context of Braunschweig's photographic history. Despite their regional focus, the collections of Buchler and Steffens possess unique historical and aesthetic value. Steffens's photographs, taken continuously for over 20 years after World War II as a press photographer for the Braunschweiger Zeitung, are particularly noteworthy for their documentary content. He categorized his photographs into sections such as "Historical Cityscapes of Buildings," "Monuments," "Museums," "Art," "Aerial Photographs," "Sports/Leisure," "Working World," "Urban Life," "People," and "Fashion." In contrast, Buchler's work is distinguished by its diversity of subjects and photographic techniques, as evidenced by her surviving Autochrome plates, her silver gelatin dry plates, and her numerous glass plate slides for slide presentations. The estate of Nikolaus Geyer was donated to the Museum of Photography Braunschweig in 2014 and, following an initial inventory and processing of the estate, was presented for the first time in 2016 in the exhibition "Neither Friend nor Foe."

Photographs from the early days of photography, created using processes such as daguerreotype, salt paper, albumen paper, or Woodbury type, and produced by some of the most important photographers of the 19th century, like Hill & Adamson, Felix Nadar, and Julia Margaret Cameron, can be considered photographic treasures. Their authentic preservation documents the beginnings of photography and its development throughout the 19th century.

The collection is housed in the Braunschweig city archive and is presented in the gatehouses on a rotating basis with other exhibitions.