From the Duchess of Kent to the Demény fraction
Photo historian Ilona Stemlerné Balog on the formation of the National Museum’s Historical Photographic Collection
MúzeumCafé 43.
In Hungary collecting and analysing historical photographs have borne a burden of the past since they used to be considered part of the domain of the Labour Movement Museum. Since her university days, Ilona Stemlerné Balog has worked with one collection, which she headed for 20 years. It has had a variety of names and parent institutes and today is known as the Historical Photographic Collection of the Hungarian National Museum. She was one of Hungary’s photo-museology pioneers. With her colleagues she endeavoured to acquire as many valuable photographs as possible from the art trade of the late Kádár era. At university she began by studying Hungarian literature and history, but after her second year she changed to modern museology, commencing in the 1963-64 academic year. Professor Emma Léderer was in charge. She did her practice at the Museum of Contemporary History, established in 1957, first in the poster collection then after university in the photo archive. The collection was transferred to the Hungarian National Museum and merged with the photographs held there, thus forming today’s Historical Photographic Collection, which she headed for two decades. She was also the picture editor of the journal História, launched in 1980. She has put together numerous volumes and albums from the collection’s huge material, such as History in Light, a photographic chronicle of Hungary, 1845-2000, published in 2001, and History and Photography, about photos and photography of Hungarian and international history, published in 2009. Ilona Stemlerné Balog is a member of the Association of Hungarian Photographers and a founding member of the Hungarian Society for the History of Photography.