The Helmut Gernsheim Duplicate Collection

The Helmut Gernsheim Duplicate Collection consists of more than 600 vintage prints from the second half of the 19th century, including works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Hill & Adamson, Roger Fenton, Maxime Du Camp, Francis Frith, Herbert Rose, Peter Henry Emerson and Carleton E. Watkins. It also contains 19th and 20th century literature on photographic history, of which some 40 volumes are rare books illustrated with glued-in original photographs. Helmut Gernsheim (1913-1995) was a pioneering photographic historian, researcher and collector. He first came in contact with representatives of Swedish photography in the early 1950s, and parts of his vast collection were shown in the exhibition Fotografiet under 100 år in Gothenburg in 1956, and in Stockholm in 1957. Bo Lagercrantz at the Nordiska Museet, one of the founders of the Friends of the Fotografiska Museet, contacted Gernsheim when he was looking for a permanent place for his collection, but it was not possible at the time to find a suitable arrangement in Sweden. Gernsheim later sold his collection to the University of Texas in Austin. Instead, Gernsheim offered his duplicate collection to the Swedish government, which bought it in 1964.