Address: Largo Alinari, 15 - Florence - Ph. +39 055.23951 / Fax +39 055.2382857
Web site: http://www.alinari.it - E-mail: info-more@alinari.it
The Fratelli Alinari Museum of History of Photography was
inaugurated in 1985. The first in Italy and one of the fourteen
in all the world, it is today the only national institution
devoted exclusively to photographic exhibitions.
The Alinari Museum carries out an important preservative
function; in fact it takes care of about 350,000 positives, old
proofs, vintage prints, printed on albumin, bromide, salt paper,
calotypes, daguerrotypes, ambertypes and stereoscopies. Here are
exhibited the "collections" of Malandrini, Palazzoli,
Zannier, Gabba and the signatures are present of the greatest
photographers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as
Alinari, Anderson, Caneva, Nunes Vals, Primoli, Beato, Ponti,
Naya, Wulz, Mollino, Peretti Griva, Baravalle, Balocchi, among
the Italians, and Mac Pherson, Sommer, Bernoud, Graham, Rive,
Flacheron, Von Gloeden, Robertson, Fenton, Bourne, Brandt among
the foreigners.
Moreover the Museum claims important collections of cameras,
lenses, old photographic objects, among which an important
collection of photographic albums, frames, publicity gadgets both
Italian and foreign. To the preservative function is connected
the expositive one: since 1985, in fact, the Alinari Museum has
initiated a programme of exhibitions, drawing inspiration from
three main themes: history of photography, semeiology, monographs
on contemporary authors.
In collaboration with the Alinari Archives the Museum has
presented most of these exhibitions from other palaces, thanks to
the close contact with analogue national and international
institutions, such as the Fortuny Palace of Venice, the Museum of
Orsay, the French Society of Photography and the National Library
of Paris, the Royal Archives of Windsor, the Corcoran Gallery of
Art and the Smithsonian institutions of Washington, the Public
Library of New York, the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon.
