Museum Ludwig keeps a high-calibre collection of photographs, albums, portfolios and archive documents from photography’s beginnings to the 19th century through to the present day. The collection comprises some 70,000 works in total.
Just one year after the establishment of Museum Ludwig in 1976, a foundation stone of today’s collection was laid with the purchase of photography from the collection of L. Fritz and Renate Gruber. Larger bundles were added in the wake of this: the Agfa, Robert Lebeck collections or that of Daniela Mrazkova, as well as Russian photographs from the 1920s and 1930s as a loan by the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation.
The outstanding feature of the photography collection at Museum Ludwig is quality and diversity. For example, Daguerreotypes set in jewellery can be found alongside pilot photographs from World War I, and works that long ago went down in photography history are by the likes of Man Ray or Julia Margaret Cameron. Parts of the collection can be viewed online at www.kulturelles-erbe-koeln.de.
Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz
50667 Cologne
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Archives & Collections
Photography has a rich and varied history in the Cologne area. This is evidenced by the numerous photo collections in art museums and photographic archives, ranging from classical picture archives to private and corporate archives. In the Artist Meets Archive programme, the hidden treasures within these institutions are revived.
The collaboration between the archives and participating artists results in exhibition projects that are presented as part of the Photoszene Festival. Here, the archive becomes the site of an artistic debate and focuses on local photographic history as well as casting a global perspective on the medium of photography.