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INVENTORY OF THE NEKES COLLECTION OF OPTICAL DEVICES,
PRINTS, AND GAMES, 1700-1996, bulk 1740-1920
93.R.118
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Title: Nekes collection of optical
devices, prints, and games
Dates: 1700-1996
Dates: 1740-1920
Collection number: 93.R.118
Collector:
Nekes,
Werner
Extent:
45 linear feet
(75 boxes, 1 flat file folder)
Repository:
Getty Research Institute
Research Libary
Special Collections and Visual Resources
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688
Abstract: German filmmaker. The collection charts the
nature of visual perception in modern European culture at a time when
pre-cinema objects evolved from instruments of natural magic to devices for
entertainment. Most of the items date from the mid-18th century to the early
20th century.
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Language: Collection material is
in French,
German and
English.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Rights and Reproductions
Nekes collection of optical devices, prints, and games, 1700-1996,
bulk 1740-1920, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Accession no.
93.R.118
This collection, acquired in 1993, is a portion of the larger
collection of optical devices, prints and games assembled by the German
experimental filmmaker Werner Nekes.
The collection was initially rehoused by Hillary Brown. In 1995-1997
it was processed and cataloged by Isotta Poggi. The collection was re-boxed by
Alan Tomlinson in April 1999. The finding aid was edited by Jocelyn Gibbs in
1998-99. A large portion of the collection was included in the exhibition
Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen, 2000 at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Biographical / Historical Note
Already a collector in his early childhood, Werner Nekes turned his
interest to film and cinema history when he reached his twenties. While he was
a student of linguistic philology and psychology in Freiburg and Bonn in the
mid-1960s he worked on his first film. Between 1969 and 1972 he taught at the
Academy of Visual Arts in Hamburg.
While doing research for an article on thaumatropes, he began to
collect devices, prints, and books related to pre-cinema technologies and
entertainment. Ten years later, when he finally found an original set of
thaumatropes in Cologne, he had assembled a broad range of material concerning
anamorphosis, panoramas, camera obscuras, peepshows, metamorphosis,
shadowgraphy, and optical illusions along with a supporting library.
In the early 1980s he taught first as visiting professor at Wuppertal
and later at the Academy of Art and Design in Offenbach. Some years later he
worked as a consultant for the pre-cinema galleries of the Deutsches Film
Museum in Frankfurt and co-founded the North Rhine-Westfalia film office, as
well as the International Center for New Cinema in Riga.
In this period he also designed and installed a room-sized
walk-through camera obscura in a former Wasserturm, which had been turned into
a museum in Mülheim a. d. Ruhr. In 1992, in the same museum, he exhibited his
pre-cinema collection in the exhibition Von der Camera Obscura zum Film. In
1993 he organized the exhibition Schattenprojektionen and directed the
Internationales Schatten-theaterfestival in Oberhausen.
Since 1965 Nekes has directed more than 70 films (see his filmography
in Appendix 1) including a series of documentaries that demonstrate how early
optical devices, prints, and other objects contributed to the development of
popular entertainment as well as to the evolution of cinema technologies. In
these documentaries (available in the Getty Research Library on videotape) he
used the material from his own collection, a portion of which was acquired by
the Getty Research Institute in 1993.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Nekes collection of optical devices, prints, and games charts the
nature of visual perception in modern West European culture and the rise of
popular artifacts which used movement and tricks of visual perception to amuse
and astonish. The items date from circa 1700 to the early 20th century, with
the bulk dating from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century. The
collection contains rare items such as a French camera obscura, circa 1750, as
well as popular images, such as 19th-century magic lantern slides, paper
silhouettes and greeting cards with moving parts. Other items include an
18th-century peepshow, peepshow prints, over 100 megalographs, a camera lucida,
a Lorrain mirror, a zograscope, anamorphosis watercolors accompanied by a cone
viewer, and circa 20 collapsible Engelbrecht perspective theatres.
Arrangement
Arranged in four series:
Prints, circa 1700-1996
Cards and small printed items, circa 1750-1980
Artifacts, 1700- circa 1980
Animation
(Cinematography)--Instruments.
Drawing
instruments
Optical
instruments
Popular
culture--Europe
Advertising
cards--1800-1900
Amusements
Anamorphoses
Camera lucidas
Camera
obscuras
Card
games--1700-1900
Cast shadows
Educational
games
Educational
toys
Engravings--Europe--18th
century
Engravings--Europe--19th
century
Flip books
Games
Lantern slides
Magic lanterns
Miniature
theaters
Montages--1700-1900
Optical
toys--1700-1900
Optical
illusions
Peepshows
Phenakistoscopes
Physionotrace
works
Prints--Europe--18th
century
Prints--Europe--19th
century
Thaumatropes
Stereoscopic
photographs
Stereoscopes--1700-1900
Toys
Vues d'optique
Boilly, Louis,
1761-1845
Campe, Friedrich,
1777-1846
Hogarth, William,
1697-1764
Shénan, J. E.
Spooner,
William
Imagerie Pellerin
(Epinal, France)
L. Saussine
(Firm)
Riley Brothers,
Ltd.
S. W. Fores
(Firm)
Liebig's Extract of Meat
Company
Optical devices collection (Getty Research Institute) Prints collection (Getty Research Institute)