Simik Photographic Museum, Photography museum in Chacarita, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Simik Photographic Museum in Chacarita is a space dedicated to photographs and photographic equipment from different periods. The collection displays both images and cameras side by side, showing how the tools and the art of photography have developed together.
Alejandro Simik, a former firefighter, began collecting old cameras after accompanying the photographer who documented fires. He founded the museum in 2001 in the bar he owned at Lacroze 3901, and it opened in February 2002. The Buenos Aires Legislature declared it a site of cultural interest in 2005 and again in 2012.
The museum occupies the Bar Palacio, declared a notable bar of Buenos Aires since 2011, where a statue of an old photographer with his camera stands outside the main door inviting visitors in. Inside, over 4,000 photographs rotate by era or theme due to limited space, alongside a stereoscopic viewer made in France in 1893 that holds 220 glass or paper views.
The museum occupies a room inside Bar Palacio at Avenida Federico Lacroze 3901, on the corner of Fraga street in Chacarita. You can walk in without buying anything, and the bar itself serves coffee and simple food and has free internet and public computers. Photography courses are held on the lower floor, and on Friday nights there is sometimes live music such as jazz.
The museum began operating in February 2002 in a room of the Palacio bar, founded by Alejandro Simik, a former firefighter who collected old cameras at fairs and in family cupboards. Outside the main entrance, a statue of an old photographer with his camera invites visitors in.
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