Museu de Fotografia da Madeira, Photography museum in Sé district, Funchal, Portugal
The Museu de Fotografia da Madeira occupies the former studio of Vicente Gomes da Silva at Rua da Carreira 43, in Funchal's Sé district. Its roughly 200 m² display original cameras from the Vicente family and makers such as Carl Zeiss and Kodak, alongside developing, cropping and album-making equipment. The studio, enlarged in 1886 and 1887, keeps its original layout.
Vicente Gomes da Silva (1827–1906) began as an engraver in 1846 and set up his photographic studio in Funchal's Rua da Carreira in 1865, enlarging it with his son in 1886 and 1887. The studio stayed in the family for four generations; in 1982 it became a museum with the studio's own inventory, reopened in 2001 after the collection was reworked, closed on 5 May 2014 and reopened on 29 July 2019 after restoration.
The museum keeps the working inventory of the Vicente studio: original cameras, some made by Carl Zeiss or Kodak, plus the cutting and album-making equipment used to finish prints. Its 800,000 negatives, dated 1870 to 1978, record Funchal's streets and sitters, among them Empress Elisabeth of Austria, photographed by Vicente Gomes da Silva in 1860.
The museum occupies the former studio at Rua da Carreira 43, in Funchal's Sé district, and is run by the Autonomous Region of Madeira. It closed on 5 May 2014 for restoration and reopened on 29 July 2019. The display area covers about 200 m², so allow time to examine the original cameras and processing equipment.
The museum holds the sole surviving collection from a nineteenth-century photography studio in all of Portugal. This collection is so rare because nearly all other studios from that era vanished without a trace and their equipment did not survive.
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