Museu de Fotografia da Madeira, Photography museum in Sé district, Funchal, Portugal
The Museu de Fotografia da Madeira sits in a nineteenth-century building housing original photographic equipment, furniture, and an archive holding roughly 1.5 million photographs. The house preserves the complete setup from an earlier photography studio, with rooms showing how photographers worked and lived.
Vicente Gomes da Silva founded the photography studio in 1865 and operated it across several generations until 1970. The family documented daily life in Madeira through their lens, creating one of the region's most extensive photographic records.
The museum displays different photographic techniques that were once used in the studio, including stereoscopy and magic lantern slides. Visitors can see how photographers worked back then and what equipment they relied on for their daily practice.
The rooms are spread across multiple floors and follow a natural flow from the workshop to private living spaces. It helps to start at the lower level and work your way up to follow how the studio evolved over time.
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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