Photo Collection

At present, this collection is not available for research.

However, NSZL’s staff is more than happy to give you information via phone or e-mail.

Photo and Photo Art Collection is the most recently set up collection of National Széchényi Library. It was founded in 2007, with the aim of providing an appropriate storage, processing and service for photos which can be found in various collections of the national library. One the biggest collections of NSZL’s Photo and Photo Art Collection is the one which comprises as many as 40,000 glass plates, photo and film negatives made of the old and precious pieces (codices, old prints and manuscripts) of the Library’s book collection.

Glass negatives immortalizing Transylvanian towns and landscapes can be related to the 1930s, while short films and shots showing primarily historical monuments originate from the 1980s.

Especially valuable is the photo collection, currently under processing, which is related to World War I, as well as the 38,000 negatives, part of the legacy of the renowned photographer Károly Escher.

Contemporary Photo Art Collection and Documentation Center was founded jointly by National Széchényi Library and the Association of Hungarian Photographers in December 2000. Its task is to collect art work made by contemporary Hungarian photographers, together with documentation related to the activity of these photographers.

Slide Film, Photo and Drawing Collection, which got into the possession of National Széchényi Library when the one-time Slide Film Production Company ceased to exist, might be extremely interesting today when we are living an era of the renaissance of slide film stories for kids. This collection contains the original photo and drawing materials of slide film stories for kids made in the past 50 years, either with the aim of tale telling or for educational purposes. Slide films belong to the category of legal deposit in Hungary, so NSZL has been collecting and preserving them from the very beginning.

A significant amount of the already processed material is available in the Hungarian Digital Image Library.