Estók János szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 2005-2007 (Budapest, 2007)

GYŰJTEMÉNYEK - Vörös Éva: Az Archív Fotók Gyűjteménye

The oldest pieces of the collection date from the period between the foundation year of the museum 1896 and WW1. Several photos taken by artists such as György Klösz, Mór Erdélyi, Ede Ellinger and Ervin Kankowszky being significant from the viewpoint of the 19th and 20th century Hungarian photo-history can be found in the collection. The collection of archive photos belongs to the database of the Collection Department at the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture. The following important topics appear in the photographs thematically: • domanial photo groups dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g. state and private estates), • photo albums of institutes of experimental affairs in Hungary (e.g. photos on species experiments, critics, registering in the 1940s), • photos of national agricultural exhibitions and markets from the late 19th century to the 1970s, • albums on various animal species (e.g. prize-winning stock animals - cattle, sheep, horse, horse-racing from 1896 to the 1970s), • photos in connection with agricultural special education, co-operations (e.g. stock animals, plant cultivating experiments), • photos of hunting (hunting of the gentry) and fishing (fish-breeding, fishing in large lakes), • photos in the topic of plant cultivation, growing of corn, hoeing and tobacco growing, agricultural machines and work with them (steam engine, harvest by hand, threshing, etc.) from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1970's, • in the topic of gardening: work with fruit and kitchen garden, and the richly illustrated topic of vini- and viticulture, • photos on the agricultural population and their work (agricultural servants, seasoned workers, peasants) mostly from the time before WW1 and from the 1940s, • photos from the MTI (Hungarian News Agency Group) propagating the collectivisation in the 1950's and the work of big farms, photo material including agrarian-historical topics, and representing almost every area of agronomics between 1955 and 1962, • landscapes, photos on villages and towns, photos on building insides and outsides in connection with the agrarian life and the agricultural processing industry, • several decorated photo albums on the museum building and its exhibitions from 1896. The study presents the process of transforming the archive photos into an independent collection and the changes of the museum register order in details. It describes the database collections shortly (special education history-collection, tool history-collection, agrarian historical monument-collection, collection of the great ones from our agrarian past, museum-historical and documentation collections) which contain further thematic photo groups. The possibility of research in the archive photo collection is supported by a detailed subject heading system and a catalogue system based on a geographical register system.