Museum displays history of cameras and photography

The Photography Technologies Museum in the northwestern province of Kocaeli, where bellows, spy and high-market value cameras are being exhibited, sheds light on the history of photography.

The SEKA Paper Factory, one of the first industrial establishments of the Republic of Türkiye, whose foundations were laid in 1934, was turned into a museum in 2016 after a restoration process. The Photography Technologies Museum was established on Aug. 19, 2022, on World Photography Day in the restored building where the machines and equipment used in the paper production process were exhibited.

From the collection of photographer and writer İlker Kumral, who lived in Izmit and died on Aug. 6, 2021, 310 cameras were purchased by the Metropolitan Municipality in 2010. These valuable pieces, which Kumral had collected for years, were put on display in the Photographic Technologies Museum.

In the museum, where 163-year-old cameras, bellows, films and auxiliary equipment are exhibited, there is also a "camera obscura" area, which paved the way for the invention of photography and the camera. In this image production mechanism, known as a dark room or box, citizens are shown how an image is created from the light entering through a pinhead-wide hole.

Equipped with informative articles explaining the history of photography and cameras, the spy cameras get the greatest interest from visitors. The most striking and popular item in this section is the camera identical to the "Minox B" used by James Bond in the 1969 movie, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

SEKA Paper Museum Collection Director and archaeologist Salim Saraç said that the Photography Technologies Museum was established in the printing department of the SEKA Paper Museum.

Saraç...