Photography Museum Maribor
Background
The biggest part of the museum is represented by the Avgust and Maria Bohanec Photography Collection. Avgust Bohanec (b. 1933) was a Slovene locksmith who in the late 1950s moved to the USA. There he became a deal in photography equipment, a repair service provider and a representative of the Leica cameras manufacturer. Together with his wife maria he also became a renowned collector of photography equipment.
In the late 1980s, the pair decided to donate their collection to Maribor in order for the collection to be presented in a public museum. The donated collection featured 1645 items, including more than 1100 cameras, film cameras and projectors.
Collections and exhibitions
The core of the permanent collection are select artefacts from the donated collection. They are augmented by certain missing pieces, this comprehensively presenting the evolution of analogue photographic technology up the end of the start of the 21st century, when digital photography became the norm.
The museum also has a gallery where it sets up about five exhibitions per year. These are usually more focused on photographic content, be it art, historic or documentary photography. Among the authors whose work was displayed here are Zora Plešnar, Smiljan Pušenjak, Gero Angleitner, Viljem Klemenčič and [Peter Naglič].