| European Photographic Institutions |
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Centre national de la photographie
http://www.cnp-photographie.com/
The most prestigious gallery of contemporary photography in France offers only a basic site about its activities. It describes where the gallery is, when it is open, its programme of talks and exhibitions and how its staff can be contacted. Beyond this there is little else, current and recent exhibitions are represented by one image each. The site is only available in French. |
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Finnish Museum of Photography
http://fmp.fi/fmp_fi/muvieras/english/general.htm
The English version of this site contains a description of the role of the gallery and an assertion of the importance of Finnish photography. The Finnish version of the site is larger and contains more information for readers of Finnish. The site does not contain many images considering the museum itself houses a large historical collection as well as showing contemporary work. |
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Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain
http://www.fondation.cartier.fr/
Photography has recently played a prominent part in the exhibition programme of the Cartier Foundation. Along with details of how to visit the gallery and a timetable of its activities there is also an online gallery with projects made specifically for the website. These can be, like the site itself, difficult to navigate but do give a view of the diversity of work the Foundation exhibits. Both English and French versions of the site are avaialble. |
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Fotomuseum Winterthur
http://www.fotomuseum.ch/
This excellent, clear and useful site shows a Swiss photographic museum and gallery. The interior spaces of the gallery are shown with different exhibitions installed. The collection of the museum can be sampled through an online gallery and contains many major contemporary figures. All other information about the gallery's events and location are presented clearly. A good English and German version of the site are available. |
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Hungarian Museum of Photography
http://www.fotomuzeum.hu/
In both Hungarian and English there are examples of the diverse kinds of photography in the collection under a long and peculiar list of different classifications such as 'plant' and 'fire guard'. The Museum also stages exhibitions and summaries of previous exhibitions and publications are available back to 1996. |
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Maison Européene de la photographie, Paris
http://www.mep-fr.org/
The Maison Européene de la photographie in Paris is dedicated to collecting a diversity of international photography from the 1950's onwards: particularly complete series of works by the 'greatest' photographers. Its well designed website shows a number of examples from its permanent collection and impressive temporary shows. The Raméo Martinez Library is an important photographic research resource with 12,000 titles (700 of them Japanese), magazines and 700 videos (including videos made by photographer/film-makers and interviews). |
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Nederlands Foto Instituut
http://www.nfi.v2.nl/ned/main.html
The web user is offered the chance to sign up to an e-mailing list to keep up to date with the institute's activities. The site gives a basic description of the exhibition programmes with a few images and previous exhibitions archived back to 1997. This gives a useful overview of the artists shown in recent years. There is also a good links section with many Dutch photographers represented. |
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Niepce Museum
http://www.museeniepce.com/indexplorer.html
Not only a museum of historical photography the site also represents the Niepce Museum's contemporary exhibitions. A sample of its collection of 'more than 2 million images' can be seen in a time line of photographic movements. Although this is only a fraction of the collection it is a useful selection. There is information for visitors to the museum. The site is available in both English and French. |
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Patrimoine Photographique
http://www.patrimoine-photo.org/index.html
Holding photographic collections donated to the state, in particular those of 16 individual photographers including André Kertész, this is a fussy site. Apart from the information given about the organisation the only other benefit of the site is a good selection of the work of the artists in the collection. To use this site one really has to find the search mechanism, which is not easy. The site is available in both English and French. |
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The Provincial Museum of Photography, Antwerp
http://www.provant.be/fotomuseum/
Little more than a long page of text explaining how the museum was founded and that it has a library and education unit. It is impossible to judge the exhibition programme because, aside from telling you how many floors are occupied by the various galleries, no other information is available. |
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