Industry Visit to Museo Camera Centre For Photographic Arts
March 25th, 2021, Gurgaon: School of Journalism and Mass Communication organized a museum tour at the Museo Camera Centre for the Photographic Arts. The visit started off with Mr. Aditya Arya, the director, introducing himself and briefing about evolution of photography. He explained what photography actually means and how it took off in the old times. Mr. Aditya also told the students about a device called camera obscura (which is Latin for the dark room) which is an instrument that people used for processing pictures and it was around for a few centuries before photography came along.
Museo Camera has grown out of the personal collections of Mr. Aditya. Arya has added 1500 cameras to this collection over the period of 40 years. Scouring the flea markets and curiosity shops around the world, he picked up some rare and historical specimens, making up what was to become the India’s largest collection of vintage photographic equipment today.
The museum is designed in modern architecture with well-preserved gems from the history of cameras owning and displaying some rarest of the rare photographs, cameras, lenses, aperture rings, lanterns, dark room, camera obscura, etc. The museum was filled with lots of facts and information related to different types of vintage-modern era cameras such as Kodak, Graflex, Agfa, Sanderson, Yashica, etc. It had pictures as well as original masterpieces of the cameras from the 1800s and more. The museum guide took the students to the daylight studio and explained how they used to capture photographs only in the daytime because of the lack of flash feature.
The Fairchild K20 was an aerial photography camera used during World War Two. Many bomber planes carried these cameras, as it enabled pilots to take low altitude images, such as of potential enemy missile launch sites or targets. Mr. Arya took the students to the print images room and gave a brief historical background about it and let the student have a closer look at them. There were various prints and photographs from the old times framed, including inspiring people like Mahatma Gandhi.
Before leaving the museum, Mr. Aditya had three questions based on some facts of photography and the correct answers got three beautiful mugs. It was a beautiful and great learning experience for all the journalism students who are just getting started with photography. The ambience of the museum was extremely welcoming and warm, and we are looking forward to going to such more aesthetic places.