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Nekes Collection of Optical Devices, Prints, and Games
93.R.118
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Title: Nekes Collection of Optical Devices, Prints, and Games
Date (inclusive): 1700-1996 (bulk 1740-1920)
Number: 93.R.118
Creator/Collector:
Nekes, Werner,
1944-
Physical Description:
45 Linear Feet
(75 boxes, 1 flat file folder)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: German filmmaker. The collection charts
the nature of visual perception in modern European culture at a time when pre-cinema objects
evolved from instruments of natural magic to devices for entertainment. Most of the items
date from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century.
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Language: Collection material is in French,
German and English.
Biographical / Historical Note
Already a collector in his early childhood, Werner Nekes turned his interest to film and
cinema history when he reached his twenties. While he was a student of linguistic philology
and psychology in Freiburg and Bonn in the mid-1960s he worked on his first film. Between
1969 and 1972 he taught at the Academy of Visual Arts in Hamburg.
While doing research for an article on thaumatropes, he began to collect devices, prints,
and books related to pre-cinema technologies and entertainment. Ten years later, when he
finally found an original set of thaumatropes in Cologne, he had assembled a broad range of
material concerning anamorphosis, panoramas, camera obscuras, peepshows, metamorphosis,
shadowgraphy, and optical illusions along with a supporting library.
In the early 1980s he taught first as visiting professor at Wuppertal and later at the
Academy of Art and Design in Offenbach. Some years later he worked as a consultant for the
pre-cinema galleries of the Deutsches Film Museum in Frankfurt and co-founded the North
Rhine-Westfalia film office, as well as the International Center for New Cinema in Riga.
In this period he also designed and installed a room-sized walk-through camera obscura in a
former Wasserturm, which had been turned into a museum in Mülheim a. d. Ruhr. In 1992, in
the same museum, he exhibited his pre-cinema collection in the exhibition Von der Camera
Obscura zum Film. In 1993 he organized the exhibition Schattenprojektionen and directed the
Internationales Schatten-theaterfestival in Oberhausen.
Since 1965 Nekes has directed more than 70 films (see his filmography in Appendix 1)
including a series of documentaries that demonstrate how early optical devices, prints, and
other objects contributed to the development of popular entertainment as well as to the
evolution of cinema technologies. In these documentaries (available in the Getty Research
Library on videotape) he used the material from his own collection, a portion of which was
acquired by the Getty Research Institute in 1993.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Rights and Reproductions .
Nekes collection of optical devices, prints, and games, 1700-1996, bulk 1740-1920, Research
Library, The Getty Research Institute, Accession no. 93.R.118
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa93r118
This collection, acquired in 1993, is a portion of the larger collection of optical
devices, prints and games assembled by the German experimental filmmaker Werner Nekes.
The collection was initially rehoused by Hillary Brown. In 1995-1997 it was processed and
cataloged by Isotta Poggi. The collection was re-boxed by Alan Tomlinson in April 1999. The
finding aid was edited by Jocelyn Gibbs in 1998-99. A large portion of the collection was
included in the exhibition Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen,
2000 at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Biedermeier cards in Series II.A. were digitized in August 2017. Click here to view
digitized material:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/93r118b10
Scope and Content of Collection
The Nekes collection of optical devices, prints, and games charts the nature of visual
perception in modern West European culture and the rise of popular artifacts which used
movement and tricks of visual perception to amuse and astonish. The items date from circa
1700 to the early 20th century, with the bulk dating from the mid-18th century to the early
20th century. The collection contains rare items such as a French camera obscura, circa
1750, as well as popular images, such as 19th-century magic lantern slides, paper
silhouettes and greeting cards with moving parts. Other items include an 18th-century
peepshow, peepshow prints, over 100 megalographs, a camera lucida, a Lorrain mirror, a
zograscope, anamorphosis watercolors accompanied by a cone viewer, and circa 20 collapsible
Engelbrecht perspective theatres.
Arranged in three series:
Series I. Prints, circa 1700-1996;
Series II. Cards and small printed items, circa 1750-1980;
Series III.
Artifacts, 1700- circa 1980
Animation (Cinematography) -- Instruments.
Drawing instruments
Optical instruments
Popular culture -- Europe
Optical devices collection (Getty Research Institute) Prints collection (Getty Research Institute)
Engravings -- Europe -- 19th century
Engravings -- Europe -- 18th century
Magic lanterns
Lantern slides
Games
Flip books
Optical illusions
Optical toys -- 1700-1900
Montages -- 1700-1900
Miniature theaters
Phenakistoscopes
Peepshows
Advertising cards -- 1800-1900
Amusements
Camera obscuras
Card games -- 1700-1900
Anamorphoses
Camera lucidas
Educational toys
Physionotrace works
Cast shadows
Educational games
Thaumatropes
Stereoscopic photographs
Prints -- Europe -- 18th century
Prints -- Europe -- 19th century
Vues d'optique
Toys
Stereoscopes -- 1700-1900
Spooner, William, active
1831-1854
Riley Brothers, Ltd.
Nekes, Werner,
1944-
Shénan, J. E.
S. W. Fores (Firm)
Imagerie Pellerin
(Épinal, France)
Hogarth, William,
1697-1764
Liebig's Extract of Meat
Company
L. Saussine (Firm)
Campe, Friedrich,
1777-1846
Boilly, Louis,
1761-1845