Historical Consulting
⭆ Commissions |
As a trained art historian, I have always been interested in collections and archives and have often worked in this field myself. On the one hand in the role of curator and head of collections and on the other hand as a researcher and consultant. Here are some examples of my activities in this field. For Movies
A great deal of historical expertise is needed to bring past times back to life in feature films. The questions that arise with productions of this nature are very diverse: What kind of street lighting existed in Paris in 1920? What did dentures look like at that time? How would one have greeted a lieutenant? Questions that usually cannot be answered with a simple Google search, but require in-depth historical inquiry. In my experience it always is very advantageous to have a historical consultant like me on board as a professional contact person who is able to quickly provide answers for the director, the DP and the costume and set designers and can point out errors at an early stage. So far, I have performed this task for two major productions:2020 Hinterland by Oscar winning director Stefan Ruzowitzky
The challenge of this project was to recreate Vienna 1922. This period was completely different to the roaring twenties and characterised by enormous political and economic upheavals as a consequence of the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy. In comparison with the late 1920s hardly any amateur film footage or photographs have survived from this period, so I had to conduct intense archival searches in order to find relevant footage and reliable sources for the numerous historical details.
2013 The Dark Valley directed by Andreas Prochaska
Sam Riley plays an itinerant photographer who arrives in a remote Austrian alpine village in the mid-19th century. My task was to assemble and partially rebuild the period equipment and to instruct the actor in the use of the historical techniques. I also helped to make daguerreotypes of the villagers – props, which in the end were not used in the film. A very beautiful scene in which Sam demonstrates the photographic development process in the village inn was also prepared, but unfortunately later cut.
For Museums and Institutions
Exhibiting, safekeeping and cataloguing historical collections requires a great deal of patience and experience. Often museums and institutions themselves do not know exactly what is in their collections and need an estimate of its value or a historical expertise. In other cases, a representative selection of objects is to be chosen for an exhibition.
2021 University of Vienna: packing and maintaining the historical collection of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
2014 Salzburg Provincial Museum: cataloguing and evaluating of the camera collection
2012 Camera Museum Bad Ischl: co-curating the permanent exhibition
2012 Upper Austrian Provincial Museum: cataloguing of the museum’s camera collection
2004 Austrian Film Museum: cataloguing and evaluating of the museum’s camera collection
2004–10 WestLicht: curator of the camera museum
2001–04 Technisches Museum Wien (TMW): curator for film and photography