Visit Asia’s Only Curated Camera Museum In Gurgaon

If you were born before or during the 2000s, you know of the horror we’ve all faced when your parents pulled out albums dedicated to baby pictures of you. Now with technology, it’s probably a whole lot worse — but at least you can sneakily delete them off the device. Then again, seeing the familiar Kodak envelope with film reels of the negatives and originals, along with the developed photographs was a feeling unlike any other. There was a certain element of thrill and surprise when you finally see the pictures, after painful deliberation during a click or not to click moment. There was that phenomenon of limited reel to account for back then — and if we’ve succeeded in making you feel nostalgic, we’ve found a solution. There is a museum in Gurgaon that gives you a chance to time travel to this bygone era where the right picture was not up to photo burst but your own patience and skill.

Museo Camera houses almost 1500 iconic and rare cameras, right from the 19th century; since the art of photography was first introduced to the world. This July, the museum which claims to be the ‘only curated camera museum in Asia’, is hosting Vintage Viewfinders. It is a session through which you can unravel stories behind some of the most exquisite cameras of this private collection and also understand the transitions photography has gone through over the past 170 years.

Conducted by Aditya Arya, owner of Museo Camera and an eminent Indian travel and commercial photographer, the museum collection has been under work for 35 years! Over time, the vintage pieces he collected from various countries (England, France, Germany, Japan, America and Switzerland) led to a collection we could all appreciate in one place, today. Participants of the event get to touch and view their surroundings from the lenses of some of these prized vintage pieces! The session ends with Arya explaining how a salt print is created, a historic photographic process from 1850’s — and your very own salt print of an image you share with Arya before the session!

The museum, which is funded by India Photo Archive , a trust that has preserved almost 40,000 pre-independence political and social photographs, is not only a visit for those interested in photography but for anyone who wants to understand why the legacy of pre-digitalised photography is increasingly relevant today. “Today, with digital photography people visualise after taking the photograph. That’s what happens when you have 32GB memory cards that allow you to click every other second. The cameras before the 2000s required a fair amount of pre-visualisation which meant one to four hours of analysing your frame before you clicked. This workshop is to get the message across that one needs to slow down with the number of clicks one takes at a go and understand how quality photography worked.”

With the increasing number of people who consider themselves photographers on the basis of their oeuvre of selfies we couldn’t agree more. To book your seat for Vintage Viewfinders click here.

Session Dates: 16 July, 22 July, 23 July, 30 July.

Timing: 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM

Cost: INR 1800 per person.