Online Exhibition Photo Album of Folk Costumes by Franz Thiard de Laforest

Koraljka Kuzman Šlogar

Review of the National Center for Digitization, Tome 25 (2014) no. 1.

Résumé

Franz Thiard de Laforest (Vienna, 1838 - Kotor, 1911) was one of the pioneers of the art of photography. In 2005, thanks to a donation of artist’s granddaughter Lidija Laforest, the Maritime Museum of Montenegro in Kotor received his original Album od Folk Costumes and the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb received 384 copies of images of costumes and digitized them in order to make them available to the public. Today, these photos represent a valuable testimony as a unique ethnographic document that serves, among others, as a precious source for the study of folk costumes at the turn of the 20th century. Their first public presentation will be in the form of an online exhibition named Photo Album of Folk Costumes by Franz Thiard de Laforest. Given the fact that this collection of photographs of folk costumes is a historical document of exceptional cultural value, the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research and Maritime Museum of Montenegro in Kotor launched a collaborative project of preparation and organization of a traveling exhibition that will be staged in many different places in which Laforest has spent a part of his life.