Public Presentation of Non-European Cultures At the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Part 1: An Analysis of the Collection of Vráz’S Glass Slides in the Photographic Collections of the Náprstek Museum

Abstract

Abstract The way in which the Czech public in the late 19th and early 20th centuries learned about exotic lands was primarily dependent on travellers’ abilities to present their findings in literature or to mediate their experiences directly, by means of lectures. From the 1890s onwards, lectures were accompanied by slideshows. The Náprstek Museum contains an extensive collection of glass slides from the estate of Enrique Stanko Vráz (1860-1932), and an analysis of this collection forms the basis of this contribution. The slides with which Vráz accompanied his lectures can be divided into three types: slides produced from Vráz’s own negatives, slides created from other sources and slides from educational series, manufactured and sold by professional companies.