Photography collection

Turku's collections are moving

Turku museum services is preparing the move of all collections to a new collection centre. All collections’ customer service was closed on June 30, 2022. The closure of the photo collection's customer service applies to all collection services: photo orders, photography of objects and works of art, reception of donations and consultancy.

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Turku Museum Center's photographic collections include approximately 1.7 million photos, negatives and slides from the 1840s to the present day.

The photo collections are expanded with donations and as a result of the museum's own photography activities. Photographic material related to Turku and Southwest Finland forms a central part of the collection. The collection contains rarities, such as Henrik Cajander's daguerreotype taken in Turku on November 3, 1842, which is considered to be the oldest photograph in Finland.

Search the collections in the Aina database

The collections of the Turku Museum Center and other museums in Southwest Finland can be viewed publicly online in the collection management system Aina. Aina's public interface serves a variety of users. Researchers, non-fiction writers and teachers can browse various materials. Similarly, genealogists and those mapping their own family history can, for example, look for familiar places in old photos.

Objects from the collection have also been exported to the online service of the national digital library, Finna. This will be continued both through the cataloguing of new acquisitions and digitization projects.

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