Radu Bârlă
Renascendis Association, coordinator of the Arhiva de Fotografie platform
Bio: Radu Bârlă is a historian, graduate of the University of Bucharest, who’s secondary field of expertise is history of photography. He is the founder and coordinator of the Arhiva de Fotografie platform, a Romanian private initiative dedicated to saving, conserving, researching and promoting old photography.
Topic: The photographer’s family album. A case study of the Herter – Auerlich family from Transylvania.
The case study is dedicated to a rare find in the field of the history of photography: a photographer’s family album. The Herter – Auerlich family, a short dynasty of Transylvanian photographers, which owned studios in Brașov/ Kronstadt, Bucharest, Sibiu/ Hermannstadt/ Sighișoara/ Schäßburg and Vienna starting from the late 1850s to the early 1920s, its members being one of the most important and talented photographers in this small part of Europe, is rediscovered on a personal level due to the content of a family album recently saved from being irrevocably disassembled and scattered. The study highlights the challenges arising from the conservation and documenting of such photographic documents.