The Bavarian State Library has acquired the archive of the photographer Nikolai Molodovsky (1899-1986) with around 69,000 photographs. Molodovsky documented everyday rural life in post-war Bavaria with his camera, the State Library said on Thursday in Munich. With this unique Bavarikum, the library is expanding its picture archive, which is the largest publicly owned one in Germany.
Molodovsky was born in Russia in 1899 and emigrated to France in 1920 at the end of the Russian Civil War. In 1933 he moved to Prien am Chiemsee and began working there as a freelance photographer. A broad oeuvre was created in 40 years, for example with recordings of Bavarian customs and the working world of the 1950s to 1970s. His photographic interest was also in Upper and Lower Bavarian towns and churches as well as local artists.
Among them, the family of artists around the photographer Peter Keetman, who was related to Molodovsky through his marriage to Doris Keetman, is said to be particularly noteworthy. “We are therefore particularly pleased to be able to secure very rare snapshots of Bavarian post-war history for science and the public with this acquisition,” said the Director General of the State Library, Klaus Ceynowa. Molodovsky masterfully understood how to capture the moment with his photographs and capture special moods. According to the State Library, the photo archive consists of 48,000 black-and-white negatives, 6,000 color slides and 15,000 high-quality prints. You will receive your life’s work as a whole permanently.
According to the State Library, the entire image archive includes 19 million primarily documentary images with a focus on contemporary history. The main fund is made up of the magazine’s photo archive, which was acquired in 2019 star with around 15 million images. In addition, the picture archive collects photos by numerous photographers who worked primarily in Bavaria, such as Felicitas Timpe, Bernhard Johannes, Max Prugger and Georg Fruhstorfer.