Rare museum photographs have been digitized in Mykolaiv

A digital photo archive has been created in Mykolaiv, for which experts digitized 500 rare photographs and negatives from four local museums. The collection includes unique albums from the early 20th century, images of the Olbia excavations, and previously unknown portraits of the city’s prominent figures.

Some of the digitized materials are already freely available on the project’s online platform.

While working on the archive, experts from the four museums used five scanners to digitize 130 negatives and 370 photographs. All historical materials were scanned at the highest quality—up to 1,200 dpi—so that every detail can be clearly seen.

Thanks to detailed, high-quality scanning, the experts were able to clarify the attribution of many items. They also discovered previously unsigned portraits of Mykola Leontovych, the founder of the Mykolaiv Zoo, and Volodymyr Murzanov, the first director of the art museum.

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Overall, the digital collection includes various genres of photography: studio shots, street photography, family photos, and even old “police” photographs. Rare photo collections have also been partially digitized: a 204-photo album of the “Russud” factory, views of the city from the 1920s–1930s, and engineer Vladimir Ryumin’s collection of 283 photographs. Graduation albums from girls’ and boys’ high schools from the early 20th century have also been scanned.

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The collection also includes scanned negatives from the 1920s featuring scenes from the excavations at Olbia and along the shores of the Bug Estuary, children’s field trips to the Mykolaiv Historical and Archaeological Museum, and the work of the “Society of Friends of the Museum,” led by local historian and museum director Feodosiy Kaminsky.
 

Юлія Калабайда