Pál Rosti’s album (1858) is a hybrid object: a unique artifact, which, however, exists in five copies; a collection of separate photos, but also an album with a beginning and an end; a tribute both to the scholar Alexander von Humboldt and to the Hungarian nation, and a visual trophy presented to Rosti’s sisters. Although the work is more interesting for its concept than for the technical quality of the individual photographs, Rosti’s album is not merely a visual replay of Humboldt’s journey in South and Central America.
The Photographic Collection is undeniably a 19th century photo album, and as such, it is representative of its time. Our current task is to place Rosti’s work in the context of its creation – understanding the author’s possible motivations – and to examine the later uses to which the album and the photos in it were put; in other words, to treat our object no longer as a trophy but rather as a “paradoxical trace”, which can and should be read in multiple ways.
This book is a collection of the edited presentations given at the Memorial Conference Rosti 160 organized at the Hungarian National Museum in February 2019, the first result of a transdisciplinary research project bridging over national borders and disciplinary boundaries.