The Bensusan Museum of Photography is named after Dr AD Bensusan, a former mayor of Johannesburg and a man who has devoted himself to the promotion of the art and science of photography in this country. It was donated to the city in 1968 and forms part of Museum Africa.
The collection includes rare and valuable precision-made photographic equipment. For example, a very early Daguerre camera - bought by his English rival, WH Fox Talbot, in 1839, the year that the invention of photography was announced to the world - is on display. The collector's gallery shows how, one-by-one, seemingly impossible obstacles to photography's evolution were solved by ingenious engineering solutions.
The museum also collects the pictures made using this equipment - from the earliest wet-plate prints, to experiments in 3D such as stereoscopic views and holograms, to digital images.
The museum also specialises in preserving the work of South African photographers. Along the way interactive toys, darkrooms and multimedia shows teach basic lessons in the principles of optics, light and the moving image, and the fundamentals of photography.
