Museum of Printing and Photography

In 2009 in the state institution "Museum of the history of the of Gomel City" the collection of photos, cameras and photographic accessories was started. Gradually formed collection (about 500 items) formed the basis of the Museum of Photography - the FIRST museum of photography in Belarus in the structure of the state institution, which was opened in Gomel on the eve of the City Day in September 2015.

Gomel photographer and collector Leonid Borisovich Pinsky was the first to donate a large number of items to the museum. His initiative was supported not only by photographers and collectors from Gomel, but also from different parts of Belarus, Russia and other countries, for example Alexei Nikitin (Russia, Kaluga).

It is symbolic that museum is placed on the first floor in one of the buildings in Kommunarov street in the premises of the most famous photo studio in Gomel. It has been working here more than 50 years practically since the moment of building construction (since 1960th).

The key models of photographic equipment (Soviet Photokor, Zenit, FED, Smena-8, Lubitel, Kiev, the famous German Leica, Spy Hit, Praktica, Argus, pavilion cameras, etc.), photographic materials, equipment, a large number of thematic books, periodicals on the art of photography, accessories, as well as photos and photo albums, personal items of famous photographers, donated to the museum by city residents and its guests. Also there is a photo lab of the Soviet period in the exposition. By the way, the geography of photos and photographic equipment is very wide: Minsk, Gomel, Mogilev, Riga, Vilnius, Barnaul, Leningrad, Krasnoyarsk, Kaliningrad, Ivanovo, Odessa, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Uzhgorod, Chernigov, etc.

Thus, in the Gomel museum you can study the history of photography during the XX century, both in terms of technical evolution and as a kind of art. The presented collections reflect domestic and global trends.

As a result of the expansion of exhibition space, in 2017, in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Belarusian book printing and the 100th anniversary of the newspaper "Gomelskaya Prauda", the renovated object "Museum of Photography and Printing" was opened. The permanent exhibition "History of the Gomel Region printing" was opened for visitors, where materials on the history of the printed media and printing houses of the Gomel Region for the past 100 years were collected.