Over the past decades the film maker Werner Nekes has put together a unique collection of works that, taken together, constitute a cultural history of visual media forms: anamorphoses, Laterna Magika devices and projected images, perspective theaters, etc., which are viewed as the forerunners of present film, television, and the digital age. The collection with its many pieces illustrates the historical development of producing images within the context of the prevalent technological capabilities at the time of each object’s creation.

A glossary of visual media forms with more than 200 terms from A to Z can be found at the internet site:
wernernekes.de

Buddha, magic lantern, France 1870, Collection Werner Nekes

Lantern of fear, in: Jacobo’s Gravesande: Physices Elementa Mathematica. Geneva, 1748, Collection Werner Nekes

Ludwigs Kanal von der Donau zum Main, Concertina peep show, Germany, c. 1840,
Collection Werner Nekes

Hand-shadow cards, colour lithographs, France, c. 1900, Collection Werner Nekes

Optical construction of a cylinder anamorphosis, in: Mario Bettini, Apiaria Universae Philosophiae Mathematicae, Bologna 1642, Collection Werner Nekes

The Collection of Likenesses or Portraits. A domino and metamorphosis game (detail), colour lithographs on cardboard, Germany 1840, Collection Werner Nekes

Rat, Thomas Mann Baynes, lithograph, picture disc for Joseph Plateau´s Phenakistiscope, manufactured by Ackermann, London, 1833, Collection Werner Nekes

Chess Piece, Jouet séditieux (subversive toys), France, c. 1825, Collection Werner Nekes

Zoetropes, makers unknown, cardboard and printed paper, c. 1860, Collection Werner Nekes