Preus Museum – An exciting place to visit!

Preus Museum is the national museum of photography. It is located in an old naval building at Karljohansvern in Horten.

 

The museum's collections

The collections have three components: images, technical equipment, and books. Therefore one may receive many wide-ranging impressions of the meaning and development of photography in most fields. The library gives an interested person a sense of the knowledge possessed by the inventors of the medium, since there are books in most areas (chemistry, vision, light, etc.) from the 1500s on. One also discovers books on innumerable photographers, areas of photography, and the development of photography generally and as a discipline since its beginning in 1839. The collections of images are large and comprehensive. The histories of photography by Beaumont Newhall (1949; 5th edition, 1982) and Helmut Gernsheim (1955) have unquestionably been definitive guides to the acquisitions. Thus one finds the entire history of photography represented in terms of the development of processes, technical equipment, and important photographers. Earlier photographers such as the British William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) and Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), the American Edward Steichen (1879-1973), the Austrian Heinrich Kühn (1866-1944), and the Norwegians Anders Beer Wilse (1865-1949) and Elisabeth Meyer (1899-1968) are found, along with hundreds of other photographers from nearly all areas of the world.   

Opening Hours

Tue - Sun 11-16
July: all days 11-16



Closed on the following days

The last weekend before Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day
New Year's Eve and New Year's Day
May 1st
May 17th