Photography Museum, Port Louis (must see)

The Photography Museum in Port Louis is a stunning stone building that houses an impressive collection of exhibits and equipment from the early days of photography. Whether you are a professional photographer or just an amateur, you will be awed by the array of worldly possessions collected by keen enthusiasts.

The guided tour of the museum, which lasts around an hour, is offered by one of the family members of the museum founders or by one of their knowledgeable associates. However, some visitors have been so lost in the picturesque displays that they have spent the whole day there.

The museum is located in the back roads of Port Louis and is hidden behind cobbled pathways. It is a trip down memory lane and will transport you to the early days of photography. The museum was born from the passionate love of photography of Mr Tristan Breville and his wife's sparkling hunger for life and little treasures. Their daughter Marie Julie is now keeping the tradition rooted down in our human culture.

The museum surprises visitors with one of the largest collections of exhibits, portraits, and equipment used in the old ages mainly in the 1800s and early 1900s. The collection dates back to the early roots of photography when the principle of imagery copying was used in the early 1800s.

One of the most interesting exhibits at the museum is the daguerreotype process, named after the French associate photographer who successfully developed clear imagery prints on copper and silver backgrounds. This process was first introduced in the late 1830s, and the museum exhibits some of the earliest daguerreotype cameras.

Mauritians were not left far behind in the cult of photographic imagery. A Mauritian with German origin bought one of the first daguerreotype cameras first on sale in France, and from his noble camera came one of the earliest pictures ever daguerreotyped in 1842, which is displayed at the museum.

The equipment displayed at the museum ranges from the press machine dating back from 1773 to the earlier Gaumont stereoscopic film used in cinema halls from 1913. The gallery includes earlier colonial sceneries of sugar barons and plantations as well as remote village way of life to the development of cities like Rose Hill and Port Louis pinnacle architecture.