Special collections

Our collection boasts unique heritage pieces and exceptional sources. Discover some hidden treasures and the fascinating stories behind them – all available digitally in our catalog.

Amsab-ISG has built up considerable expertise in digitizing newspapers and archives over the past few years. This section also provides insights into a selection of these sources, which are full-text searchable wherever possible.

The Variétés photo collection

Variétés was one of many magazines published by Paul-Gustaaf Van Hecke, with varying degrees of success. Van Hecke maintained close contacts with key figures in modern photography from the 1920s, such as Man Ray, André Kertész, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Germaine Krull. The collection he assembled for Variétés was remarkably well preserved and eventually, more or less by chance, ended up at Amsab-ISG.

Varieties - The Photographer

Once a militant member of the Socialist Young Guards, Paul-Gustaaf Van Hecke later devoted himself to theater, literature, and especially to the promotion of visual arts. Not as an artist, but as a driving force behind magazines and galleries, he supported the Flemish Expressionists and Belgian Surrealists. Together with his wife Norine, he also made his mark in the fashion world.

From 1931 until the Second World War, he was an editor at Vooruit . After the war, he helped shape the Knokke Film Festival, but his name remains primarily associated with the visual arts. With Sélection , he promoted expressionism, while Variétés focused more on surrealism and modern life, with a special emphasis on film and photography.

 

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View the complete Variétés photo collection in the online catalog