Photographic exhibition at Ban Kúnn on Museum Night

A magnificent collection at Ban Kúnn

If they could talk! is the title of a camera exhibition at the restaurant Ban Kúnn in Hafnarfjörður on Museum Night 2025. Svavar G. Jónsson, the owner of the cameras and the restaurant, saw a golden opportunity to take part in Museum Night and invite people to view the magnificent camera collection.

„The origins of this collection can be traced back to a „photography craze“ I got around my confirmation! Yes, that was almost 60 years ago, so the collection contains a bit of everything,“ says Svavar. His cameras date from 1896 to the present day. This includes the camera he bought with his confirmation money.

About six hundred cameras

„There are nearly six hundred film cameras at the exhibition, but two digital ones are included. The collection has about 60 of them, but they're in storage; they just don't appeal to me in the same way as film cameras,“ explains Svavar.

„There's a certain charm to these old machines; tinkering with them, cleaning and making minor repairs is a good and enjoyable pastime. Of course, the collection also needs to be catalogued, with the type, characteristics and other history of the machines recorded as accurately as possible. Sometimes, no information is available about machines other than their type.“

The exhibition on Museum Night will be at the Thai restaurant Ban Kunn, which is located at Tjarnarvellir in Hafnarfjörður and has been there for eleven years. It will be on a larger scale than usual, with cabinets full of machines adorning the venue.

The design and testing behind every machine

Svavar is fascinated by cameras. „Many people believe that the things they use every day just appeared, without giving any thought to the work that goes into them. Design, manufacturing, testing and more testing is what lies behind every camera,“ Svavar explains.

Although we all carry cameras on our phones, there are still quite a few who use the old technology of taking pictures on film, „…something that was considered next to magic in the old days,“ he writes in the description of the exhibition, explaining how collectors like him have amassed cameras. He is going to tell the stories of some of the cameras on Museum Night.

„Collecting cameras is a fairly widespread hobby and there are also specialised collections of photographic equipment and cameras abroad,“ he says.

Svavar with the machine he bought with his confirmation money.

An opportunity to enjoy antiques

As everyone knows, there has been tremendous development in recent years in terms of photography and image processing.

„It's lovely to see when older people come here to Ban Kunn with their grandchildren. They point and tell them that they used to have a camera like that or another one. Then the children often ask, „Grandma, where do you see the picture?“ because they're used to seeing photos straight away on their phone,“ describes Svavar.

„This exhibition is set up to give more people, but also me as a collector, the opportunity to enjoy these beautiful artefacts. Here are cameras that have been used to take ordinary family photographs, all kinds of news photographs, pictures of accidents, at murder scenes (abroad) and so on,“ he says.

„If they could talk, I'm not sure I'd want to hear everything they had to say.“