The Fostinum
The collector is the true resident of the interior. The collector dreams his way not only into a distant or bygone world but also into a better one.
- Walter Benjamin
Zikmund Reach (also known as Sigmund Reach) was a photographer, antiquarian book store owner, and collector of photographs in 19th and 20th century Prague. He is most famous for his photographs of old Prague and its inhabitants (memorialized in his series Pražské typy - Prague types). Since Reach collected a number of negatives of other photographers from the 19th century, one can often not say definitively whether he was the author of the photograph or just the printer, though some photographs of buildings that were destroyed before he is believed to have started photographing (before 1888) can be assumed to be those of others.