GUIDE TO PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS AT THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, VOL. 3. Diane Vogt O'Connor (original) (raw)
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Muzealnictwo, 2021
Elizabeth Edwards, a British researcher into the relations among photography, history, and anthropology, used the term of non-collections to define numerous photo- graphs of unidentified status which can be found in contem- porary museums. They are not collector’s items, such as e.g., artistic photography or unique specimens of the first photo- graphy techniques. What she rather means are various items: prints, slides, photo-mechanic reproductions, postcards, namely objects once produced on a mass scale, with copies present in many institutions worldwide, thus being neither unique nor extraordinary. They present works from a museum collection, historic pieces of local art, or universally known works of world art. They exist in a hierarchical relation with other classes of museum objects, yet they are often pushed to the margin of curator’s practice and kept as ‘archives’, namely outside the system of the museum collection. They can sometimes be found in museum archival sections, in other instances in libraries, yet it is on more rare occasions that we come across them in photo departments. However, owing to the research into archival photographs conducted in the last decade (the studies of afore-mentioned Elizabeth Edwards and also Constanza Caraffa as well as the teams cooperating with the latter), such collections are experiencing a certain revival. Forming part of this research, the paper focuses on the collec- tions of reproductions produced at the turn of the 20th century in museums in Toruń, Poznań, and Szczecin, which were German at the time; the reproductions later found their way to and con- tinue being kept in Polish institutions.
“American Iconography: Assessing FSA Photographs, 1945,” Visual Resources 30/3 (2014): 239-54.
In Washington, DC, in 1945 the German émigré art historian Edgar Breitenbach, a recently naturalized American citizen, was witness to and participant in a bold experiment in the ordering of visual documents. The vast assemblage of photographs recording American ways of life that had been generated during the Great Depression and war era under the guidance of Roy E. Stryker, working for a succession of government agencies including the Farm Security Administration, was soon to be deposited in the Library of Congress. Stryker had appointed the visionary classifier Paul Vanderbilt to give shape to the archive. Vanderbilt hired Breitenbach to help, and thus a European "iconographer," trained in Hamburg by Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl, and Erwin Panofsky, found himself applying his skills to contemporary American cultural documents. Eight small exhibits mounted by the staff January-July 1945, three by Breitenbach, give insight into the thoughts and aspirations of the classifiers.
NMHM Historical Collections Subject Authority
2016
This document describes the classification of artifacts in the Historical Collections of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, an element of the Defense Health Agency. Included is the 206 and the 2023 versions.
EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIALS IN LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE COLLECTIONS
ICA Proceedings Exhibiting Archival and Library Material and Works of Art on Paper, 2004
Photographic materials differ physically and chemically from collections of graphic media on paper. The chemistry and the composition of photographs vary by process. The diversity of image forming materials, binders, and emulsions, and the varying supports linked to each process create variations in the chemical and physical stability of photographs and therefore a greater sensitivity to the exhibition environment. As a consequence of the absence of an international standard for the exhibition of photographic materials, and due to the fact that many archives and libraries do not have a trained photograph conservator on staff, it may be difficult for institutions to determine the most recent guidelines concerning the exhibition of photographic materials. This impediment can lead to the use of standards created for collections of works on paper, which can have severe consequences for most photographic images. This paper attempts to summarize the conservation field‘s contemporary knowledge on the exhibition of photographic materials. Attention is focused on the viewing of photographs, their chemical and physical deterioration, and the effects of the exhibition environment, in particular the effects of light, temperature, relative humidity, and air quality.