Oudadate Pix: An introductory word (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
The Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts does not have a museum collection of photographs due to its very specific mission and restrictive acquisition policy. However, during the almost one and a half centuries of its activities, the Gallery has accumulated tens of thousands of photographic objects (negatives, slides, photographic and photomechanical prints), which today form the museum’s photo archive, while a smaller number is embedded in two specialized sub-collections of the museum library. Among them we can find excellent examples of early photography, even works by internationally relevant photographers, which entered the museum’s holdings mostly by chance. From today’s perspective, their “role” in the museum is all but clear. Most of the corpus, however, comprises photographs that were quite obviously acquired, or produced, by the institution in order to be used as “tools” for a plethora of applications. To name only the most evident: in research purposes, for analyzing and documenting museum objects, their preservation and exhibiting, in managing collections, educational activities, publishing, and marketing. Until recently, this material has been perceived exclusively as a “passive resource without its own identity, used as the need arises”. A few years ago, the inventory process initiated showed that the Gallery’s photographic material comprises a significantly wider and more diverse collection of objects than was previously thought. Furthermore, the objects are scattered throughout various assemblages in the nooks and crannies of offices and library storerooms, existing in unequal conditions. Since then, a number of steps have been taken in order to properly catalogue and protect the objects. However, due to non-existent institutional standards for the processing and protection of such objects, along with inadequate storage spaces and technical infrastructure, as well as limited financial resources, the steps that were taken have often followed individual choices. These were, in turn, primarily based upon personal contacts with experts from institutions that already have a well-rounded and long established systematic approach to the management and care of photographic collections. The aim of this presentation is to describe these experiences and the road towards the construction of institutionalized policies of managing photographic material. Apart from the immediately tangible results, such as the precise recording, physical protection, better visibility and wider availability of photographs, the careful and detailed examination which they underwent also yielded a more subtle and far-reaching effect: the awareness of the material specificities and social biography of each and every one of the photographic objects, as well as their value as a whole. Within the museum, over the generations that evaluated them solely as visual recordings, these objects have too often been seen as an accidental, or even as an “imposed heritage”.
BRINGING DOWN THE ‘ARCHIVE FEVER’ – opening and collaborating on photography archives and collections: Programme and Book af Abstracts, 2021
In art museums, the acquisition of a visual artist’s estate frequently includes correspondence, journals, sketches and notes, various documents, books, and photographs. Such material, being a secondary aspect of the artist’s practice, is (at best) placed in associated archives, or filed under “documentation” of respective museum art collections. In practice, this means that the “institutionalization” of such material does not necessarily result in its greater visibility and availability, as it all too frequently remains un-inventoried, let alone catalogued. In a considerable number of cases, this material is seen only as an additional research tool, and as such is subject to the volitional treatment of curators under whose part of the museum collection it should fall. In the grey area between public and private property, such material is frequently taken out of the institution, often without written trace. This material is sometimes returned to the museum in the form of new intellectual and material assemblages in bizarre turnabouts, such as reacquisitions from the private archives of former curators. Photographs, because of their very nature, are especially sensitive in this kind of context. They are – sometimes due to easier storage and preservation, but more often because of a utilitarian approach pushed to the extreme – arbitrarily separated from their original context and embedded into a new one, often at the expense of their material integrity and original appearance. This presentation outlines a curator’s personal experience in a museum of art with several such “auxiliary” archives of museum collections, in which various photographic objects are the most numerous. In an effort to preserve the conceptual integrity of the new/old archive, which will as much as possible mirror all earlier uses, interventions, manipulations, etc. of the material, as a sign of its pre and post acquisitional biography (Edwards, Morton, 2015), and equally the history of the museum, we have resorted to a top-to-bottom archival description that will reach the level of each individual item which is also being catalogued. In this way, the archival imperative of acknowledging the provenance and original order is not being betrayed, while at the same time we are ensuring the visibility of each individual photograph, which is described both as a document and as an artefact. Taking into consideration the fact that this kind of approach is not universally applicable, we will present all of its recognized benefits and inherent limitations. Finally, we will discuss the challenges of applying the same approach to a digital context.
PHOTOCONSORTIUM: International Consortium for Promoting and Valorising Photographic Heritage
2014
Great success for a project is not only successfully delivering all its expected results, but also going beyond the planned activities and transforming its outcomes into a “new life” beyond the end of the project. This is the case of EuropeanaPhotography, the CIP ICT PSP pilot B project about early photography, funded by the European Commission within the Competitiveness and Innovation framework programme, officially ended in January 2015. During the project, sixteen archives from all over Europe digitised hundreds of thousands of pictures from the first one hundred years of photography and contributed this content to Europeana, the European portal of cultural heritage. Its partners, after a rich and successful collaboration experience in the project, decided to establish a long-term strategy and to transform cooperation synergies into a new Association called PHOTOCONSORTIUM, the International Consortium for Photographic Heritage. The PHOTOCONSORTIUM association was established on ...
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.
Capturing the Past: A Symposium on Photograph Conservation Abstract Book, 2019
Photographs are complex material objects whose layers hold a variety of information on different forms of human activity. In order to understand them, a great deal of attention and knowledge is required, and not merely an interest in the pictorial content. Hence, it is not possible to grasp their full meanings without an understanding of their materiality, the conditions in which they were created and used, as well as of the context within which they transmit their message to the viewer. The elements of form with all their usage traces are the very thing that makes photographs objects within space and time, and understanding their materiality requires a variety of competences. Above all else, the knowledge of photographic techniques, the ways in which these objects are created. Then, inescapably, there has to be the ability to identify the process by which they were made and the numerous possible modifications of the images. Finally, there is knowledge of the various deterioration mechanisms, which is a precondition for proper care and preservation. The conservation of photographs is primarily focused on their material aspect. Identifying the photographic processes and choosing appropriate protective materials and storage conditions are the basic conservation procedures that arise exclusively from the materiality of objects. This is precisely the reason why these procedures are necessary and a basic knowledge of them is obligatory. Familiarity with photographs as material objects will make it easier to understand them as images or documents. Based on personal experience of working with photographs, this presentation will endeavor to highlight the necessity of knowledge of the material side of photographs as objects for complete understanding of photography as a medium. With particular reference to the competences and skills gained during the NEDCC Advanced photograph conservation internship program, and accompanied by the numerous examples from practice, this lecture will show the various benefits deriving from organized professional training in the field of photograph conservation and possibilities of their incorporation in almost every aspect of work with this type of record. It will also confirm the proposition that every newly mastered item of information is but a starting point for the understanding of information still to come.
Photography and Preservation (editor's introduction)
Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism, 2014
This is the second number of our special issues on preservation and photography. The previous number approached the relationship between these two disciplines historically, examining the paradigmatic preservation practices of documenting, surveying, and archiving.
The Náprstek Museum Photography Collection – An Assessment Based on Collection Records
Annals of the Náprstek Museum
The study deals with the Náprstek Museum ethnographic photo collection. In order to obtain detailed knowledge of the composition of this collection, an analysis was performed using digital data records obtained through an export from the collection database. The data was then edited using MS Excel with the Contingency Table and Contingency Graph tools. The analysis focusd on the perspective of geography and chronology, originator and the type of photographic material in question. Obtained data clearly shows the percentage of each pursued characteristics and allows to combine them and compare the photo collection as a whole with the other part sof museum’s collections. The analysis method can be also used for another collections as well.
PHOTOCONSORTIUM: Opening up the Riches of Europe's Photographic Heritage
2018
Digitization and crowdsourcing actions are fostered by the European Union for enhancing access and citizens’ participation in culture and research. Several experiences are demonstrating how tangible and intangible heritage is moving nowadays from the concept of representing objects to that of safeguarding memories and stories related to those objects. This process means to have richer, more complex and heterogeneous metadata associated to digital objects. To leverage on such richness of information, new approaches for improving searchability/retrievability of digital resources, storytelling and reuse are developing. Also, dealing with crowdsourced contributions of various types poses new challenges for curation and preservation methods in heritage institutions and across separated repositories, where linked objects and resources lie. PHOTOCONSORTIUM, the international consortium for photographic heritage, is exploring the potential of technologies, which can make possible to enrich ...