Documentary Photography and the Digital Archive David Walega Fall 2004

1. Documentary Photography and the Digital ArchiveDavid Walega Fall 2004 David Walega, Espanola beauty salon, Espanola, New Mexico. 1996

2. Digitization of photography • Institutions such as libraries, non-profit organizations and museums are digitizing photographic collections for: • Preservation of materials • Dissemination of information • Effective management of assets

3. Aspects a digital archive • Preservation • The vulnerability of original photographic materials • Reduce handling of sensitive material • safeguard the preservation of unstable source materials • Dissemination of information • The balance between making photographic collections available to the public at the same time protecting the collection for future use.

4. Advantages of a digital archive • Cultural Impact • Digitization of original materials is deepening our understanding of past social concerns by assisting in the dissemination of information through new media • Ability to view an entire collection of images lending the single image contextual meaning • Preservation of materials to a growing international audience

5. Disadvantages • Budgetary restraints • An overwhelming amount of material and information must be considered for inclusion. • Acquisition of new media and adoption of emerging technology • longevity of current storage formats • Often the initial cost of this new technology in human resources and software overshadows the eventual benefits of its adoption

6. Sociological impact of the digital preservation of photography • The exploitation of evolving digital media has the potential to convey contemporary social issues to the attention of a widening audience • Educate through narrative essay and photographs • Early social photographers documented social issues of the day. The visibility of their work and the subject matter had an influence on the greater social agenda.

7. Jacob Riis: How the Other Half Lives Jacob A. Riis, Room in tenement, New York 1910

8. Turn of the century and the rise ofsocial awareness Jacob Riis (1880s- 1990s) - worked extensively photographing New York’s immigrant impoverished population with his association with the Child Labor Committee and Survey, the social work journal. His work, along with Lewis Hine, became part of the early documentation of a growing awareness and evolution of a movement toward social activism.

9. “ The greatest advance in social work is to be made by the popularizing of the camera work, so these records may be made by those who are in the thick of the battle.”- Lewis Hine Lewis Hine, Newspaper Sellers on Brooklyn Bridge at Midnight, Photograph, 1906, International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester

10. Farm Security Administration Project 1937 These pioneering photographers exploited the most effective technology of the day to convey a message and sway public opinion. Photography could be equated to digital technology today, arguably the most immediate and influential conveyer of information. Dorothea Lange, White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco, Ca, 1932

11. Rural america life in the 1930s • Dorothea Lange (1875-1966) documented the economic and cultural condition of 1930s rural American poor • Farm Securities Administration was funded by the federal government to photograph and document america during the depression years • The FSA Photograph Collection, with photographs from Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, is one of the most widely used sets of images in the public domain.

12. Dorothea Lange, FSA Rehabilitation Clients, Near Wapato, Yakima Valley, Washington,1939

13. “ Not only did these individuals play important roles in social work history, their work exemplified how social work can make its contemporary campaigns more effective through the use of images.” Dorothea Lange, J.R. Butler, President of the Southern Tenant farmer’s Union, Memphis Tennessee, 1938

14. Diffusion of digital innovation -The transference of analog materials into centralized digital archive is enabling organizations to effectively convey to an international audience the importance of social issues through images. - Businesses and institutions are using this new medium of communication to share resources and engage a worldwide audience. David Walega, Boa Game, Burundi, Africa, 2002

15. Preservation Techniques • Transcription of Texts • Photography • Microfilm • Digitization David Walega, Outside the classroom, Burundi, Africa, 2002

16. Trends in preservation and information management Transcription during Medieval Times: - Throughout the Medieval period (1348 - 1484) monks were responsible for preserving historical materials through meticulous copying of text. Monasteries became the repository of scholarly work and the early predecessors of libraries and archives.

17. Emergence of photography & microfilm Photography: The invention of photography in the 1850s and the eventual discovery of a chemically stable negative presented the option of duplication through a negative and multiple positives. Microfilm: The first patent for microfilm was granted in 1859 to Rene Dagron a French optician. Microfilm allows the preservation of great amounts of information and easy accessibility to it.

18. Microfilm application - The first commercial application appeared in the 1920s when a New York City banker named George McCarthy used his newly patented Checkograph Machine to produce permanent copies of bank records. - Microfilm was used in American libraries in the 1930s. Harvard University faced with the rapid deterioration of its newsprint, began to use microfilming techniques with the Foreign NewspaperProject.

19. War as supervening influence on adoption of preservation technology • War was a supervening influence establishing microfilm technology and photography as communication mediums. • During the Franco-Prussian war 1870 microfilm was utilized in its first practical application for transmitting messages by carrier pigeon across German lines. • The threat of destruction of records during the advent of the first world war further added a sense of urgency to microfilming records.

20. Transition to digital • The first version of the microfilm formula began breaking down in the 1980s proving this was not a permanent solution or a replacement for the original object. • Confronted with limited storage and budgetary restraints, institutions today are forced to consider emerging technologies to counter growing economic issues with preservation. • Digital applications are taking the place of microfilm as accessibility and management become more valuable.

21. Digital image asset management • Abundance of information • “Information is not like those old-fashioned commodities that get cheaper as more of them are produced. Rather, the greater amount of information that is gathered, the more correlations and cross-references it potentially contains; and consequently the more each bit of information is worth. Value results from abundance, not scarcity.” • Steven Sahviro, Connected, or what it means to live in the network society, (Minneapolis, Minnesota: university of Minnesota Press, 2003) pg 4

22. Digital image asset management • Digitization is the transformation of physical objects to numerical values equivalent to zeros and ones. • Uniformity of information is realized with digitization. A digital scanner translates an image by transforming the information into bit maps. • Storage and formatting of images continue to be a challenge on budgetary constraints • Longevity of Zip Disks, floppies, CDs, DVDs, CD-RWs, • Hardrives • Portability • Migration of information one costly solution

23. Contemporary preservation • Librarians have taken on the role of of social conservators. • Using digital technologies to save historic information that are crucial to national identity

24. Monumental preservation • the retention of objects related to a disaster of historic proportions and contemporary reactions to that disaster • Involves acquisition of objects and recollections close to the event • Examples • War in Iraq- looting of the National Museum and National Library of Iraq in Baghdad • Kosovo and the destruction of their National Archive • Irreplaceable objects of national and cultural interest

25. Monumental preservation • Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague, May 14th 1954 • “Damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind, since each people makes it contribution to the culture of the world” Michele V. Cloonan, Monumental Preservation: A Call to Action, American Libraries, September 2004, pg 38

26. Related Theories • Diffusion of Innovation • Supervening Necessity • Variability