Photo Collections Research Articles

Bias mitigation techniques in Image Classification: Fair Machine Learning in Human Heritage Collections

A major problem with using automated classification systems is that if they are not engineered correctly and with fairness considerations, they could be detrimental to certain populations. Furthermore, while engineers have developed cutting-edge technologies for image classification, there is still a gap in the application of these models in human heritage collections, where data sets usually consist of low-quality pictures of people with diverse ethnicity, gender, and age. In this work, we evaluate three bias mitigation techniques using two state-of-the-art neural networks, Xception and EfficientNet, for gender classification. Moreover, we explore the use of transfer learning using a fair data set to overcome the training data scarcity. We evaluated the effectiveness of the bias mitigation pipeline on a cultural heritage collection of photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries, and we used the FairFace data set for the transfer learning experiments. After the evaluation, we found that transfer learning is a good technique that allows better performance when working with a small data set. Moreover, the fairest classifier was found to be accomplished using transfer learning, threshold change, re-weighting and image augmentation as bias mitigation methods.

Automation of Fruit Sorting Process Using Conveyor Belt System

Abstract: Fruit sorting is an important step in the fruit industry since it ensures that only high-quality fruits are sold. Manual sorting takes time, is labour-intensive, and is prone to human error. The use of a conveyor belt system with machine vision to automate the sorting process can increase the efficiency and accuracy of fruit quality sorting. This study describes the design and execution of a conveyor belt system for sorting fruit quality using machine vision. The approach is intended to sort fruits based on their appearance, such as colour, size, and form. The machine vision system is trained using a collection of photos of variable quality fruits, allowing it to differentiate between high-quality and low-quality fruits. The conveyor belt system is made up of a motor, sensors, and a camera that takes pictures of the fruits as they move along the belt. The machine vision system processes the photos in real time, determining the quality of each fruit and directing it to the right bin. The precision, speed, and efficiency of the system are all measured. The technology looks potential for increasing the efficiency and accuracy of fruit quality sorting in the fruit sector.

Masyarakat Jawa Di Desa Sidomulio Kabupaten Padang Lawas Tahun 2007-2018

This study discusses the life of the Javanese people in Sidomulio Village, Barumun Selatan District, Padang Lawas Regency. This research aims to explain the life of the Javanese people in Sidomulio Village. Researcher Sources were obtained through literature studies in the form of articles, journals, study documents in the form of a collection of photographs displayed in the Sidomulio village head's office as well as field studies by means of interviews and observations. In the discussion there is much that we know that the arrival of the Javanese to Sidomulio can be said to be gradual. In 1945-1946 Sidomulio Village was pioneered by a prominent figure, Mr. Marsidin, Mr. Kasmin, Mrs. Kasiah, Mr. Suanda and their friends who were Javanese who moved to Sidomulio. The driving factors for Javanese migration in Sidomulio Village are geographical location, demography and the economy, while the pull factor is that there is still a large area of ​​land available for them to work on. The Javanese live with various aspects of their lives, so that the dominance of Javanese identity is found in Sidomulio Village. The Javanese interact well with the Mandailing community, as can be seen from the harmonious kinship between the two tribes. The harmonious relationship between the Mandailing-Javanese Batak people is shown when the Mandailing Batak people have a celebration, inviting the Javanese to attend it.

White Trash Cooking: ‘exploding’ the cookbook

Ernest Mickler’s White Trash Cooking, with its focus on a disparaged population, its addition of a collection of documentary photographs alongside the recipes, and the camp hilarity of its authorial voice, has long been judged to transgress, shatter or even explode the generic conventions of the cookbook. Mickler’s book clearly does satirize the seriousness of cookbooks’ attention to polite norms, lifestyle aspirations and good housekeeping. Its satire is combined (albeit rather awkwardly) with a range of high cultural references deriving from Mickler’s interests and experiences as well as the work of the Jargon Press on the material Mickler had collected. However, the history of Mickler’s composition of White Trash Cooking draws attention to different, unacknowledged dimensions of the cookbook genre, and in particular to the methodology through which it constructs community. Mickler’s book recalls the sub-genre of community cookbook, but both his definition of ‘white trash’ and the relationship between such a community and the contents are sketchy and uncertain. Mickler asserts that his book presents a cuisine new to the cookbook, but with small justification. This essay examines White Trash Cooking’s composition and its context to re-read Mickler’s work, and uses comparison between White Trash Cooking and other cookbooks of its day to think afresh about the cookbook genre.

Laboratory work in Physics and Chemistry in the training of future teachers in the conditions of distance learning

The article is devoted to the systematization of experience and establishing the peculiarities of conducting laboratory work in Physics and Chemistry in the training of future teachers in the conditions of distance learning (on the example of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University).
 Possibilities of using photo and video recording of physical and chemical experiments for their repeated display in the form of synchronous and asynchronous broadcasting are considered. The procedure for performing laboratory work based on the use of photos and video materials is described, and relevant examples are given. Conducting laboratory work in physics and chemistry in the conditions of distance learning using interactive simulators and models on various platforms is characterized. Laboratory work in physics and chemistry using specialized virtual laboratories is described, examples of working with them in classes are given. The experience of using the author's software-methodological complexes to ensure laboratory work in chemistry is described, which are actively used in the educational process in the conditions of distance learning – using SchoolKit as an example.
 It has been established that conducting laboratory work in physics and chemistry in the training of future teachers in the conditions of distance learning can be ensured in several ways: access to collections of photos and video materials of physical and chemical experiments; demonstrations of laboratory experiments in synchronous mode by means of video conferences; using virtual simulations and models of physical and chemical objects, processes, phenomena; using virtual physical and chemical laboratories; using software and methodical complexes in physics and chemistry.
 Prospective areas of further research are the study of the effectiveness of the considered methods of conducting laboratory work in the conditions of distance learning in the practice of training future teachers of physics and chemistry and the development of appropriate methodological recommendations with the generalization of the acquired experience of institutions of higher pedagogical education.

РУССКИЙ СЕВЕР. ОБРАЗЫ РОССИИ В ФОТОКОЛЛЕКЦИИ Д.Н. АНУЧИНА

An exhibition of photographs from the collection of Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin, organized jointly with the Earth Science Museum of Lomonosov Moscow State University, has opened in the Maritime Exhibition Center of the Museum of the World Ocean in Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region. Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin (1843-1923) was a famous Russian anthropologist, ethnographer, archaeologist, geographer, and museologist. D.N. Anuchin was active in spreading geographical knowledge and creating a Russian university geography school, and educated a great number of students. Dmitry Nikolayevich was at the origin of the creation of the Geographical Museum of Moscow University, which he headed for more than 20 years. The exhibition shows about 70 prints of photographs of the Russian North of the late 19th-early 20th centuries from D.N. Anuchin’s photo collection. A significant part of the collection (more than 3.5 thousand units) is now stored in the funds of the Earth Science Museum of the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Из фондов Музея антропологии МГУ. Фотографии народов Северного Кавказа в экспозиции Антропологической выставки 1879 года: кабардинцы и шапсуги

Introduction. Since the early 1860s photographic practice has become an integral part of the scien-tific process and one of the main methods of ethnographic and anthropological research in Russia. In the course of preparations for the first Ethnographic Exhibition in Russia (1867), organized by the Society of Devotees of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography (OLEAE), the Photographic Commission established by the Exhibition Committee (1866) developed a regulation on the execution of photographic portraits of the local population. In 1872 the first “instructions” in Russia for ethnographic and anthropological photography were published. Materials and methods. The source for the preparation of the article was a collection of photographs collected by E.D. Felitsyn (1848-1903) and presented at the Anthropological Exhibition of 1879 in Moscow. Currently, it is stored in the funds of the D.N. Anuchin Research Institute and the Museum of Anthropology, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Results and discussion. Photographs of representatives of two nationalities - Kabardians and Shapsugs, who lived in the Kuban region, are described and analyzed: the villages of Blechepsinsky and Khodzsky (currently the village of Blechepsin and the village of Khodz of the Koshekhablsky district of the Republic of Adygea), Khokhondukovsky and Kasaevsky (currently the village of Ali-Berdukovsky and the village of Khabez in the Khabezsky district of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic) and the village of Kudzhirsky in the Maikop district, that was located on the left bank of the river Farce and abolished in 1885. These are: 3 photographs of children (6 and 8 years old), 7 photographs of men (18-58 years old) and 5 photographs of women (18-60 years old). A description of the depicted national clothes is given, as well as a summary of literary anthropological information about the Kabardians and Shapsugs of this period. Conclusion. The first published photographs of representatives of the two peoples of the North Caucasus living in the Kuban region in the second half of the 19th century make it possible to visualize some aspects of the historical information that scientists have at their disposal, to clarify the available anthropolog-ical, historical and cultural data on the Kabardians and Shapsugs, and also are an addition to the historical, archaeological, anthropological, genetic and ethnographic studies of the peoples of the North Caucasus @ 2023. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.

A Collection of Photographs by A.M. Pozdneev (from the Archives of Orientalists at the IOM, RAS)

This article presents a collection of photographs from the personal archive of A.M. Pozdneev that have been housed as a separate item (fund 44, inventory no. 3, file 15). These are both professional and amateur photographs that tell the story of the scholarly and public life of Aleksey Matveevich Pozdneev. There are also a few photographs of places he visited officially. The most remarkable achievements of the researcher were expeditions to Mongolia that he undertook in 18761878 and in 18921893. Pozdneevs amateur photographs of Mongolian landscapes, local landmarks and people prove that the trips were carefully and meticulously organized. The documents from the Pozdneevs archive contain a few fragments of the travel journals which he kept during his expeditions to Mongolia and which were helpful in identifying some of the photographs.

VR Based Remote Campus Tour

Abstract: We recommend a system called "Virtual Tour of College Infrastructure" that gives a virtual college tour to visitors, such as students, parents, and guests. They may be interested in learning about the facilities and infrastructure offered by the college. For this, students must really travel to the college campus, which will take a lot of their time and effort and cost money for those who live far away. The suggested solution offers a virtual perspective of the infrastructure at the college in order to address this problem. This enables visitors access a certain department or lab from a distance. Additionally, it can be displayed at the College's main gate to assist visitors in finding a certain student, member of staff, or lab by outlining the precise route through the "Search" module. Virtual reality is essentially how this technology operates. Combining two or more photos to create an image panorama is the procedure. The method of producing an image panorama from a collection of photos with overlapped fields is known as image stitching. The process of stitching together photographs is difficult because of issues including noise-corrupted images, indexing a lot of images, high image resolution, parallax, and scene motion. Another difficulty is getting rid of seams that are noticeable. This work applied a feature-based automatic image stitching approach to obtain a broad seamless panorama.

Exploration of Lichenes in the Mutis Mount Area, Noepesu Village, West Miomaffo District

This study aims to explore and identify the types of Lichenes that exist at the Mutis Mount Area, Noepesu Village, West Miomaffo District, and the Biology Education Laboratory, University of Timor. This research was conducted for 6 months starting from May-October 2022. This research is descriptive qualitative research. Sampling used a purposive sampling method. The collected Lichenes were identified based on their characteristics using the determination key and then matched with the photo collection. Morphological observation of lichenes was conducted at the Biology Education Laboratory, University of Timor using a microscope. The result of observations and collections based on this research conducted in the Mutis Mount area found 29 species of Lichenes with 12 families, the species found were Septennium azureum, Parmotrema tinctorum, Parmotrema perlatum, Parmelia sulcate, Parmelia sp, Flavoparmelia afternoondians, Usnea hirta, Usnea sp 1, Pyxine subcinerea, Cryptothecia sp, Dirinaria sp, Lepraria Lobificans, Lepraria incana, Lepraria sp 1, Hydropunctaria maura, Candelariella sp, Arthonia ilicina, Arthonia Radiata, Arthonia Clemens, Graphis Scipta, Graphis sp1, Graphis sp2, Graphis sp3, Graphis sp4, Graphis sp5, Graphis sp6, Ramalina farinaceae, Cryptothechia striata, and Bacidia insularis. Lichenes were found in soil, weathered wood, tree trunks, and rocks with thallus morphology, namely Crustose, Foliose, Fructicose, and Squamulose.

Podlascy fotografowie z lat 30. i 40. XX wieku. Wyrastanie z prowincji

The article focuses on the works of three photographers active in Podlasie in the 1930s and 1940s. For over a decade, the discovered and rescued negatives by Bolesław Augustis from Białystok, Jerzy Kostko from Kleszczel, and Jan Siwicki from Jaczno have been compiled and published by the Cultural Educational Association ‘Widok’. They document provincial life just before and after World War II. They are part of contemporary photographic archaeology, which looks at popular (vernacular) photographs through the lens of avant-garde art theories, focusing not so much on their aesthetic qualities as on their context and interpretations. The heterotopias preserved in the photographs, due to the passage of time, restoring them to the public and drawing the attention of critics to their vernacular, have gained a new dimension and universality. Photographers from Podlasie grew out of the provinces and, as a result of the restoration of their works to cultural circulation, moved from the periphery of art to the central mainstream–Augustis as the creator of Poland’s largest collection of street photography; Kostko as a portraitist of the small hermetic community that he photographed for more than half a century; and Siwicki as a documentarian of the Catholic-Orthodox rituals of the village of Jaczno. The article is an attempt to answer the question of whether and to what extent the significance of the provincial background of those photographers is the result of a transformation made by time, and to what extent contemporary reading endows it with new meanings.

After the Flood: Notes on Photography and the Archive

The often-theorised relationship between the photograph as a democratic object and medium for knowledge production and the archive continues to influence the making of the photographic collection. In this reflective article on the career of Deborah Willis, I trace these ideas through eight ruminations on Willis’s curatorial practice as researcher, archivist and photographer. These notes operate as a proposal on Willis’s contributions to an expanded vision of the photographic archive and its function as a public repository.

‘Letting the pictures […] do the job’: Sandy Phillips at SFMOMA

Across three decades at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), curator Sandra S. Phillips (American, born 1945) built a distinctive photography collection and exhibition programme driven by her institution’s geographical setting. In response to Phillips’s oral history excerpt for the project Framing the Field, this article identifies intuition as an emphasis of Phillips’s interview and her curatorial practice. Challenging the perception of intuition as irreconcilable with traditional scholarly expertise, this article examines it as a form of knowledge and core component of ideation. Combined with her art historical acumen, Phillips’s stance of receptivity towards SFMOMA’s location in the Bay Area, California, the western USA and the greater Pacific Rim propelled her shaping of the institution’s photography programme. Ultimately, her example indicates how intuition and expertise are mutually constitutive and intertwined.

Commentary

Commentary

Co‐temporality and Sovremennost': Late Imperial and Early Soviet Photographs

Co‐temporality and <i>Sovremennost'</i>: Late Imperial and Early Soviet Photographs

Deborah Willis. The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship.

Readers interested in the Black freedom struggle of the nineteenth century will find Deborah Willis’s The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship a must read. While abolitionist portraiture and antislavery ephemera of the 1830s and 1840s have yielded some of the most iconic illustrations of the nineteenth century, this text reveals an equally robust image practice organized around Black soldiers, produced between 1860 and 1866, that continues to influence twenty-first century visualizations of Blacks in the military. Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery by Willis and Barbara Krauthammer (2013) might be the closest comparison to Black Civil War Soldier in terms of revelations about African American engagements with the camera around the question of freedom. However, Black Civil War Soldier contributes to a larger historiographic project that insists the abolition of slavery was the central motive for fighting the Civil War. Critical works such as Thavolia Glymph’s Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (2019) rebuff a larger swath of secondary scholarship organized around ideas about who fought and for what reasons. Yet Black Civil War Soldier is distinct in using photographs to assert the primacy of African Americans in the Civil War and freedom as their particular motivation for taking up arms. Willis organizes archival sources in ways that reveal the Black freedom struggle in visual media produced in a wartime context. By presenting readers with a vast collection of photographs, letters, diary writings, pension records, newspapers and contemporary art, Willis shows us that vision and visibility were of central importance to Black Civil War soldiers who fought to free loved ones and end the system of enslavement.

Professionalism, privilege and publicity: representations of development cooperation in amateur photography and Finnish newspapers, 1968–1972

This article explores the visual rhetoric of development cooperation in Finnish newspapers during late 1960s and early 1970s. Photography, with the political and geographical imagination that it reinforces or dissolves, has the power to shape our perceptions of place, culture and people. The study compares two data sets, one collection of official press photography and another collection of amateur photographs shot by an individual development cooperation worker. It asks, how were development experts represented in the official press photos approved by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Finland (MFA) and, more importantly, how it differed from the set of photographs taken by an amateur photographer, Lasse Björkman, who worked in Tanzania from 1970 to 1972. The results show that the press photos excluded any signs of leisure, tourism or anything associated with exoticism, to centre on experts and expertise, professional diligence and places or actions of work. The public image of individual development cooperation workers was carefully built on the premises of political neutrality, anti-imperialism and rationality. Political appearances are, thus, not only negotiated in offices and conferences but also in choices of representation and publicity.

Developing neural-based hardware and soft ware complex with a mobile application for monitoring apple fruits on tree canopy

The paper presents a soft ware and hardware complex with a mobile application based on a neural network, designed to identify apple fruits on tree canopy, to count their number, to determine the quantity of fruits affected by diseases, as well as to estimate the growth rate of apple fruits and, thus, to calculate the total yield during the growing season. The developed soft ware and hardware complex consists of a photo (image) collection unit with client soft ware (a mobile application, a digital camera), a unit for processing the obtained images, which includes a database and a neural network, and a unit for interpretation of the obtained data. A neural network based on VGG-16 and SSD architecture was developed to identify apple fruits on the tree canopy for evaluating apple fruits and distinguishing sound fruits and those affected by disease. Training of the neural network was based on the selected classes of sound red and green apple fruits, and apple fruits affected by diseases – scab, powdery mildew, fruit rot, as well as mechanical damage. The soft ware runs and operates on Ubuntu operating system, a mobile application – on Android. The soft ware package and mobile application are capable of processing incoming photos (images) online, as well as to use previously captured photos. The generated database collects structured information about all field measurements and calculations of the number of apple fruits on the planting rows under study. The experiments conducted on an industrial apple plantation showed that the accuracy of estimating the total number of fruits on the tree canopy compared to the true value was 94.7%, the accuracy of calculating the number of affected fruits was 90.4%. When technical requirements for the server and requirements for images are met, the average recognition rate does not exceed 0.6 seconds per image, the average segmentation rate of the apple fruits from the background does not exceed 0.8 seconds per image, the average speed of analyzing one image and obtaining the recognition result does not exceed 1.5 seconds.

A note on the movement of a humpback whale from Abrolhos Bank, Brazil to South Georgia

Most models of population structure for Southern Hemisphere humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) assume that individuals feeding in the Scotia Sea migrate primarily to breeding and calving areas off Brazil. However data to support this are few and mostly indirect. Abrolhos Bank, Brazil, is the largest breeding and calving ground for humpback whales in the western South Atlantic Ocean. Historically, the waters near South Georgia held the largest concentrations of humpback whales in Antarctic Area II and were among the largest in the Southern Ocean. Photographs of individually distinctive natural markings on humpback whale flukes collected from the Scotia Sea (n=9) were compared with two collections of photographs from Brazilian waters (n=829 and n=735) to identify re-sightings. A humpback whale photographed in August 2000 at Abrolhos Bank was subsequently photographed in December 2004 near Shag Rocks off South Georgia. The migratory distance between these sightings is 3,945km. This finding constitutes the first long-distance individual resighting to be documented from either of these areas.

African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics By Cajetan Iheka

Reviewed by: African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics by Cajetan Iheka Christopher R. Hebert African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics BY CAJETAN IHEKA Duke UP, 2021. xiii + 322 pp. ISBN 9781478014744 paper. Cajetan Iheka's African Ecomedia, his first full-length work following Naturalizing Africa (2017), is a continuation of his focus on the intersection between African cultural expression and environmental issues on the continent. Unlike Naturalizing Africa, which discusses literary texts across a broad geographical range, African Ecomedia turns toward visual culture, to include films (both documentary and fictional), photographs, sculpture, and video art. Iheka broadly demarcates the "media" within this book into three different kinds: media arts (film, photography), resource media (oil, uranium), and elemental media (earth, air, water, fire) (8). Importantly, these three kinds of media are linked through transnational networks that often prioritize Western consumption over the ecological health of African environments and the well-being of African laborers who work with e-waste or dangerous resource media. By foregrounding these different kinds of media as well as their networks of production and consumption, African [End Page 190] Ecomedia broadly expands the purview of the environmental humanities and provides a framework for a nuanced discussion of media in a world that is radically interconnected. Iheka's task in this work, therefore, is not only to explicate different representations of the environment in African visual culture, but also to untangle the complicated itineraries of media in all its materiality on the African continent. Iheka's first chapter opens with a discussion of Wanuri Kahiu's film Pumzi and Fabrice Monteiro's photographic collection The Prophecy from the perspective of temporal entanglement. By calling attention to the ways in which these artists incorporate elements of the past in their new-media creations, Iheka identifies important threads of continuity between ecological attitudes of the past and those of an imagined future, most interestingly through the waste aesthetics of Monteiro's photographs. His second and third chapters approach environmental issues in various films and photography collections through the idea of spatial entanglement—for example, excessive consumption of electronic goods in Europe and North America directly contributes to rapidly growing e-waste sites in Ghana, just as a thirst for oil in the industrial centers of the Global North has traumatizing effects on resource centers in Africa, particularly the Niger Delta region. His examination of Pieter Hugo's photography collection Permanent Error in chapter two is especially salient, as he deftly analyzes the photos of burning waste in Agbogbloshie not as "poverty porn" but to explain the "logics of exploitation" that the images reveal (66). Iheka's fourth chapter focuses on the circulation of a grisly safari trophy-photo shortly after the death of Cecil the Lion and, importantly, during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2015. This photo and its viral trajectory "allows for apprehending vulnerabilities across species" (153). In this chapter, Iheka also calls for more attention toward "interspecies entanglement"—and he cites Orlando von Einsiedel's film Virunga as a positive example of media that "activates a borderland for intertwining human-nonhuman interests" (153). Finally, his fifth chapter explores African cities and their urban spaces as sites of precarity as well as sustainability. His analysis of Wu Jing's Wolf Warrior 2, a Chinese film set in an African city, is especially interesting as it underscores the struggle for influence in Africa between China and the West, as well as the racist ideologies at the heart of much media that takes Africa as its subject. As he notes, "in every battle in which elephants fight, the grass—in this case the African space and the continent's inhabitants—suffers" (207). One of the biggest strengths of Iheka's work in African Ecomedia is his commitment to a practice of what he calls insightful reading—a way of responsibly engaging with media arts that depict ecological degradation and human suffering. For example, Iheka does not turn away from the haunting photographs of young Ghanaian e-waste workers in Pieter Hugo's Permanent Error, nor does he downplay the future trauma that ordinary people will experience in the Niger Delta or in Arlit, where oil exploration and the mining of...