Historical Photographs Research Articles

Re:]Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times curated by Paul Basu

Re:]Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times curated by Paul Basu

The World Through the Lens of the Photographer Ara Güler

The art of photography appeared in Turkey between the XIX and XX centuries. In the beginning, because of the high price of the service, only the rich could afford it. The first photography studio in the Ottoman Empire was established in the Bera district of Constantinople (presently, the Beyoglu district of Istanbul), where most of the population was Christian. Here, in 1857, Pascal Sebah of Armenian descent opened a photography center. He was one of the few to be awarded the Third-Class Order of the Medjidie by Sultan Abdulmejid. Unfortunately, all his photographic works were burnt in the great fire of 1881. The sons of Sarraf Mikayel Abdullahyan – Vichen, Gevorg and Hovsep Abdullah, also occupy an important place in the history of Turkish photography. They held a monopoly on dissemination of photography throughout the Empire. In 1836, the Abdullahyan brothers became special photographers fоr Sultan Abdul Aziz. In 1867, near the Russian Embassy in Bera, they opened a photography studio named “Abdullah Brothers”. A great number of photographers of Turkish and foreign descent, working in Turkey, namely, the Gulmez brothers, Ashil Samanj, Jerome Savajian, the Papazyan brothers, Antoine Zilipojian, Othmar Pfersci, Ismayin Nesmi, Ahmed Polat and others, furthered the development of Turkish photography. Ara Güler is one of those, who played a big part in the history of photography, having created with his outstanding works a whole new world in that field.

The Night Albums: Visibility and the Ephemeral Photograph

The Night Albums: Visibility and the Ephemeral Photograph

Review: Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, directed by Rachel Dretzin

The Netflix documentary series Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey features interviews with participants in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) who relate their experiences living under the leadership of Rulon Jeffs and his son Warren. It differs from Hulu’s miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, which is a fictional retelling of Jon Krakauer’s book about Brigham Young in the nineteenth century and the Lafferty murders in the twentieth (reviewed in this issue). Although Keep Sweet includes clearly identified reenactments of events, its strength lies in the personal accounts of former members, as well as in historical photos, TV footage, and most chilling, an audiotape of Warren Jeffs as he is about to rape a twelve-year-old girl.The first two episodes show some of the attractions, as well as tribulations, of polygamous life—large families full of children, sister wives who may be competitors or cooperators, a clear identity and purpose, and most important, the pathway to eternal salvation. Despite the irony inherent in the title—taken from the exhortations of Warren Jeffs—some of these positive elements are apparent as the tale initially unfolds. Yet sexual abuse and criminal activity become the focus of the last two episodes, with the move to Eldorado, Texas, and the construction of the Yearning for Zion Ranch. It is here that the series earns its identification on IMDb as “Documentary, Crime.” In other words, this isn’t really a series about the FLDS or plural marriage. It’s an exposé—and a deserved one—of the heinous practices of men trafficking (as several people call the arranged marriages) in young women, including minors. Yet the filmmakers had to go over the top and put snake eyes on Warren Jeffs’ image and play rattles from a snake on the soundtrack. This cheapened, rather than enhanced, the gripping tales survivors told.The sincerity, honesty, and courage of the young women who shared their stories was remarkable, while the narratives of men expelled from the movement were also compelling. I don’t recall any former members use the word “brainwashing” in their admission of absolute and complete devotion to the Prophet. They had been raised to believe Warren Jeffs was not just God’s representative on earth, but God himself. They paid a high price for that belief.

The Invisible World of Images. From “Nonhuman” to “Undigital” Photography in Joanna Zylinska’s Reflections


 
 
 The article presents the theoretical views and, to a lesser extent, artistic practices of Joanna Zylinska, who in her artistic activity combines epistemological strategies of a researcher and theorist with her activities in the field of art. She develops in different manners an original project of philosophy as photography, or photography as a form of philosophizing. Posthumanist and post-anthropocentric inspirations and the inclusion of her reflections in a wider circle of a nonhuman turn constitute an epistemological framework of numerous statements devoted to the “photographic condition” in the age of dominance of digital technologies. The author argues that, in fact, photography has been a nonhuman practice since its beginnings, which is developed in her book Nonhuman Photography, preceded by the concepts of mediation and photomediation. In her latest proposals addressing the issues of the functioning of art in the era of algorithmic systems, the author develops the concept of undigital photography, which constitutes an extension of thinking about those manifestations of photography that are not of/by/for the human. The idea of “vision machines” (once proposed by Paul Virilio) takes the form of a holistic view of photography as a “medium of life,” which, unlike modernist descriptions of it as a “medium of death” (Roland Barthes), makes a significant contribution to both the theory and the history of photography. The synthetic presentation of Zylinska’s concepts is an attempt to describe and interpret the contemporary state of theoretical and methodological awareness in the field of contemporary image studies. It stems from the need to constantly reinterpret the canon of thinking about the medium of photography in the epoch of cooperation between human and non-human agencies in the area of pictorial production of images addressed to both people and machines.
 
 

METHODS FOR FINDING THE LOCATION OF HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS FOR REPEAT PHOTOGRAPHY

Historical photographs are windows into the past. By comparing historical and modern photographs we can measure change; but how do we find the original camera location to repeat a photograph? Historical, geographic, topographic, and other clues may be used, but we lack a numerical method suitable for any user to find the general location of a historical photograph. We derive a geometric method that can be applied in the field or prior. The method uses measurements of at least three points of reference (POR) in the historical photograph and corresponding geographic locations measured via a compass or on a map. rePhoto, an open-source R package that applies the method and outputs spatial KML files for use with Google Earth, is provided. The geometric method was tested on 20 photographs with known locations and validated by independent users. The effectiveness of the method varied among users, but overall predicted a search area containing the original camera location 70% of the time (the prediction accuracy) and typically predicted search areas 99.5% smaller than the total region evaluated by the method. The method was robust regardless of whether three or four POR were used, and worked well even when POR were more than 30 km away. The proposed method only works for photographs with at least three identifiable geographic POR, thus other methods are illustrated for use more generally. California and the western USA have numerous iconic historical photographs, for which many locations could be found and re-photographed using methods described here.

An Academic Study of Clothing Ethnoculture and Modern Clothes Production: Interaction Practices in Ukraine

AbstractAs a result of globalization processes, the lives of average people are nowadays filled with uniform products. In Ukraine, contemporary clothing featuring national markers stands out from among the wide range of cultural and artistic trends. Ukrainian academics are currently studying the specific features of the diffusion of traditional clothing into everyday urban life. A knowledge of the historical path of the penetration, adaptation, and development of traditional Ukrainian clothing within the urban cultural system is necessary for an understanding of its modern transformation processes. An examination of the theoretical model of the diffusion and development of nationally marked clothing from 1861 to 2020 reveals that, in the context of urbanized culture, the spread of Ukrainian clothing is subject to five factors: social and economic, religious and ritual, identification (patriotic), cultural and artistic, and design and production. Within each subperiod, namely 1861–1920, 1921–1990, and 1991–2020, these factors have influenced clothing culture to varying extents, and their content is transformed in accordance with the historical circumstances. In addition to the publication of the above developments in scientific journals, considerable efforts to popularize them are also being made. Several thematic lectures have been given on the influence of the above-mentioned driving forces at different historical stages, accompanied by the multimedia presentation of prominent members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia posing in Ukrainian attire. The ZETA Atelier clothing manufacturing team produces collars embroidered with Ukrainian folk motifs, which became fashionable among Ukrainian intellectuals in the early 20th century. Collaboration based on the educational platform of the clothing brand Zerno has given rise to the idea of producing a line of stockinette T-shirts with prints of historical photographs of the Ukrainian cultural figures previously featured during lectures and presentations. The aim is to shape a contemporary urban culture of nationally marked clothing via the introduction of national images into consumer practices.

A morphological comparison between a death mask of the American Prophet Joseph Smith and a photograph likely to depict him

Application of forensic identification methods to establish authenticity of a historical photograph is made. Joseph Smith Junior was the Prophet and founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as Mormons. In 1844 Joseph and his brother Hyrum were shot and killed by a mob of angry men who opposed his church and its followers. Shortly after death, Joseph’s face was moulded, and a death mask was made. Photography was invented during the life of Joseph Smith Jnr and there are reports that he had a daguerreotype (photograph) taken, but no image has been verified to be of him. A photographic image of an Illinois man from the 1840s is linked by circumstantial evidence, such as similar clothing, to Joseph Smith Jnr and the photographer’s studio being close to where Joseph Smith III was at the time the photograph has been produced. A morphological comparison is made between the death mask and the photograph in order to establish the likelihood that the man in the photograph is the prophet. Sixteen points of anatomical similarity were found between the death mask and the photograph, the most compelling of which is asymmetry of the face and a possible scar in the area of the left eyebrow. Superim­position confirmed morphological similarity. Finding of close morphological similarity is not an ultimate proof of identification, but increases the probability that the photograph depicts Joseph Smith Junior. This is the first case of an anatomical comparison between a death mask and a photograph.

Towards a methodological approach to identify the main components used in historic photographs

In this work, a methodology is proposed to identify the components used in historic photographs using non-invasive and non-destructive characterisation techniques. The methodology provides an approach for analysing photographs by following three steps represented in a flowchart: firstly, the type of binder is determined by identifying morphological and structural characteristics; secondly, the presence or absence of a baryta layer is established; and finally, the presence of organic components used as part of a protective layer is determined. The characteristics and properties revealed using this methodology identify the type of historic photograph through different analytical techniques that provide science-based evidence for any qualitative observations first made. These techniques are interchangeable as they identify specific characteristics in the photographs by using infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopic ellipsometry, confocal microscopy and atomic force microscopy, among others. As such, the methodology proposed facilitates a secure evidence-based classification of photographs and provides valuable information for their conservation.

Negative/Positive: A History of Photography

Negative/Positive: A History of Photography

Photography and the Organic Nonhuman: Photographic Art with Light, Chlorophyll, Yeasts, and Bacteria

ABSTRACT The concept of nonhuman in relation to photography has recently been mostly theorized through technology, while organic nonhuman agents and processes at work in photography have received less attention. In this article, works by three contemporary Finnish artists who incorporate organic materials and processes into photography are analyzed to renegotiate the borders between photography, bioart, and science. This leads to a rethinking of the dichotomy between the concepts of technological and organic in the context of contemporary photographic art. Combining new materialist and posthumanist theories with photography history and theory allows for a multidisciplinary method that recognizes the worth of both human and nonhuman agents and processes at work. The artworks are analyzed as temporal and processual, taking into account their performative qualities.

The Slide Lecture: Introduction to a Special Issue of History of Photography

The Slide Lecture: Introduction to a Special Issue of History of Photography

Southwest Cinematography: The Scientific, Ethnic and Aesthetic Nature of Sun Mingjing’s Frontier Photographic Perspective

Sun Mingjing is the pioneer of modern Chinese film education and the pioneer of Chinese TV industry. From 1938 to 1945, Sun Mingjing moved westward to Sichuan due to the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, and the southwest countries naturally became the theme of his photography. At that time, there were many provinces such as Sichuan, Kang, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Tibet in the southwest. However, the academic circles at that time paid little attention to and researched on this area due to the remote location, the difficult roads, and the distribution of many ethnic minorities. Photography is not only an image recording medium, but also an important image-building tool. A history of photography is also a history of visual viewing and image changes. The author tries to sort out Sun Mingjing’s Southwest photographic works, compare his photographic works with other works of similar themes in the same period, and study Sun Mingjing’s photography investigation of landscape, geography, ethnic minorities and people’s livelihood, in which way a glimpse of the social phenomenon in ethnic minority areas in modern Southwest China can be viewed from those real images, and we can explore the scientific, national and aesthetic approach to appreciate his works.

Putting a Human Face on It: Gender and Photographic Meaning in a Canadian Women's Coal Mine Campaign

AbstractIn January 1999, the Canadian government announced their withdrawal from the Cape Breton mining industry with a settlement package for redundant miners, which was considered inadequate by miners and their families. In response, a group of women organized a community-based campaign, United Families (UF), led by two women who traveled to Ottawa to meet national politicians presenting themselves explicitly as “miners’ wives.” While the UF located their campaign within the context of family and community, as expected of miners’ wives, their principal focus was the men disadvantaged by the settlement. Here they strayed onto the terrain of the men's union.To support their case the women took photographs of miners leaving the pit at the end of a shift and organized them into an album. This became a catalyst for the disjuncture between the gendered expectations associated with female roles, and the women's efforts to represent the interests of the men. Intended as objective evidence in support of their position, the photographs carried a range of complex emotions relating to the women's campaign: They expressed the subjective meanings of the women's relationship with mining and the men photographed, as well as providing material evidence of the condition of the miners. This subjectivity was overlaid onto gendered subtexts inscribed within the history of photography in the public and domestic spheres.In campaign negotiations the women struggled to control the meaning of the photographic images and their endeavors resulted in only very minor amendments to the original settlement. The UF women's creative use of photography ultimately undermined the legitimacy of the women's negotiations. However, the photographs remain a testament to the history of mining in Cape Breton and to the emotional commitment of women to a partnership with men forged through the sexual division of labor in coal mining.This article draws upon a range of evidence and theories of gender, activism, and photographic practice to analyze the ways in which the women were disadvantaged in their campaign.

Heritage Building Information Modeling (HBIM) of the ruined and damaged architectural heritage in Upper Kama Region (Russia)

Building Information Modeling is a tool for the disappearing architectural heritage and environment recreation in 3D virtual reality. The article presents the information modeling experience of ruined and damaged architectural heritage, located in theUpper Kama region in the north Perm Kray (Russia) . The Scan to HBIM technology applied for modeling: information modeling based on laser scanning and a photogrammetric survey. The challenges of the work process are specified. Using the collected data (archival documents and engineering survey results), the parameters of each building's elements are supplemented with information about the history, damage, transformation, and condition of structures and architectural elements. Historic photographs helped to restore the buildings' 3D appearance. Archival descriptions provide the colour and coating materials' characteristics. Full-fledged virtual copies of ruined Orthodox churches of the Upper Kama region were created. The article proposes further work using obtained 3D-information models, including gamification, and virtual and augmented reality.Keywords: Architectural Heritage; Heritage Building Information Modeling; Laser scanning; Virtual reconstruction.

El edificio histórico del Instituto de Botánica Darwinion de San Isidro: el mensaje silencioso del legado del Dr. Cristóbal M. Hicken

The Instituto de Botánica Darwinion (CONICET and ANCEFyN) was founded by the end of 1910 in the San Martín district by Cristóbal María Hicken as his private botanical research laboratory. Its name honors Charles Darwin for his brilliant theory of biological evolution. In 1924, Cristóbal M. Hicken made public his desire to bequeath the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion to the National State, a fact that only materialized in 1934. But in the early ‘30s, he decided to move the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion to a new building located in the San Isidro district, built especially to contain the institute and also his retirement home. After 87 years of existence and five building extensions, the historic building of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro maintains its integrity and attracts the attention of both the public and architecture and design professionals. Based on the study of building characteristics and the thought of Cristóbal M. Hicken, the main objective of this work is to evaluate whether the external and internal structure of the historic Darwinion building in San Isidro, together with the ornamentation and distribution of original functions of each room, respond only to an aesthetic and functional design or if, in addition, they have a symbolic meaning, a vision of the world, a silent message for those who want (and know how) to understand. With this central purpose as a guide, we carried out a multidisciplinary investigation to reconstruct Cristóbal M. Hicken’s vision in the design of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro. We started from the analysis of the original building in the San Martín district in search of any possible design background, to then focus the attention entirely on the building in San Isidro. Plans, public documents, correspondence, historical photographs, academic and dissemination articles of the time, pre-Hispanic South American ethnographic information, Argentine historical information between 1860 and 1930, and interviews with relatives and historians were studied. In short, the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion in San Isidro was created as a museum and a laboratory plus a home. The design of the museum agrees with the concept of “temple of Botany” manifested by Cristóbal M. Hicken himself, and whose first sign is observed in the etymology of the name of the institute. Its ornamentation is eclectic, since it combines symbols of Andean pre-Hispanic cultures with symbols of Western civilization, and it is structured according to each room (portal, front rooms, herbarium, library) and orientation (towards the street or towards the inner garden). This ornamentation works like a discourse in symbolic key with multiple messages for the visitor: it reflects an original, foundational, and ancient Argentine identity, which in turn communicates that the Darwinion is a place where a silent and fertile unveiling of the knowledge, of the secrets of evolution, takes place protected from evils and misfortunes by Nature itself. The design plan of the institute, the portal, the access terrace, and the internal garden convey desirable masonic values through the symbolic language, typical and traditional of Freemasonry. Likewise, we show evidence of Dr. Cristóbal M. Hicken’s great interest in Andean pre-Hispanic cultures, of his refined knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology, his belonging to Argentine Freemasonry and consequent ability to symbolic language, and his knowledge of construction, cosmology, and analytic geometry. For these reasons, and considering his participation in the supervision of the building work declared by the newspapers of his time, the probable direct intervention of Cristóbal M. Hicken is proposed both in the design of the building of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro, as well as in the design of its ornamentation. In addition, evidence is provided of the possible intervention of Arturo Prins and Fernando de Estrada in the project of the building.

Geoarchaeological remote sensing prospection of Miocene limestone quarries in the hinterland of Roman Carnuntum and Vindobona (Vienna Basin, Austria)

Abstract We have documented quarries in Miocene limestone in the Vienna Basin (Austria), Hundsheim Mountains, Leitha Mountains and Rust Hills in high-resolution airborne laser scanning data and orthophotos aiming for a diachronic quarry inventory since the Roman period. The study region was divided into 6 quarry regions and the quarries of the whole study area as well as each separate region were analyzed concerning different rock types, mean, minimum and maximum quarry area and development in the different maps. Age information have been sought from historical maps, historical photography and paintings as well as quarry face graffiti. In total, 658 quarries, possible quarries and shallow quarries have been outlined in the detailed digital terrain models, which were compared with 453 quarries indicated in four generations of historical maps between the years 1754 to 1872. The numbers of quarries are generally low in the Walter map (1754–1756), the First Military Survey (1773–1785) and Second Military Survey (1809–1846) but increase tremendously in the maps of the Third Military Survey (1872–1873). Most old quarries were quarried also in subsequent periods, commonly destroying virtually all pre-existing traces. According to our results two types of quarries represent highly interesting targets for more detailed studies in the search for Roman quarries: (i) areas in historical maps with suspicious uneven terrain, which have never been outlined as quarries and areas that have been mapped as “old quarries” – especially in the Third Military Survey; examples represent areas northwest and west of Pfaffenberg in Bad Deutsch-Altenburg (Lower Austria), “Gruibert” in Winden am See (Burgenland) and “Hoher Berg” in Stotzing (Burgenland); (ii) Shallow quarries, which neither appear in historical maps nor in the mining archive of the Geological Survey of Austria like the one from the saddle between Pfaffenberg and Hundsheimer Berg.

Photography as Absence: Implicit Histories (Africa, Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries)

Photographic material can sometimes pose an overwhelming and distorting presence, especially when it comes to the writing of history. Some of the first visual recordings of African social worlds via photography would long serve as a model for images of the continent. This phenomenon has only been reinforced by recirculations of images from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Intended as a counterpoint, this article will contemplate a paradoxical history of photography by considering it based not on its presence but on its very absence. A work of history supported by photographic and written sources from the years 1870 to 1910, this contribution focuses on photography as absence, as disappearance, and as erasure. This implicit history focuses on various essential phenomena that characterize the (non)production of photographic images of African social worlds in the age of colonial expansion. It first deals with the key question of the material destruction of old photographs of Africa. For a variety of reasons, an entire part of what was photographed is now either lost or in the process of becoming lost. One of the long-standing major effects of this has been a double erasure of African photography pioneers, who are poorly represented or underrepresented in institutional archives and have been deprived of historiographical attention; in many cases, their history remains to be written. The article then raises the question of refusals to pose and potential refusals to take photographs. We will see several scattered traces of such evasions of photography. The problem of self-censorship and the very restricted circulation of certain images, particularly those threatening the stability of colonial narratives, will also be studied at this juncture. Finally, the article will take a closer look at the photographs taken by Alex J. Braham. This individual, a district agent in Ogugu (southern Nigeria) for the Royal Niger Company at the turn of the twentieth century, was an eager photographer. His personal album contains several shots of a secret ceremony that he took without the participants’ knowledge, having hidden with his camera in a tent. This example of concealment (not of the image but of the photographic act itself) is also one of the possible manifestations of the invisibilities that have played a major part in forming and deforming photographic imagery of Africa.

DEVELOPING A VIRTUAL OPEN-AIR MUSEUM OF VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

Vernacular architecture is an integral part of the national cultural heritage. Today, however, many of these buildings exist only on old plans or photographs and the average citizen has no opportunity to get acquainted with this part of the national identity. Therefore, in our work, we present the development of two web applications with the aim of creating a virtual open-air museum for presenting vernacular architecture in the Czech Republic. The applications were created using open-source technologies, and are implemented with methods that allow easy transfer from one operating system to another. The presented content is a carefully selected sub-sample of more than 10,000 available records representing all regional types of vernacular architecture. The result is one application designed for editors to manage the presented content and one application allowing interactive viewing of the available geo-located records designed for the general public. Individual records can be searched either directly using the map window or by querying the attribute table. These records contain descriptive information about the object, as well as historical photographs and plans and, for some objects, additional information in the form of 3D models, PDF documents and other files. The applications are designed in such a way that their content can be freely expanded in the future and thus contribute to the popularization of vernacular architecture among the general public, which was the main reason for their creation.

Double Index. The Self-Shadow in American Photography of the Second Half of the 20th Century

The article focuses on the notion of the image of self-shadow in American photography in the second half of the twentieth century, understood as a shadow silhouette of the creator captured in a photograph. The two main problems that concern the author’s research are the lack of current, theoretical study on the problem of shadow in the history of photography from the perspective of art history (V. Stoichita, R. Casati, P. Cavanagh, H. Kanaan) and the lack of the definition of the phenomenon of self-shadow and its possible types in self-portraiture. The author’s proposition of a definition of self-shadow is based on selected photographs by four artists whose works touch upon the problem of shadow in the context of relations between the “self” and the “other” (Lee Friedlander), race and subjective invisibility (Shawn W. Walker), mask and the other-self (Andy Warhol), and the intimate recording of identity (Nan Goldin). In her analyses, the author discusses the problem of the hybrid ontology of the shadow, which is both visible and visual. In this understanding, the shadow not only refers to a physical body, present “here and now” but more importantly evokes a sense of presence, even when the artist’s body is absent in the picture. The double index refers to the image leaving its mark both in reality and on light-sensitive paper. The rudimentary, vitalistic relation linking the human body with its shadow is only a starting point for analyses of the complexity of its status and symbolism. The concepts framing Andy Warhol’s Polaroid are twinning, the mask, and the Jungian theory of the shadow archetype. To discuss the self-portrait of Shawn W. Walker, the author applies the literary-philosophical concept of invisibility based on writings from Black existentialists (W.E.B. Du Bois, F. Fanon, R. Ellison). The analyses of Lee Friedlander’s photograph have been based on the psychological distinction between the figures of the “self” and the “other”. The closing concepts that frame Nan Goldin’s self-portrait are the haptic thinking subject (M. Smolińska) and the notion of a diary. The critical apparatus of the study is supplemented by contemporary analyses of the myth of Narcissus, the mythical origins of the self-portrait, and the notion of the index (after R. Krauss, M. Michałowska, M.A. Doane).