Photographic Sources Research Articles

Flood Photography and the Visual Component of Environmental American Studies

This article develops a new approach for using photographic sources that might be of interest to American Studies scholars whose research contributes broadly to environmental education. Over the past forty years of photographic scholarship, scientific and other record images have become relatively prominent as primary sources. This visual material can be used to interrogate past responses to flooding and other environmental events. On the other hand, discourses around social documentary continue to frame how the human impacts of rapidly changing environments are visualised. By comparing two sets of images from the 1930s, the article juxtaposes the approaches of photographers associated with these two conventionally distinct areas to offer a more rounded view of flood photography. The discussion starts with a reflective section detailing how I arrived at my current research project. Following this, the categories of scientific and social documentary photography are described relationally in the context of the agencies of the New Deal, in the process setting out an argument for the contribution that engaged visuality can make to Environmental American Studies. Afterwards, the attention shifts to focus on images from two official contexts. The first example concerns record photography from the Soil Conservation Experiment Station in Bethany, Missouri, whilst the second considers photographs that the Resettlement Administration produced in response to flooding in Posey County, Indiana, in 1937. The article concludes by remarking on some of the implications of this method for how American Studies researchers currently conduct environmentally focused projects.

Background adaptive PosMarker based on online generation and detection for locating watermarked regions in photographs

Robust watermarking technology can embed invisible messages in screens to trace the source of unauthorized screen photographs. Locating the four vertices of the embedded region in the photograph is necessary, as existing watermarking methods require geometric correction of the embedded region before revealing the message. Existing localization methods suffer from a performance trade-off: either causing unaesthetic visual quality by embedding visible markers or achieving poor localization precision, leading to message extraction failure. To address this issue, we propose a background adaptive position marker, PosMarker, based on the gray level co-occurrence matrix and the noise visibility function. Besides, we propose an online generation scheme that employs a learnable generator to cooperate with the detector, allowing joint optimization between the two. This simultaneously improves both visual quality and detection precision. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superior localization precision of our PosMarker-based method compared to others.

THE HISTORY OF SINO-RUSSIAN COMMUNICATIONS ON ANTHROPOLOGY: WITH THE EXAMPLE OF DONG TICHEN, THE FIRST CHINESE ANTHROPOLOGIST WHO STUDIED IN THE SOVIET UNION

Introduction. The centennial development of physical anthropology in China can be divided into three periods: 1) the initial period fr om the end of the 19th century to the founding of New China in 1949, when anthropology was imported from the West and gradually localized; 2) the unstable development period from 1949 to 1976, which was faced with a major restructuring of the discipline, the epoch of Sino-Soviet friendship, and a ten-year period of turbulence of the Cultural Revolution; 3) the period of rapid development after the reform and opening up of the country at the end of the 1970s. Materials and methods. The author presents the history of anthropological exchanges between China and Russia over the past hundred years through the study of literature and photographic sources. Results. Before the founding of New China, communications of anthropology between China and Russia was represented by S.M. Shirokogorov; after the founding of New China, it was represented by N.N. Cheboksarov; during the period of Sino-Soviet friendship, China adopted the suggestions of Soviet scientists and launched journals, translated and published monographs, and dispatched international students, Dong Tichen and Cui Chengyao, to study in the Soviet Union. Conclusion. In this article, for the first time, a large number of old photographs from private collections have been released to show the life story of Dong Tichen, the first anthropologist who went to the Soviet Union to study and returned to China. After graduating from Beijing Normal University, Dong Tichen went to Moscow University to study anthropology and obtained his Ph.D. in biology in 1961. He became a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Fudan University, wh ere he was one of the earliest teachers of anthropology in New China. His research was pioneering and prospective, for example, his proposed taxonomic position of the Gigantopithecus was very forward-looking; he created a precedent in the study of dermatoglyphics in China and contributed to the foundations of anthropometrics. His return solidified the discipline of anthropology at Fudan University, and during his short life he trained several students who would become the mainstay of anthropology in the new China in the future. Unfortunately, he died in 1966, as a result of social unrest and change.

Review article Railway station in Khabarovsk. History of changes at Khabarovsk-1 station

The object of the study is the railway station Khabarovsk-1, Khabarovsk. Particular attention is paid to the reconstruction of the railway station building, the station square with architectural monuments. The analysis of literary and photographic sources traces the history of the creation of the station at various historical stages.The novelty of the study lies in the union of information about the stages of change in the station square and the station building from the beginning of its creation to the present, with the names of architects and sculptors.

Commercial advertisements in the souvenir brochures and school yearbooks of two catholic schools in Cienfuegos (1912-1925)

Commercial advertisements published in Souvenir Brochures and School Yearbooks they were one of the economic pillars of two of the Catholic schools located in the city of Cienfuegos. The advertisements promoted ideas of modernity and progress, while consolidating relations between the Catholic Church and urban family businesses. To study them, the methodology proposed by john Collier, designed to interpret photographic sources in general, was assumed. The commercials established the dynamic interactions between these media outlets and their audiences.

Landscapes of Galicia as Viewed through the Camera: Visualization of Belligerent Spaces of the First World War

This article analyses practices of capturing the experience of the First World War on the Eastern Front and the construction of militarized life worlds by combatants of the Russian Army and photojournalists. The author aims to determine the significance of the belligerent landscapes of Galicia in the formation of participants’ specific behavioural strategies and practices in the first industrial war. Methodologically, the author relies on the synthesis of approaches of spatial research and visual anthropology, conceptual provisions of landscape studies, and cultural geography. To analyse the photographic situation on the Eastern Front of the First World War, the peculiarities of the further existence of visual images in group and collective communication, identify techniques for constructing the image of the Galician environment in 1914–1915, the author refers to photographic sources of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents. A key thesis of the study is the assumption that through the practice of photographing militarized landscapes, mental maps of alien space were constructed, and the imaginary appropriation of the territory annexed by the law of war took place. As a result, the author concludes that the landscapes of Galicia in photographs are a phenomenological construct, and not a direct reflection of reality or objective evidence. The photographic situation itself acts as an interpretation because photographers follow the imperatives of their own (prewar) life experience, the ideas formed by the prevailing discourses, consider the technical limitations of the era and shocking experiences in the spaces of death. The author also reveals the therapeutic function of war visualization and the role of the camera as a protective barrier for the photographer. The analysis determines the dynamic relationship of strategies for capturing military experience with the course of hostilities, as well as the need to study photographic albums dedicated to the life of individual units of the Russian Army or representing a series of images in a particular locality of Galicia as a whole and consistent photographic travelogue. The modern interpretation of military photographs makes it possible to reveal a layer of environmental consequences of the First World War in Eastern Europe which is latent for the photographer.

Automatic classification of land cover from LUCAS in-situ landscape photos using semantic segmentation and a Random Forest model

Spatially explicit information on land cover (LC) is commonly derived using remote sensing, but the lack of training data still remains a major challenge for producing accurate LC products. Here, we develop a computer vision methodology to extract LC information from photos from the Land Use-Land Cover Area Frame Survey (LUCAS). Given the large number of photographs available and the comprehensive spatial coverage, the objective is to show how the automatic classification of photos could be used to develop reference data sets for training and validation of LC products as well as other purposes. We first selected a representative sample of 1120 photos covering eight major LC types across the European Union. We then applied semantic segmentation to these photos using a neural network (Deeplabv3+) trained with the ADE20k dataset. For each photo, we extracted the original LC identified by the LUCAS surveyor, the segmented objects, and the pixel count for each ADE20k class. Using the latter as input features, we then trained a Random Forest model to classify the LC of the photo. Examining the relationship between the objects/features extracted by Deeplabv3+ and the LC labels provided by the LUCAS surveyors demonstrated how the LC classes can be decomposed into multiple objects, highlighting the complexity of LC classification from photographs. The results of the classification show a mean F1 Score of 89%, increasing to 93% when the Wetland class is not considered. Based on these results, this approach holds promise for the automated retrieval of LC information from the rich source of LUCAS photographs as well as the increasing number of geo-referenced photos now becoming available through social media and sites like Mapillary or Google Street View.

Ordinary Weimar: Global Press Photography, ‘Distant Seeing’ and the Normalcy of Crisis in the 1920s

Abstract Press photography was an important medium of public communication in Germany in the 1920s. Scholarship on the topic has had two distinct foci. First, research on the ‘golden age’ of visual news has mainly concentrated on the visual coverage and political implications of singular events or certain topics. Secondly, the history of photography tends to concentrate on the period’s most prominent photographers, highlighting exceptional and high-quality examples of the genre. This article argues for a change of perspective, emphasizing press photography as an industry that disseminated thousands of pictures to a wide public. Focusing on its production side and a form of ‘distant seeing’ gives a better understanding of the transnational iconography of the present as it was manufactured within this professional field. Examining portfolios distributed by important actors, such as Georg Pahl’s Berlin-based photo agency, helps chart the visual media landscape through which people became acquainted with local events and national and international politics. This iconography contributed to an image of ‘Weimar’ as a society which appeared much more ‘normal’ and more comparable to the developments in other countries than ex post interpretations of Weimar as a society in crisis suggest. Global press photography fostered homogenization of the ‘mattering maps’ of a transnational public. This concentration on the global embedding of press photography and its products balances interpretations which use photographic sources to stress either the glamorous or the dramatic aspects of life in the 1920s. The transnational collation of visual news created an image of Weimar as only one among several societies challenged by modern crisis.

Photographs as an essential biodiversity resource: drivers of gaps in the vascular plant photographic record.

The photographic record is increasingly becoming an important biodiversity resource for primary research and conservation monitoring. However, globally, there are important gaps in this record even in relatively well-researched floras. To quantify the gaps in the Australian native vascular plant photographic record, we systematically surveyed 33 sources of well-curated species photographs, assembling a list of species with accessible and verifiable photographs, as well as the species for which this search failed. Of 21 077 Australian native species, 3715 lack a verifiable photograph across our 33 surveyed resources. There are three major geographic hotspots of unphotographed species in Australia, all far from current population centres. Many unphotographed species are small in stature or uncharismatic, and many are also recently described. The large number of recently described species without accessible photographs was surprising. There are longstanding efforts in Australia to organise the plant photographic record, but in the absence of a global consensus to treat photographs as an essential biodiversity resource, this has not become common practice. Many recently described species are small-range endemics and some have special conservation status. Completing the botanical photographic record across the globe will facilitate a virtuous feedback loop of more efficient identification, monitoring and conservation.

Représenter l’égyptologue, rendre hommage au Boulonnais. Le portrait d’Auguste Mariette par Florent Buret

In this paper, we propose the first study of the portrait of Auguste Mariette kept in the Château Comtal – Musée de Boulognesur- Mer (France). Painted by Florent Buret in 1899, the work pays tribute to the Egyptologist born in this city in 1821. Artificially composed from photographic sources, this portrait evokes his work for the Louvre and Boulaq museums in France and Egypt. It was included in the “historical gallery” of the town hall of Boulogne-sur-Mer with fourteen other personalities of the city. As such, it reflects the pride of a late 19th century French town and its scholarly and political networks.

Manet and Photography: Looking at Olympia

Édouard Manet’s life and work have been studied using photographic sources that provide essential yet still underutilised information about his oeuvre and artistic process. Beginning in the 1860s, Manet employed the firm of Anatole Godet to photograph his paintings, probably as records of stock, and this article considers how Manet may have used these photographs as the basis for tracings and watercolours that served as intermediaries in the production of etchings after several of his canvases. Godet also photographed the posthumous retrospective of Manet’s work in 1884, providing the only known images of that landmark exhibition. After Manet’s death, Léon Leenhoff, the son of Manet’s wife Suzanne Leenhoff, hired Fernand Lochard to photograph works remaining in the artist’s studio, and in several other locations, to illustrate a corresponding inventory. The photographs were annotated by Léon with information about each work including its exhibition history and bound into albums. While select scholars have engaged with these important materials, Manet’s use of photography and the role photography played in the posthumous dissemination of his works remain insufficiently understood. Taking Olympia as a case study, this article aims to demonstrate how these archival sources contribute to Manet studies.

Seeing, Saving, and Remembering Barnardo’s Children: Technologies of Access and Preservation in Historical Research

This essay explores how photography and digitization have shaped access to and preservation of key sources of the historical phenomenon of child migration from the UK to Canada, as organized by Barnardo’s charity. It examines two case studies illustrating how stakeholders in the history of Barnardo’s have adopted digital technologies and networks to ensure the continued preservation and dissemination of photographic sources of that history. Focusing on the significance of digital tools in the process of researching case studies, this discussion opens up broader questions of the role of access and preservation technologies in transnational historical research.

Guidance for Professional Use of Social Media in Nutrition and Dietetics Practice

Guidance for Professional Use of Social Media in Nutrition and Dietetics Practice

Коммеморативные материалы для создания виртуальной символической среды историко-культурной памяти (на примере памятных мест С. В. Рахманинова и М. В. Асеева)

The purpose of the study is to consider the issues of developing a theoretical historical and cultural basis for creating a virtual symbolic environment of historical and cultural memory (virtual tours to memorial places associated with S. V. Rachmaninoff’s and M. V. Aseev’s stay and activities, using special equipment) with the help of the software product 3DVista Virtual Tour Pro. Scientific novelty lies in the following: based on general theoretical provisions in the field of modern cultural studies and the analysis of historical sources associated with S. V. Rachmaninoff’s and M. V. Aseev’s memorial places, the necessary layer of historically and culturally relevant information has been identified in order to create a virtual model of the memorial places. As a result, the researchers have proved that the preserved cultural heritage sites and related archival and photographic sources are more representative compared to narrative ones.

Азиз Гази-Мансура в Бахчисарае

On the basis of various groups of sources, the author considers the origins and functioning of a spiritual cult complex formed in the medieval period around the Gazi-Mansur Medini Aziz in the southeastern suburb of Bakhchisarai. The phenomenon of a wide spread of azizes in the territory of the Crimean Peninsula connected, primarily, with a high popularity of various Sufi teachings with the population of the region, is analyzed. The author traces the etymology of the term aziz, in all probability derived from the Arabic word عزیز, aziyzun translated as “friend”, “neighbor”, “om-nipotent”, “precious”. Given the lack of reliable historical facts about Gazi-Mansur, a large number of legends and folk traditions have been studied in order to find information about this semi-legendary personality. The author admits that, a native of Medina, he might have been a companion to the Prophet (Sakhab). It was established that his grave could be only one of the places of appear-ance of the saint (maqam), where one could enter into a spiritual connection with him. If this as-sumption is correct, it is possible that such saints’ maqams may exist anywhere in the Muslim world where he could be popular. On the basis of the late 19th century photographic sources, the architec-tural appearance of the complex, whose centre was a tekieh presumably built in the 15th century, was recreated. The author has reconstructed the chronology of functioning of the spiritual centre that had been almost completely destroyed by the mid 20th century. The current state of the landmark, which is still in a state of neglect, is considered. Emphasis is put on the need for a comprehensive scholarl study of the complex based on fundamental archaeological research.

Retracing the Footsteps

The paper presents preliminary research into the original scope of the Skušek Collection, based on four lists and an old museum inventory entry of the collection of Asian art collected by Ivan Skušek Jr. during his six-year stay in China between 1914 and 1920. Furthermore, it presents the cross-referencing of the mentioned documents with the first inventory record when it was formally taken over by the National Museum of Slovenia in an attempt to recreate the original scope of the collection. Through analysis and comparison of these records and with support of photographic sources this research attempts to put objects of the Skušeks’ original collection into four different groups based on provenance research. Through several case studies it gives new insights into the dynamics of the largely unknown parts of history of the collection, and the paths some of the individual objects travelled over several decades in the first half of the 20th century.

British inter-war aerial photogrammetric mapping in the MENA region: archives, access and research potential

The use of aerial photography in the Middle East and North Africa region stretches back to the First World War. While historic aerial photography has continued to be utilized in research in the region, there has been only limited consideration of different photographic sources. This paper will focus on the use of aerial photography by British forces in the MENA region for photogrammetric mapping missions in the period from the First World War through to the start of the Second World War, when large areas were surveyed via the capture of overlapping vertical photographs. The discussion will cover the survival and archiving of these collections, as well as current issues of access, as well as their overall archaeological potential, particularly as an early source of earth-observation data, comparable to more recent satellite imagery archives.

Sources of Photographs in Jack London’s The People of the Abyss

Hoping to interest Cosmopolitan editor Bailey Millard in a series of reports from the Snark voyage, Jack London wrote to him on 18 February 1906. London offered The People of the Abyss, his eyewitness account of life in London’s East End, as proof that he could ‘deliver the goods’. He mentioned the research he had done and the material he had gathered. He also maintained that he had taken ‘two-thirds of the photographs with [his] own camera’.1 London did not specify whether he had in mind the American edition of The People of the Abyss, published by the Macmillan Company (New York, 1903); the English edition, published by Isbister and Company Limited (London, 1903); or the Wilshire's Magazine serialization.2 Each of these contains a different number of photographs, only some of which appear in more than one of the published versions. London first mentioned photographs for...

The iPhone, the reflex, and the vinyl record: is the smartphone taking the best intraoperative photographs?

Surgical field photography is a tough exercise: surgeons dedicate the required time for photography even during complex surgeries; the intense lighting of the operating field works against photography, and the surgeon has to utilise whatever equipment is available. We selected five complex interventions and two surgeons (one with an iPhone® and one with a Digital Single Lens Reflex [DSLR] camera) who each took a photograph of the operating field. The source of photographs was blinded, and the image quality was scored using a 5-point Likert scale by three groups of team members with differing experiences: six senior surgeons, two junior surgeons, and four surgical residents. We evaluated the resolution (adequate for clinical interpretation), colour (appear true and natural), contrast (adequate to distinguish different structures), and overall quality. The mean ± SEM overall image quality was similar for both the smartphone and DSLR (3.7 ± 0.1 vs. 3.8 ± 0.11; p = 0.87), as were most of the scores for each image characteristic. Surgeons seek objectivity and efficiency. The smartphone is a more convenient photographic equipment and produces identical results than the DSLR. Human beings can be sensitive to image quality. The DSLR image was found to be sharper, however, this was found to be imperceptible.

The COVID-19 Disappeared: From Traumatic to Ambiguous Loss and the Role of the Internet for the Bereaved in Italy.

In Italy, in the very first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic there was a dramatic rise in mortality. However, families were forbidden because of lockdown regulations to be with their loved ones at their deathbeds or to hold funerals. This qualitative study examined bereavement experiences among family members, how they processed their grief, and how they used social networks in particular by uploading photographs during the working-through of bereavement. The sample was composed of 40 individuals aged 23–63 (80% women) from different Italian cities severely impacted by the virus, including a subgroup from the province of Bergamo, which was the city with the highest mortality rate during that time. All interviews were conducted by phone, Skype, or Zoom. Then, the transcriptions underwent a thematic analysis using Atlas.ti. The main themes that emerged were: abandonment anger and guilt, dehumanized disappeared, derealization and constant rumination, and social support and the importance of sharing photos on Facebook. Importantly, the use of social networks proved to be a valuable source of support and photographs were a powerful tool in facilitating the process of mourning by encouraging narration and sharing. Grief had a complex profile: on the one hand, it was traumatic and characterized by all the risk factors causing mourners to experience prolonged grief, but on the other, some features were similar to ambiguous loss (that occurs without closure and clear understanding) because of the impossibility to be with their relatives in their final moments. The possible relationships between ambiguous loss, the use of internet, and the risk of prolonged grief are discussed.