Documentary Value Research Articles

A survey of current design publishing

In comparison with architectural books, books on design have a relatively recent history, although not as recent as might be thought since many of today’s design books had antecedents in the 1930s. The publishing of design books in the 1930s followed the emergence of design as a profession; the rapid expansion of design publishing in the last two decades has been stimulated by the design boom of the 1980s, by the rise of design history as an academic discipline, and by new varieties of and issues in design such as computer graphics, design education, and “green” design. Publications from this period include some major new bibliographies and reference works, but also a good deal of transient material which will nonetheless possess some documentary or curiosity value in time to come. Writings about design by designers themselves are still in short supply.

L’arbre au pourri

The tree with rotteness. Celticist have long debated about the documentary value of the so-called Bern scholies added to a Lucan text, and particularly of Celtic human sacrifices mentioned in them. The discussion about the sacrifice made to the god Esus has been hindered by the poverty of Gallo-roman evidence concerning this god. A comparison with Insular medieval material permits — as it often happens — a decisive progress on that question, and lead us to favour the theory of the authenticity for the Bern scholies.

A propos du tableau de Lemonnier : « Une soirée chez Madame Geoffrin »

John Lough: Lemonnier's Painting, "Une soirée chez Madame Geoffrin en 1755". Lemonnier's painting, originally entitled "Première lecture, chez Madame Geoffrin, de l'Orphelin de Chine", first exhibited in 1814, is reproduced in many books on the 18th Century. We demonstrate that Mme Geoffrin did not possess the bust of Voltaire shown in the painting, and that most of the 54 people present in the picture of the salon could not have attended her Wednesday dinners, which were much more intimate, at that date. Only 15 of those shown are known to have attended, while others, not included, did attend. The picture is thus of no documentary value concerning the place of the writer in the society of the Ancien Régime.

Institutional Transmission and Literary Translation

Abstract If target texts should be accorded the same amount of serious critical attention usually reserved for source-side literature, increased study of the institutional forces instrumental in its production and mediation is necessary. Such study, to be of documentary value, could be conducted empirically on a case-by-case basis in order to uncover pre-textual elements as, among others, legal and socio-economic issues, in-house rules, publisher-translator relations, and the often rhizomatic personal constellations formative in the constitution of the translated text. The sample case chosen is meant to open further discussion of the issues involved.

The Kritios Boy: Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date

Despite its frequent appearance in textbooks and histories of Greek art, the Kritios Boy has never been the subject of a discrete or detailed study. Perhaps as a result, a number of misconceptions and errors have found their way into the scholarship on the piece (the height of the statue, for example, is considerably greater than the almost universally cited dimension), and certain problems (such as the curious nature of the join at the neck) have gone unresolved. This article clarifies a number of issues related to the discovery and reconstruction of the statue, presents the results of work performed on the statue in the spring of 1987 (when the head was removed from the torso, the join reexamined, and the post-World War II restoration proved incorrect), and examines criteria for identifying and dating the statue.It is argued that the head and torso of the Kritios Boy, though found at different times and in different spots, certainly belong together and that there is no evidence of any ancient repair. Neither head nor torso came from a homogeneous deposit of Perserschutt; indeed, it is likely that the statue's bodily parts were not buried until the third quarter of the fifth century (an old photograph showing the torso of the Kritios Boy in the company of the Moschophoros, Angelitos's Athena, and the head of the pedimental Athena from the Archaios Naos, and often used as evidence for the torso's archaeological context, has little or no documentary value). It is suggested that the statue may in fact have been created under the stylistic influence of Kritios and Nesiotes (often doubted), that the Kritios Boy represents a young hero (Theseus, in all likelihood) rather than a victorious boy athlete (the usual identification), and that it was probably dedicated on the Acropolis after 480 B. C., in which case it was the victim not of Persians but of either accident or Athenians.

L'amour de la patrie dans Le temps retrouvé de Marcel Proust

Love of the fatherland in Marcel Proust's « Le temps retrouvé », Annick Cochet. Proust denied any documentary value to art and the characters of Le temps retrouvé have only a partial and relative view of the First World War. The analysis of the novel is nevertheless a mine of observations which the historian can use profitably : on " Parisian life " in the rear, on the manipulations of public opinion, on naive or carefully cultivated love, on the Fatherland. Heroes, egoists, or simple " good people ", the characters of Le temps retrouvé reveal a lot about the minds of French people at war and about the emergence of a system of control of social representations which were to have so many successors throughout the history of the 20th century.

'Een merkwaardige verzameling Teekeningen' door Leonaert Bramer

'Een merkwaardige verzameling Teekeningen' door Leonaert Bramer

More Leaps Backward

We publish here a rather unusual article. Unusual in more than one sense. It is a translation of the original in Telugu, yet unpublished. The authoress is Ranganayakamma, a Telugu writer. The translator is 'Gandhi', a teacher of Linguistics in an Andhra University. Neither is a China specialist as far as we know. But, obviously, both have been following and studying develop ments in China with more than ordinary interest. Which is commendable. We publish it mainly for its documentary value.—EDITOR

Albums of War: On Reading Civil War Photographs

Drawing on contemporary theories of representation and signification, Alan Trachtenberg considers the crucial role of photography in constructing historical narratives. Trachtenberg focuses on the Civil War as the first American crisis to fully avail itself of “historicism-by-photography,” the creation of a palpable sense of reality in recollections of the past through photographic evidence. In particular, photographic albums that simulated historical archives, designed for the intimate conditions of home viewing, are examined for the extent to which they provide, through the judicious combination of image and text, a structured discourse about the events and meaning of the war. Challenging the commonplace belief in the incontrovertible reality, and thus reliability, of the photograph, Trachtenberg argues that both the meaning and the documentary value of the photograph can be called into question. The Civil War photographic album emerges as a purposeful narrative construction of which the most compelling truth is affirmation of the camera’s presence as a witness to the past and thus of its privileged status as authorized purveyor of historical knowledge.

Early photography in Iran

Abstract Photographs are of immense iconographic and documentary value for the study of 19th-century Persian history, because they provide unrivalled testimony of a traditional way of life and its architectural setting. They also document the hierarchical establishment of the Qajar state.

AACR 2 and “graphic materials”: use for a descriptive catalogue for the Science Museum

AACR2 encourages specialist and archival libraries to “use the rules as the basis of their cataloguing and augment their provisions as necessary.” Is this relevant to the needs of an image collection? What are the implications? The Science Museum has evolved a supplement to AACR2 to cope with visual materials of all kinds retained primarily for their documentary value, and the special needs of its users. A case study suggests how traditional descriptions of art works may metamorphese into computer-based systems such as those of the MDA and AACR2.This article has developed from a contribution to the ARLIS/UK and LA course “The Image Library” at the Library Association on 20 February 1981. The views expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Science Museum.

Photographing the Modoc Indian War: Louis Heller versus Eadweard Muybridge

Abstract Battlefield photographs of the Modoc Indian War (1872-73) have been widely published, and historians have long recognized the important documentary value of these remarkable images. However, little effort has been made to study them as a group, and questions concerning the photographers or other circumstances of their origin have seldom been posed. The nearly 100 surviving examples include: stereo graphs of the military encampments and hardware, the participants, the battlefield topography, as well as carte-de-visite style portraits of the captured Modoc warriors.

Veinte años decisivos en la vida de John Henry Newman: 1826-1845

The article describes Newman's intellectual and religious odyssey from 1826 until October of 1845; from abandonment of his initial liberalism and evangelism to his entrance into Catholic Church. It constitutes a long, arduous period during which Newman set up what he was to call the between Anglican and Catholic Churches. Newman's question, involving his own personal search for religious truth, rested on apparent dilemma of whether to concede priority to Church (Roman-Catholic) , or if one's principal concern should be for doctrinal purity, this latter being a primary concern in Anglican way. Newman would ultimately conclude that dilemma did not really exist and that to achieve and maintain Christian doctrinal purity it was necessary to revere authority of existing This is an historical-doctrinal investigation. It is not precisely a biography of Newman during those twenty decisive years. It does not, for example, touch on many points of family ancl academic life relevant to his life at Oxford and Tractarian Movement which are only brought up when considered as being influential on Newman's religious and spiritual development leading to his conversion. All available sources were made use of in an attempt not only to narrate course of his conversion but also to throw light on it. The acknowledged insufficicient documentary value of Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), which for reasons of literary genre, among others, does not describe all of aspects of a story so rich in events, required author to search through other relevant material. The author drew on Newman's correspondence edited by Anne Mozley in 1893 and later by Ch. S. Dessain from 1966-1977, as well as all works published by Newman prior to 1845 and writings of a later date which contain retrospective considerations of special interest to theme. The investigation clarifies events which occurred prior to Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine and Signals appearance of Newman's first explicit ideas relevant to this area of his thought. The article points out material for study in Newman concerning question of dialogue between churches, as he conceived it at various times. The study, as a whole, allows for an understanding of spiritual and intellectual iter of a consistent man, who obeying a demanding interior command, honorably did what he found necessary after a long process of study and meditation. In 1845 Newman finally found one, true Church. For his good Anglican friends, he had simply been transplanted to another part of vineyard.

Varieties of American Indian Autobiography

Published autobiographies by Native Americans constitute a small but significant part of American literature. Standard bibliographies usually identify some fifty works, almost all of which have been published since 1900.1 Although some of these are virtually impossible to locate, having been printed in small runs at obscure places, many titles-My People the Sioux, Black Elk Speaks, and The Way to Rainy Mountain among them-are widely known. Indian autobiographies deserve our attention not only because they are truly and indisputably American or because, as Luther Standing Bear said about his own story, No one is able to understand the Indian race like the Indian.2 They also represent a diverse and complex literary genre, one that obliges us to consider the nature of autobiographical expression in traditional Indian cultures, the role of outside white influence in the recording of personal experience, and the ultimate esthetic as well as documentary value of the work. To these weighty considerations we must also add the obvious fact that public autobiography (printed autobiography, that is, not traditional forms like family stories or informal personal expression in journals and correspondence) has served different functions for its creators and their people at different times. To some extent it is even possible to examine Native American autobiographies historically as an index to changing Indian attitudes towards their own cultures and their relationships with white civilization.

Authentic Ressentiment: The "Experimental" Novels of Gissing

Gl ISSING'S EARLY NOVELS raise two interesting issues for a post-formalist approach to literature. The first has to do with the relationship between literary quality and documentary value, a tension often and overhastily formulated as that between form and content. The fundamental problem here-known to technical aesthetics as the axiological one-is the alleged incapacity of a historicizing approach to do justice to the phenomenon of literary value. And it is certain that, in spite of Lucien Goldmann's very sensible suggestion that it is the greatest literary works which are the most representative-their greatness consisting precisely in their capacity to articulate the most significant contradictions of a given age-those of us still formed by the attitudes of a now distant Romantic tradition find it hard to overcome the instinctive feeling that it is only the average which can be more representative or typical, the greatest works being those which are the most personal and distinctive, and thus in one way or another profoundly uncharacteristic of the socially typical materials with which a sociological or a historical approach has to deal. That the early novels of Gissing with which this essay will deal-Demos: A Story of English Socialism (1886), Thyrza (1887), and The Nether World (1889)-are average at best, no one will wish to deny; at the same time all three of them have so often been pressed into service as historical or documentary testimony about the condition of the British working classes in the late nineteenth century that the question of their adequacy for such a task becomes an unavoidable one.

Pictorial Resources: The Henry E. Huntington Library's California and American West Collections

An institution that displays Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy and houses an E. A. Burbank portrait of Geronimo bespeaks of great diversity. The Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, noted for its splendid collection of English portraits and land scapes, also possesses a surprisingly fine array of photographs, prints, pencil sketches, and water colors depicting the American West. Ranging from original sketches by George Catlin to photographs by Edward Weston, the Huntington's pictorial archives offer scholars an unusually wide variety of mediums, topics, geographic areas, and time periods. Since the library's inception, Mr. Huntington and his librarians collected western pictorial material as a complement to the library's famous collection of rare books and manuscripts. Recognition in recent years of the importance of western photography and art has revealed the depth and flexibility of the Huntington's resources. Drawings originally procured for their documentary value are simultaneously studied as works of art. Photographs once utilized only as illustrations for scholarly monographs are now studied because of their photographer. Books once acquired for their textual value are now reviewed for their original photographs. Thus the Huntington, in an almost inci dental manner, has created a pictorial collection that in many ways matches the richness of its books and manuscripts. The library's photograph collection is remarkably well-rounded, possessing prints made by nearly every major pioneer photographer including O'Sullivan, Hillers, Haynes, Savage, Gardner, Hart, Soule, Russell, Jackson, Barry, Taber, Muybridge, and Watkins. Topically, the collection contains subjects common to many photo libraries such as agriculture, architecture, business, industry, Indians, culture, trans portation, significant events, and scientific exploration. Geographically, all the western states are covered, but, because of the library's location, a great percentage of its hold ings center on Southern California. Of course, the collection embraces a sizeable portrait file. At a conservative estimate, the collection encompasses approximately 150,000 prints, negatives, and albums. Half-tones and other photo-mechanically produced prints are excluded from this file. Qualified scholars gain access to the collection through an index or photo file, which is arranged by portraits, places, events, subjects, and in some cases by date and individual collection. Los Angeles, for example, is catalogued by street (Spring Street), place 175

The Polish Underground State (1939-45

Throughout the history of Europe Great Britain has probably never been so popular among the European nations as during the last war. After the fall of France, not only did she reject Hitler's peace proposals and stand up to him with only minimal help from the allied forces who found themselves in the British Isles, but she also created a secret organization, 'Special Operations Executive' (SOE), which provided assistance for all resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. It would have seemed likely that these most creditable wartime exploits would be well documented in postwar British historical work. And yet this has not been the case. Only a few documentary works have so far been published on this subject. Among them are: Proceedings of a Conference on Britain and European Resistance, 1939-1945 (a report of a conference held at St. Antony's College, Oxford in 1962), which unfortunately exists only in roneoed form; and Professor M. R. D. Foot's valuable work, SOE in France, published in the same year. There is also a lecture given by the Head of the SOE, Major-General Sir Colin Gubbins, at the Royal United Services Institute in 1948, entitled 'Resistance Movements in the War', which has not been published in book form, and a symposium on resistance movements in Europe during the years 1939-45, organized in Spring 1973 by the University of Salford. The papers presented at this symposium will shortly be appearing in print. There are also many reminiscences and additional publications, but they have little documentary value for the assessment of the British role in the European resistance. Amongst European resistance movements, the activities of the Polish underground take a leading place because of its scope and versatility, but yet again very little has been written in English about it. There is a

A new approach to terrestrial and photographic forest sampling: The use of a panoramic lens

This paper presents a technique of forest sampling using a new panoramic lens. One to three photographs are taken from a levelled platform on a tripod at the sample plot centre with a base length corresponding roughly to a tree diameter. These photos can be analysed monoscopically, in part also stereoscopically. The present study deals primarily with the determination of the polar coordinates and the stem diameter of test trees. This panoramic sampling technique can aid in making a forest inventory more expedient. It can be used for combined aerial and terrestrial surveys as well as for the terrestrial control of pure aerial surveys. This new method is higher rated for its documentary value than conventional terrestrial photographs. Also, it serves to detect qualitative changes in forest stands at periodic intervals.

Franklin and Villarroel: Social Consciousness in Two Autobiographies

SCHOLARS DEALING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT continue to recognize the documentary value of autobiography, a genre which discloses as much about collective social history as about individual private affairs. Not only does social consciousness weave itself into the autobiographical fabric, but the threads of class attitudes trace a sociomoral design of great subtlety. The perspectives suggested by this tapestry converge at the vanishing point of intellectual history, an infinitely large position capable of unifying all components of the picture. Among these perspectives, two important ones involve the relationship between the autobiographer's value system and the direction taken by his society's historical development. For example, Benjamin Franklin's personal code of behavior also summarized the ethos of a burgeoning society. The pragmatic character of American culture derived from the same axiological source as Franklin's. Therefore his autobiography may be taken as a gauge measuring his nation's bourgeois transformation and, eventually, its integration with the Enlightenment. In contrast, the problematic autobiography of Diego de Torres Villarroel1 raises other issues regarding Spain's class structure and the value system which sustained it. By Spanish standards. America's

The Dialectic of Il Cortegiano

The book of the Courtier, by the overwhelming weight of its reputation and influence, comes to us as a handbook of the courtly virtues, or, more historically considered, as a treatise on the education of a Renaissance courtier. It is reasonable that it should. Castiglione himself announced his intention of teaching “what manner of man he must be who deserves the name of perfect Courtier, without defect of any kind” (i, 1); and his division of his work into four books which treat successively and compendiously the personal qualities, the conduct, the female counterpart, and the utility and aspirations of the courtier emphasizes its appearance of being a handbook. One can hardly refute, therefore, those writers who use The Courtier as an encyclopaedia of courteous manners, or even those who find in it a manual of Renaissance philosophy. Few works of the Renaissance have a more genuine documentary value.