The future is not what it used to be: Changing views on contemporary color photography

Attitudes and approaches toward the collection, use, and care of color photographs have evolved enormously since the official arrival of commercially viable color photographic processes in the early twentieth century. This article traces the evolution of collection, exhibition, and preservation practices for works of art in color photography over the last few decades, as represented by one institution, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.     

Framing photographs,denying archives: the difficulty of focusing on archival photographs

This article pursues the varying understandings of the photograph in archival literature. An in-depth review of the scholarship uncovers several possible reasons why archivists and those writing about photographic archives apparently continue to struggle with the photograph, including: the sheer difficulty that photographs as an elusive medium present; past debates about photography in art history, history, and archival literature; and the challenges that the photograph as an evasive document presents to the contradictory nature of archives themselves and to conceptions of archival science. Having evolved from an understanding of photographs that conflated content with meaning to postmodernist notions of contingent and plural meanings in which photographs participate, archival writings on the photograph hold promise as they begin to tread the waters that Schwartz charted in the last 15 years. This paper follows that historical progression in order to trace the discourse on photographic archives that has emerged over the past three decades.

Scanning technology selection impacts acceptability and usefulness of image-rich content

Objective

Clinical and research usefulness of articles can depend on image quality. This study addressed whether scans of figures in black and white (B&W), grayscale, or color, or portable document format (PDF) to tagged image file format (TIFF) conversions as provided by interlibrary loan or document delivery were viewed as acceptable or useful by radiologists or pathologists.

Methods

Residency coordinators selected eighteen figures from studies from radiology, clinical pathology, and anatomic pathology journals. With original PDF controls, each figure was prepared in three or four experimental conditions: PDF conversion to TIFF, and scans from print in B&W, grayscale, and color. Twelve independent observers indicated whether they could identify the features and whether the image quality was acceptable. They also ranked all the experimental conditions of each figure in terms of usefulness.

Results

Of 982 assessments of 87 anatomic pathology, 83 clinical pathology, and 77 radiology images, 471 (48%) were unidentifiable. Unidentifiability of originals (4%) and conversions (10%) was low. For scans, unidentifiability ranged from 53% for color, to 74% for grayscale, to 97% for B&W. Of 987 responses about acceptability (n=405), 41% were said to be unacceptable, 97% of B&W, 66% of grayscale, 41% of color, and 1% of conversions. Hypothesized order (original, conversion, color, grayscale, B&W) matched 67% of rankings (n=215).

Conclusions

PDF to TIFF conversion provided acceptable content. Color images are rarely useful in grayscale (12%) or B&W (less than 1%). Acceptability of grayscale scans of noncolor originals was 52%. Digital originals are needed for most images. Print images in color or grayscale should be scanned using those modalities.     

Looking Presidential: A Comparison of Newspaper Photographs of Candidates in the United States and Taiwan

News coverage of elections is a popular topic in mass and political communication research. Studies of this tradition usually focus on news articles and neglect another important element of news content: news photographs. In this study, newspaper photographs of presidential candidates in the United States and Taiwan were compared. Generally, US candidates were more likely to be portrayed as a beloved leader, at leisure, from the side or back, looking determined, as a leader and follower, standing or walking, and with cheering crowds. Candidates in Taiwan were more likely to be depicted in a ‘glad-to-see-you’ pose, with a camera angle looking down, with no expression, as an equal to others in the same photograph, and with inattentive people. How political and cultural differences between these two countries may have contributed to such variations was also discussed in this study.     

The Winokur-Munblit Collection of Russian Empire Postcards at the Library of Congress: A Brief Overview

The article describes a collection of 21,000 postcards from the Russian Empire acquired in 2011 by the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.     

Noninvasive physicochemical characterization of two 19th century English ferrotypes

The present work was one of the first attempts to analyze the conservation status of two ferrotypes, ancient photographic plates realized on a support made of iron. The photographic material was constituted of collodion as binder for the photosensitive silver halides grains. The two ferrotypes studied belonged to a private collection of a family from Durham, UK, and were made at the end of the 19th century. The analytical techniques used for the morphological and physicochemical characterization were noninvasive. The surface morphology was studied by means of optical microscopy (OM) and environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) coupled with an energy dispersive X-rays (EDX) system for the elemental analysis. These techniques, together with microreflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (μ-FTIR) and contact angle, allowed to obtain information on both the chemical – elemental – composition of the materials constituting the ferrotypes, and the conservation status of these photographic plates. The study showed that the physicochemical diagnostics allowed to characterize the two ferrotypes that, despite their similar age and provenance, showed different conservation status, surface properties, and elemental composition.