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Institute of Fine Arts Conference Proceedings >
Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History, part III >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29914
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| Title: | Local Space/Global Visions: Archives, Networks and Visual Geography
Around 1900 |
| Authors: | Rice, Shelley |
| Keywords: | photography
photo archives
visual geography
Photoglob AG |
| Issue Date: | 24-Feb-2011 |
| Abstract: | This project began as a paper given for a lecture series, 'The Geography
of Photography: American Photography,' at the Art History Institute of
the University of Zurich in the Fall of 2009. The title of the series
intrigued me. What, in the era of Thomas Friedman's 'Flat World,' was
the 'geography' of American photography? Can we still, in the 21st
century, define a nation's artistic production by the nationality of its
maker, or the locale of its production? And was such an idea even valid
in earlier stages of photography's history, given the medium's
propensity for reproducibility and portability? My interest focused
particularly on the moment around 1900 when small cameras, half tone
reproduction processes, and multinational corporations came on the
scene, and photographic production and distribution expanded
exponentially. The creation of a vast network of photographic (and
pseudo-photographic) prints in the late 19th century set the stage for
the establishment of what can reasonably be referred to as a 'world
culture' of imagery. Local representations, stereotypes and conventions,
when globally produced, commoditized and exchanged, formed the syntax of
an international language, literally the currency for communication
between diverse nations, cultures and linguistic groups. For the
Zurich project, I began to explore how this historical shift affected
what I'm calling the visual geography of 1900. The first stage of the
research centered on two very different projects of this era--Alfred
Stieglitz's magazine 'Camera Notes' and Albert Kahn's 'Archive of the
Planet' in Paris--in an attempt to understand the divergent ways in
which significant photographic practitioners comprehended, visualized
and manifested the spatial and temporal changes that were transforming
their world. While working on this paper in Switzerland, I came across
the PhotoGlob AG collection, 11,000 photochrom images (mass produced
lithographic color prints obtained from black and white photographic
negatives, with colors added by hand) stored in the Central Library in
Zurich. Between 1896 and 1911 the Swiss company had subsidiaries in
England and Detroit and over 200 independent suppliers on every
continent. A branch of the tourist industry, Photoglob AG exhibited
scenic views at Universal Expositions, on cruise ships and in Thomas
Cook boutiques, and published more than thirty sales catalogues
containing at least 12,000 images (including post cards). For a scholar
obsessed with visual networks and distribution at the turn of the last
century, this was the Mother Lode, and the archives (in Zurich and in
the Library of Congress, which houses material from the Detroit
subsidiary) quickly became an integral part of the ongoing project. My
paper will present aspects of this work-in-progress, some things I've
learned from research in these diverse collections. I will be especially
interested in focusing on the ways in which the visual geography of this
historical moment--its emphasis on networks, franchises, portability and
distribution, its inherent tensions between the local and the global,
the artistic and the commercial, the elite and mass--can illuminate the
perils and possibilities of our own contemporary image world. |
| Description: | Conference paper presented March 25-26, 2011. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/29914 |
| Appears in Collections: | Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History, part III
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