Photo history » christianehoej.dk

Photographic value – a comment

Feb 132009

Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer (TOP) has written a thoughtful post on the subject: what makes photographs valuable for the future. As usual, the post has caused a lot of comments. The following is my own contribution, as posted on TOP. Please go here to read Mike’s original post and all the other comments.

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What this interesting post and the comments illustrate nicely, is that “value” is not something absolute or intrinsic to an object, but something that is attributed to the object in a certain context. And as the context change, the value may change likewise.

In a market economy, value is often equated with price. However, objects can have value in many other ways. Value is often a function of the story or meaning the object conveys to somebody – be that an individual or a certain group of people.

This is where public museums come into play. Their objective is to find, preserve, exhibit and communicate such objects, which convey stories or meaning of importance to society.

This, I can say from my own personal experience, is not an easy task.

At the Dept. of Modern History, Danish National Museum, where I work, we do collect photographs. However, we seldom accept or reject photos based on their artistic value – and never on the basis of their commercial value.

One of the main aims of the department is to documents changes in people’s daily life throughout the last 350 years. Thus, we have in our collection both the archives of commercial photographers, family albums and personal collections as well as a vast number of “diverse” photos, including such that has been taken by museum staff for documenting purpose.

What is important for us is to gather as much information as possible for each photo. As we ultimately collect objects in order to be able to tell stories of the past, we need as much information about the objects as possible. A photo with no information about who took it, why and when can be useless to us, even if it’s a beautiful example of photographic craftsmanship.

That is also why, that in an ideal world we would collect most of our objects not just from what the public more or less randomly comes to offer us, but as part of carefully planned research programs. This would ensure that we get as much relevant information as possible and that we expand our collections in areas, which are particularly relevant. Unfortunately, we have only very limited funding to do so.

Contemplating how time flies?
Piccolo Mondo restaurant, Malmö, Sweden
8^thFebruary 2009

Looking back at the historical evolvement of photography as a mass medium, from the point of view of a museum, there has and will be different challenges. From the early period of photography, the number of objects to be collected is scarcer and some of them involve at lot of work and expenses, when it comes to preservation and storing. During the mid-20^th century there is a vast increase in the number of objects, since photography becomes accessible for everybody.

But still: as long as taking pictures – even family snapshots – involves a rather lengthy and not especially cheap process of buying the film, taking the picture, having it processed, sorting out the best ones and putting them in an album, there is a great chance that the family album more or less consciously reflects the self-image of its producers: these are the pictures, that the original photographer valued and cherished. This makes such an album a possible source of how people at a certain time and space interpreted their own lives.

With the advance of digital photography, however, the number of pictures has exploded. The process of photographing is now quick and almost free, so there is no reason not to photograph anything that catch your eyes – be it important or not. For the future museum curators, who inherit a collection of digital snapshots, the job of sorting out the meaning of the photos as the photographer’s interpretations of his or her own life becomes much more complicated. What is important here, what is not – and in what sense and context?

There are great challenges ahead, in the area of research methodology and theory.

Kodachrome

Photography 3 Responses »

Oct 212008

Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama dont take my kodachrome away

Paul Simon

Alas, mama is going to take our Kodachrome away. At least that is what is being suggested in an article from AP, quoted in a number of net media. Kodak has gradually phased out most versions of the well known 35mm slide film, with the 64 ISO version being the only one remaining. But according to the article, no more of this last version will be produced, when current stocks have been sold. Kodak will neither deny nor affirm this. But Kodak has also closed all of its laboratories for the rather complicated Kodachrome processing. Only one independent laboratory is still operating in the US, and Kodachrome film from the entire world has to be send there for processing. Under these circumstances, it’s plausible that Kodachrome will not live much longer.

To me personally, Kodachrome evokes nostalgic memories of the pre-digital era. For those who are not photo-nerds, it might seem rather uninteresting, that a certain make of film disappears. But there was once, when Kodachrome was not just the niche-product that it is today.

Launched in 1936 (a movie film version was launched one year earlier) it was revolutionary: the world’s first mass-produced colour film. The processing was quite complicated, but the colours were stunning for its time.

A year later, German Agfa launched their own colour film, and for a short while there was some competition. But during WW2 it was the photographers of the victorious parties who also won the battle of our world view – and they were using Kodachrome. The cold war settled the situation even further.

In the fascinating book by Els Rijper: Kodachrome – the American invention of our world 1939-59 (New York, 2002), you will see how. The book contains a large number of colour photographs – not necessarily masterpieces, but the kind that filled the printed media: the ending of the world war, movie stars and pin-ups, sport, American cars and aeroplanes, the Korean War – and a young Elvis Presley.

All in bright colours – Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day...

A fallen picture?

Photography, History, Culture 2 Responses »

Oct 072008

…a note on photography, reality and history

In an article on the 3^rd of October, the newspaper Politiken writes about an upcoming exhibition in the Barbican Art Gallery in London. The exhibition is supposed to shed new light on the old discussion about Robert Capas famous photo the fallen soldier: is it a fake or not?

Unfortunately, the article is not very helpful for those of us interested in photo-history. It says that “new negatives” will be exhibited. That sounds interesting, since it was announced at the beginning of 2008 that some new Capa-negatives was found in the so-called “Mexican suitcase“. However, the article goes on by saying that the person who “dug out” the negatives from the archives is Richard Whelan, the author of a well-known Capa biography. Since Whelan died 1½ year ago (which the newspaper doesn’t seem to have noticed), the evidence can hardly be newer than that – and thus not from the “Mexican suitcase”. In fact, from an interview with the curator, it seems like the exhibition will be much in line with the claims about the authenticity of the fallen soldier, which Whelan made in his well known 2002 article on the subject.

In an effort to bring the story up to date, the newspaper interviews a photographer, a photo-editor and a lecturer in media science about their views. Unfortunately, this part end up as it often does: pro or against Capa and his moral validity.

The photographer, Jan Grarup, dismisses Capa totally as being a charlatan. Instead, he points to the soviet war-photographer Jevgenij Khaldei as an example of a lesser known, but much better photographer. Jan Grarup is an eminent photographer, but in this case I think he is mistaken. It’s a bit ironic that he mentions Khaldei. No doubt he was a great photographer, who deserves to be remembered. But his most well known photo, that of two soldiers waving the red banner on top of the German Reichstag in May 1945, is in fact known to both staged and retouched.

More to the point: when we discuss pictures that are 60-70 years old, we must take into account that they are historical artifacts and take that context into consideration. When the first war photographs were taken, they were all staged – if not for anything else than for the simple reason of cameras being very slow and bulky. What we today consider as modern press photography was born in the inter-war period. It was aided by new, smaller and faster cameras as well as the boom in illustrated magazines. But in the end, it was the photographers – Capa, Khaldei and lots of others – who created and defined the new genre by what they actually did.

Granted, today there are press photographers who has lost their career do to photo manipulations that seems much more insignificant than the staging done by Capa and Khaldei. The rules have changed – and this, to my mind, is OK. But the interesting thing about Capa and Khaldei is not to use them to confirm what we suppose to be out present high moral stands. The interesting thing is to see them and their colleagues as historical figures in the gradual creation of modern press photo.

(The English version of this post is slightly shortened compared to the Danish version)

Capa’s negatives resurfaced

Photography, History 1 Response »

Jan 292008

A number of Robert Capa’s negatives from Spain, believed to have been lost during WW2, has resurfaced in Mexico. The collection allso includes pictures by Davis Seymour and Gerda Taro. The New York Times has the story.