Blogs

Thank you to all of you who answered our survey last year, of the Photographic History Research Centre's digital resources for photographic history. The time you took to answer our survey has been invaluable in assessing the range of users and research on these sites. It has also been gratifying to hear your messages of thanks, which have been passed on to those who originally created them.

I'm pleased to announce that we will be undertaking a security upgrade to safeguard the following sites for the future (in no particular order):

http://fentonletterbooks.dmu.ac.uk/

http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/

http://peib.dmu.ac.uk/

http://erps.dmu.ac.uk/

http://amelina.dmu.ac.uk/

http://rpsmembers.dmu.ac.uk/

DMU is committed to open access research, and the IT department (ITMS) is supporting PHRC's mission to make open research resources  for  photographic history. In the coming months there may be some disruption to the websites that you normally use. We hope that these interruptions will be short, and will not inconvenience you greatly. However, in the knowledge that there will be some inevitable down time, I would encourage all researchers who have time-sensitive projects not to delay any use they need to make of these sites. Work will begin very soon.

Again, Many thanks for all your efforts.

Kelley Wilder

Victorian Cartes de Visite

A householder in this island of Colonsay (where I live) asked me to look through the library of his deceased parents and I came across an interesting photographic album.  With his permission I have made simple digital copies and I am attempting to identify the subjects.  I have already met with some success, and I was especially pleased when I identified one person by using the image-search facility in Google.

This led me to the blindingly-obvious thought that every such Carte de Visite will have duplicates, probably at least half-a-dozen or a dozen copies will have been made and distributed in every case.  After all, if one booked a photographic studio, put on one’s best clothes, turned up for the appointment, went back a week later to collect the result etc., it was all a bit of a hassle so one would make it worthwhile and get a good few copies.  Some of these copies will have survived, and in some cases the owners will have identified them.  Common sense suggests that anybody with a labelled photograph would be keen to make contact with anybody else who had a copy, identified or not, since both parties might have other images or documents to share.

There must be millions of unidentified Cartes de Visite worldwide, and it should be possible to establish a comparison centre on the Internet.  As we know, this already exists for paintings and buildings – the user simply submits a digital image of a scene and the system offers the closest matches, sometimes with great success.

I wonder if an respected institution such as British Photographic would think it worthwhile to try to advance such a scheme?  It might be a bit daunting to actually undertake, but perhaps an approach to Google might be enough to get the idea adopted? 

P.S. As an example of just one such album, the images to which I refer are at http://www.colonsay.info/text/Kindred1%20McNeill%20images.htm

I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has had experience of restoring the backing cards to Cartes de Visite.

I have a Victorian family album, just given to me, containing some 80 or so CdV's, all or most of which have delaminated, (as as the album, page by page), and the photo paper stock has also come away from the CdV card. This means that I can attempt to repair the cards, let them totally dry, them re-stick the photo to them.

My problem is that I've no idea what adhesive to use, although I suspect a watered down paste, something like the old Gloy brand, might do, but need to be sure it won't adversely affect the photo when that is re-attached. I'd propose to use a large flower press to keep the card flat while drying.

I would normally attempt this, but they are family photos, and really would like to preserve them intact if at all possible.

Any help out there please.