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Beyond safeguarding historical records, archivists promote using and understanding invaluable resources.
One hundred and eighty-two years after its production, the image still captivates us. The daguerreotype now resides at the Library of Congress, with Cornelius’s handwritten note on the back describing it as “the first light Picture ever taken, 1839.” Cornelius’s likeness is the world’s original selfie.
I recently watched R.I.P.: Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman, a 1997 documentary about the painter and performance artist. Coleman paints detailed, overwhelming, and chaotic scenes in a similar style to Hieronymus Bosch. Coleman's work is categorized as "outsider art," a condescending way of saying an artist is talented, but without the usual pretension of being an artiste.
This post explores how data mining, a rapidly changing discipline of new technologies and concepts, affects the individual right to privacy. As technology becomes more enmeshed in the daily lives of individuals, information on their activities is being stored, accessed, and used. Society is developing a new definition of privacy in this information environment, with few laws specifying privacy protection with electronic transmission and storage. Collecting and using data without limitations is unacceptable, but norms have changed enough that data collection has been accepted without much opposition.
The definitions and relationships in this thesaurus have been cultivated from my experience as an archivist, as well as reading the articles and publications of professional associations. The Archival Fundamentals Series, published by the Society of American Archivists, has been helpful in introducing core principles in an intelligent, enlightening way.
In this essay, I provide a new critical consideration of the works of the semiologist Roland Barthes and the artist Victor Burgin. The influence of Barthes on Burgin’s work is well documented. Equally, Burgin’s prominence as a theorist concerned with text and image offers a productive dialogue with Barthes’ work. The interaction between the two is most apparent in my mind when they discuss the limitless possibilities of the panorama and panoramic vision.
I presented this paper at "The Art of Death and Dying" symposium on October 24-27, 2012. The symposium was hosted by the University of Houston Libraries, in partnership with the Blaffer Art Museum, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, the Department for Hispanic Studies, the Honors College and School of Art. Far from being morbid, this was the best, most well-planned, and liveliest symposium I've ever attended. (Soon afterward, I was contacted to be interviewed for a Norwegian docu-series on death, which is just as awesome and metal as it sounds).
I presented this paper at PhotoHistory XV, the 15th Symposium on the History of Photography, on October 21-23, 2011. These symposia are organized by The Photographic Historical Society, the oldest such organization in the world, founded in 1966. During the conference, historians, collectors, photo experts, and dealers from around the world meet at the George Eastman House, the International Museum of Photography & Film in Rochester, New York.
