This paper was written for the Visual Literacies 5 conference at Oxford University in 2011. Despite its age, it still offers insight into the challenges of visually documenting historic preservation work.
Abstract: Visual literacy refers to a number of competencies allowing people to decipher actions, objects, and symbols experienced in the environment and enjoy achievements of visual expression. These abilities are especially imperative in the field of historic preservation, which is heavily reliant upon visual documentation. However, being able to ‘read’ architecture through visual materials remains challenging. In order to understand the highest architectural achievements as well as simple vernacular structures, those who manage images within cultural heritage institutions should be visually literate. Unfortunately, the training archivists, librarians, and other information professionals receive triumphs text over images, and often those charged with image management are impaired by visual analphabetism.
Images conveying built environments or cultural landscapes should not be viewed as decontextualised items, valued only for their aesthetic qualities. Additionally, the ambiguous connotations of images often lead to them being interpreted solely by their subject content. Instead, meaning is revealed by uncovering the context of the images. Information professionals should take into account the historical, aesthetic, and cultural frames of reference, intended functions, relationships and meanings related to conventions at the time and place of construction, and the interests of the image creators. In regards to architectural preservation, the images, as a visual narrative, should impart knowledge about site context, situating projects within their natural or urban landscapes, as well as demonstrating the scope of intervention, including before, during, and after comparisons. This paper explores visual literacy in the historic preservation field through a postmodernist lens. This point of view welcomes a wide range of contextual information as the basis of understanding images and their multiple meanings to advance the universal patrimony embodied in the world’s great monuments.
Key Words: Architecture, conservation, historic preservation, image management, photographs, postmodernism, visual literacy.
Visual literacy is the capacity to analyze, interpret, and use images. Those who are visually literate are interested in the production, circulation, and reception of images, which allows for their placement in a historical context and the evaluation of their integrity. Being visually literate assumes that one form of sense-making does not override others; no single, privileged perspective exists, as images are polysemic. Nor does visual literacy mean that someone can simply see; it is a cultural construction, a learned and cultivated skill. Visual analysis is based on the awareness that a person creates an image, and the image’s subject, the thoughts and feelings of its maker, the techniques used in generating the image, and the context of its response inform the resulting picture.
In an increasingly image-centered world, visual literacy is especially important for information professionals,[i] such as librarians, archivists, and other workers who use information to advance institutional missions. Information professionals have traditionally relied on text as the primary source of information about the past. Education and training in archival, library, and information science has rarely required course work in image analysis, and information professionals often lack skills to evaluate images effectively or have an awareness of their deficiency. Pacey remarks:
There is of course a crucial difference between illiteracy and visual illiteracy. People who cannot read know that they cannot read. We all think we can ‘read’ images—but very probably we cannot.[ii]
Despite logocentrism, scholarly interests across disciplines have expanded, with a growing recognition that photographs transmit information ‘provid[ing] most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present.’[iii] Photographs ‘now constitute a thoroughly conventional evidentiary resource’ as records of enduring value in their own right.[iv]
This paper explores visual literacy for information professionals when applied to historic preservation image collections. Conservation treats damage caused by natural processes and human actions and thwarts further deterioration using technical and management methods. Historic preservation cannot be understood by text alone; visuals are integral to recording the built environment. Stereophotogrammetry, as well as rectified, X-ray, and infrared photography, provide information to conservators, but this paper focuses on documentary photography, which blends technical ability and artistic skill to record and interpret historic sites.
Although I have previously written about image management in general,[v] this paper arises from my experiences managing a visual collection depicting more than 600 conservation projects in 90 countries over the past 45 years at World Monuments Fund, an international historic preservation organization. To bring the images to a global audience, I have led an initiative to digitize thousands of images and create metadata for ARTstor, a digital image library in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.
While the process has developed my visual literacy, I have found a postmodern approach efficacious. Postmodernism undermines the assumptions of a positivist worldview and discounts its associated concepts of rationality and objectivity. Realizing that there is no ultimate truth but only versions of reality, being visually literate with a postmodern outlook validates the perspectives of conservationists, photographers, and information professionals who manage heritage image collections.
In the nascent years of photography, when long exposures and immobility were required, architecture was a frequent subject. As early as 1850, France’s Historic Monuments Commission (Missions Héliographiques) used photography to survey its architectural treasures.[vi] Since that time, photographs have become understood not as neutral representations of the past, but constructions with historical, aesthetic, and cultural frames of reference with connotations that evolve in response to changing contexts.
As a portal of interdisciplinary exploration, architecture mediates between social values and built forms. Structures are frequently the only tangible evidence of history, offering insights into past cultures and events. Heritage loci, spanning the ancient to the modern, include archaeological sites; burial grounds; cultural landscapes; engineering and industrial works; historic city centers; and, civic, commercial, military, religious, and residential buildings. Cultural significance - the aesthetic, historic, scientific, social, and spiritual values of past, present, and future generations - embodies places, their records, and their uses and associations.[vii]As symbols of the past, locations are instilled with the values of the communities for whom such places have meaning. Different stakeholders ascribe diverse significance to the monuments, producing contrary accounts.
Preservationists assay these site interpretations, determining what the buildings represent related to symbolic qualities, memories, and beliefs. Conservationists are guardians of the past, yet they shape the future, as they research, write, and administer historic significance. The monuments’ ages, uniqueness, associations with people or events, technological qualities, or documentary potential determine historical importance.[viii] Historic value assessment considers if locations demonstrate past customs, philosophies, or systems that are important in understanding historical evolution. Significance is greater where evidence survives in situ or where the settings are largely intact than where they have been changed.
Conservationists determine the most accurate period in a site’s history to preserve, often based on visual information provided by the ‘photographed past.’[ix] Heritage sites transform throughout history, and photographs may only capture a moment in time. Ironically, some ancient buildings may be:
restored to a condition captured by a recording medium - photography - that is much younger than they are, and that can only reveal their condition during the span of its own relatively recent history….The implication is that old images have somehow captured things in their ‘right’ condition, and that they therefore contain some sort of standards by which the present can be evaluated, and perhaps even made to conform.[x]
Photography’s power - and danger - is its capacity to affix images to the historical record and instil agelessness in them. The visually literate understand that photographs seem ‘more real, more right, more true’ than monuments, but they are not.[xi]
To ‘get the picture’, that is, to interpret what is shown in photographs, information professionals represent sites that they have never visited before. Architecture, as a spatial experience of movement and scale, cannot be captured accurately in a two-dimensional photograph. Rather than the architecture itself, most viewers examine images, which act as representations, ‘a mediated relationship using signs or symbols between the maker and the viewer of one object that stands for another.’[xii] Photography allows architectural features to be studied better than in person, where the scale and wealth of details overwhelm the eye. Zooming in permits the observation of minutiae that cannot be seen on site.
Photographic documentation of heritage sites centres on the continuation of design and construction knowledge, the preservation of material and aesthetic heritage, and the promulgation of culture, as well as research, interpretation, and education. Images record existing conditions, aid in evaluation report and drawing preparation, and serve as records for features that may become destroyed or damaged. Photographs also document deterioration that is difficult to indicate in drawings, such as cracks and erosion. Before and after photographs demonstrate the project’s achievements, while photographs taken during intervention capture moments in the conservation process.
Photographers frame their images from almost infinite perspectives, and only a fraction of what constitutes a historic site can be represented in one photograph - or one hundred. Photographs capture cultural, natural, or landscape features, including buildings, site context, spatial relationships, construction techniques and methods, architectural details, materials, circulation patterns, or special functions, among other choices. Shots can be aerial, panoramic, long-, mid-, or short-range; interior or exterior; illuminated or shadowed. Some photographs are standard front, rear, and side elevations, while others reveal neoteric views. Photographers may be professionals who capture dramatic evocations of the built environment or project managers who focus on common conservation issues, such as foundation cracks or façade damage.
Akin to conservators and photographers, information professionals interpret photographic records, understanding that photographs are ‘not a facsimile of total past scenes and events, but only a partial reflection of past reality.’[xiii] Unlike texts, image collections have no order by which they can be understood or titles by which they can be described. Image description is ‘idiosyncratic, knowledge-intensive, and time consuming,’[xiv] because ‘the very characteristics that make [images] valuable also make them difficult to describe.’[xv] Burgin writes that ‘the intelligibility of the photograph is no simple thing; photographs are texts inscribed in terms of what we may call “photographic discourse.”’[xvi] Since photographs represent an ‘insoluble historiographic challenge’, information professionals read visual texts, striving to document their contextual relationships, narratives, and multi-provenance characteristics.[xvii]
Visually literate information professionals appreciate levels of pictoric engagement, which fall under many labels. Barthes distinguishes between denotative and connotative.[xviii] Denotative is the literal meaning of the image. Connotative aspects display visual codes, reflecting signification within the culture. Another way to describe Barthes’ perspective would be ‘ofness’, what an image objectively represents, and ‘aboutness’, what it subjectively represents. Panofsky identifies three levels of meaning: preiconography, iconography, and iconology.[xix] Preiconographical description identifies the objects and events represented in the image, whereas iconographical analysis involves conventional meaning requiring cultural familiarity. Iconology is the intrinsic meaning of the work. Kaplan and Mifflin also describe three similar levels: superficial, concrete, and abstract.[xx] Knowledge of the degrees of meaning provides for better visual literacy, as interpreting image significance requires familiarity with cultural codes in a postmodern milieu.
To understand an image, ‘it is essential to know exactly where it was created, in the framework of what process, to what end, for whom…and how it came into our hands.’[xxi] Information professionals should explore the photographic intent ‘not because it provides the only way of interpreting an image, but because it provides one possible starting point for a more complicated reading of a picture.’[xxii] Appreciating photographic value looks beyond content to various contextual factors that endow significance.
The photograph’s format, process, and size convey meaning. The image’s physicality, ‘prescribed by prevailing technology, determines what can be photographed, how it can be displayed or published, how it can be encountered by others, how it can circulate through public culture.’[xxiii] Most collections contain analog, digitized, and born-digital images, whose formats inform visual literacy. For example, some photographic formats were popular during specific years, which identify their date range.
Of analog formats, 35-mm slides provide the most contextual information because their frames encourage labeling. Since slides were used in lectures, information was recorded on them to aid the speaker’s memory. Conversely, photographic prints frequently lack identifying information because writing on them or applying labels can be damaging.
To fulfill their research potential and be reproducible for publications and exhibits, photographs should have ‘proper focus to render detail, exposure that preserves the full range of tonal contrast, clarity, satisfactory composition and be in good physical condition’ - in short, be aesthetically appealing.[xxiv] Depth of field, point of view, rhythm, color balance, and tonal range must be evaluated. Aesthetics are visual grammar: ‘a well-composed picture makes the author’s point more forcefully than a poorly framed image. The rules of composition, like the rules of grammar, improve the final product.’[xxv] Visually literate information professionals choose images that convey the maximum amount of information about architectural details, yet are composed beautifully.
By constructing sequences throughout conservation and determining adequate site coverage from existing photographs, information professionals hone their visual literacy. Information about images are gleaned from progress reports, project manager memorandums, similar photographs, and other materials.
Interpretation is needed because ‘existing captions are often incomplete, inaccurate, deliberately distorted or irrelevant.’[xxvi] Photographs frequently enter cultural heritage collections without captions, because the photographer, usually the project manager, knew their content and context and saw no need to record them for posterity. ‘Even when photographs have extensive captions…research may be necessary to verify their general accuracy by fact-checking a sample…with the same scrutiny given to any primary resource material.’[xxvii] Due to historic preservation’s global scope, captions may be in another language or written by non-native speakers. Conservation terminology confuses language conversion programs, and human translation may be required.
Scrutiny of the images reveals details to formulate captions. Information professionals may decipher signs, posters, numerals, and other clues. Sometimes, research enhances description, although the findings should be confirmed with multiple citations.
Captions should denote information not readily apparent. For example, captions such as ‘façade’, ‘general interior’, or ‘exterior detail’ should be replaced respectively with ‘northern façade with fire damage’, ‘Great Hall interior, looking south, post-conservation’, or ‘east exterior wall with marble inlay detail’. Captions can identify the image elements and the direction from which the photograph was taken or supply an extensive interpretation of what was photographed and how various elements interrelate.
Description for heritage sites should include site names and locations, names of the photographers and organizations responsible for the documentation, dates, and captions. Other elements may include item titles, image measurements, photographic processes, collection titles, identification numbers, and citations.[xxviii] Data should be captured at the most granular level. For example, locations should include country, region, city, and address; dates should include day, month, and year.
For homogeneous descriptions, I use a metadata schema adapted from VRA Core 4.0, a data standard for the description of works of visual culture as well as the images that document them.[xxix] For architectural terminology, I consult the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, a structured vocabulary created to improve access to information about art, architecture, and material culture.[xxx] Although site features may have been called different names throughout a monument’s history, consistent naming conventions should be used.
Information professionals should also record provenance, the person, agency, or office that created, acquired, used, and retained the images in the course of their work. Knowing who took the photographs, when, and why is essential to understanding the image’s content and the importance of the subject depicted.
Building on a foundation of visual literacy to document heritage sites, information professionals should choose images that address site context, such as the heritage curtilage. Collections should include interiors and exteriors when appropriate and details illustrating character-defining features. For heritage sites undergoing conservation, preservation issues should be recorded. Photographs with people demonstrate site use, scale, and community significance that cannot be conveyed through sterile façades. When different photographers document the same site, the quality varies; information professionals should curate a uniform image collection that complements associated site narratives and drawings. The images should be placed in sequence and keyed to site plans illustrating the locations and directions of the photographic views.
Conservation-based image collections represent heritage sites differently depending on the purpose of the intervention as factors change with each project; some images document narrow physical interventions, while others provide site context. Historic architecture images function both as part of a series and as individual units. They should be compelling as unique images, but they should also tell a narrative about the project and the conservationists’ role in it. Taken as a series, the images impart an understanding of site context, situating the project within its landscape. The sequence also demonstrates the scope of intervention, such as the number of conserved buildings and, to the extent possible, the results of the conservation, including before, during, and after comparisons. For certain projects, including efforts to preserve specific features, identifying the conservation stage is critical. For others, such as efforts to improve site management or sustainable tourism, identifiers are less important.
An escalating demand for architectonic images makes users seek photography more readily than ever before. Through a contextual approach, information professionals provide intellectual and physical access to images. Improving visual literacy for information professionals reveals the marvels of places that speak of their ingenuity, aspiration, and achievement across time, geography, and cultural boundaries. As evidence of humanity’s finest expression, historic structures connect generations, representing the continuity of humankind and the cumulative result of our monumental endeavors.
[i] I use the phrase information professionals, rather than archivists, librarians, or curators, because the management of images affects diverse institutions, such as academic research libraries; historical societies; natural history collections; special collections libraries; commercial archives; and local, municipal, state, and federal records offices. Thus, job titles for those that manage image collections vary widely.
[ii] Phillip Pacey, ‘Information Technology and the Universal Availability of Images’, IFLA Journal 9, no. 3 (1983): 233.
[iii] Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Picador, 1977), 4.
[iv] James W. Cook, ‘Seeing the Visual in U.S. History’, Journal of American History
95, no. 2 (2008): 432.
[v] Margot Note, Managing Image Collections: A Practical Guide (Oxford: Chandos, 2011).
[vi] Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011), 53.
[vii] Marta de la Torre, ed., Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2002).
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Derek Bousé, ‘Restoring the Photographed Past’, The Public Historian 24, no. 2 (2002): 10.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid., 11.
[xii] W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘Representation’, in Critical Terms for Literary Study, eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 11.
[xiii] Elisabeth Kaplan and Jeffrey Mifflin, ‘“Mind and Sight”: Visual Literacy and the Archivist’, in American Archival Studies: Readings in Theory and Practice, ed. Randall C. Jimerson (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2000), 85.
[xiv] Claire Dannenbaum, ‘Seeing the Big Picture: Integrating Visual Resources for Art Libraries’, Art Documentation 27, no. 1 (2008): 16.
[xv] Sara Shatford, ‘Describing a Picture: A Thousand Words are Seldom Cost Effective’, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 4, no. 4 (1984): 14.
[xvi] Victor Burgin, Thinking Photography (London: Macmillan, 1982), 144.
[xvii] Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Camera Lucida: Another Little History of Photography’, in The Meaning of Photography, eds. Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 76.
[xviii] Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana, 1977).
[xix] Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939).
[xx] Kaplan and Mifflin, “Mind and Sight.”
[xxi] Michel Duchein, ‘Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des Fonds in Archival Science’, Archivaria 16 (1983): 67.
[xxii] Martha A. Sandweiss, ‘Image and Artifact: The Photograph as Evidence in the Digital Age’, Journal of American History 94, no. 1 (2007): 194.
[xxiii] Ibid.,197.
[xxiv] Cilla Ballard and Rodney Teakle, ‘Seizing the Light: The Appraisal of Photographs’, Archives and Manuscripts 19, no. 1 (1991): 47.
[xxv] Frank Boles, Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005), 133.
[xxvi] Richard J. Huyda, ‘Photographs and Archives in Canada’, Archivaria 5 (1977): 10.
[xxvii] Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Diane Vogt-O’Connor, Photographs: Archival Care and Management (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2008), 77n15.
[xxviii] Ibid., 288.
[xxix] For more information, see www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4
[xxx] For more information, see www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat
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