Re: The Center for Photographic History and Technology

Ryuji,

In context:

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryuji Suzuki <rs@silvergrain.org>
Sent: Jul 26, 2005 9:57 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Re: The Center for Photographic History and Technology

A few questions.

1. What does the hexagon represent in the scope of the Center?

It is a carry over from the APIS logo. The hexagon can either represent the beehive cell, the carbon atom or benzine ring, or a lens shutter -- take your pick. Most corporate symbols today are not symbolic so in that sense we are old fashioned.

2. How is the organization staffed to achieve the goals of the Center?

There are four unpaid volunteer directors:

Jeffrey Krenzel Esq. (lawyer) he is the Project Director and since we have no funded projects at the moment he is helping me to set up the structure, web site accounting etc. First rule of non-profits: get a lawyer on the Board!

We have an Outreach Director who will be named Monday when he returns from vacation. He will coordinate the advisors, affilliate group activities, and member issues and activities.

We are searching for a Finance Director at the moment.

 I am serving as the Executive Director with a public relations person in a staff position.

3. The Center's goals seem to be event oriented. Are there any other
   plans that might be of interest to distant members or members with
   main professions outside photography who can't justify days off and
   traveling? (except, of course, there is a "relevant" conference
   back-to-back in the same city :-)

I made a 30 minute Powerpoint presentation outlining the goals and some of what we called pie-in-the-sky dreams, most of which were not event oriented.

A short list:

Support research in historic processes -- things like autochrome and Woodbury have not been practiced in the modern era to my knowledge or have not been widely published. The advisory panel is chartered to help people in this effort. We are building the panel now (7 members) so I would like to wait a bit before announcing the names. We want to get grants to support research -- this couldbe tough but we can use the advisory panel for consultation. I've got three PhD's, one chemist, one physisist, and one pharmcology. The others are known experts in thier fields. I think some of the folks here are familiar with Paul Lehman's work in inventing new carbon processes. That's the sort of thing we would like to see more of.

Build informal affilliate groups. If you are interested in forming one letme know. I can bet B+S to provide names from your area. Two are now forming as was mentioned. I expect a few more in the coming weeks. I founded the Platypus Group in 1985, we published two portfolios and we still think of ourseleves as a group even though many have moved out of the area. Jan Pietrzak keeps the fire burning. One of the goals of the affiliate groups, besides networking, is to follow the lead of the New Mexico Council on Photography and to search for local collections of photographs and negatives to preserve. Joan Coke, wife of the late Van Deren Coke, was hot on the trail in Lordsburg of a shoe box full of negs of Pancho Villa's army taken by a local photographer. Turns out that by the time she got there, they had apparently been thrown out by the person renting the room. I know finding and saving historic negatives sounds corny, but were are at the end of the negative era. In a few years every negative will be historic. Often what has been saved relates to the overclasses and not the underclasses. Think Van der Zee.

Eventually publish a real peer reviewed journal. Lots of work and lots of money.

For now publish occasional papers.

Build an online library of scanned and ocr'd historic process works. Some previous work has been done by VSW in facsimile reproductions but having the works on line really will make a difference. I dream of a grant to get many of the journal sets planetary sanned and ocr'd. The journals are rich with information but there is no index and only by digging for hours and good luck will find anything of value.

Build a collection of historic and modern samples of process work. The Getty is interested in having these works for research.

Build a major library of early photographic manuals. I am hoping or a major break in this area but I can't talk about it.

We are hard at work building a Sharepoint collaborative web site system. Bob Herbst is helping on this we will be able to allow a certain level of member to have their own subsite that they can modify, add to and manage from a browser. The thinking at the moment is this would be the perk for the $75.00 associate membership. Sharepoin offers all kinds of collabortive tools and we are hoping that the membrship can help drive the organization in the direction that suites them.

You can have their own picture library. You can even have your own discussion group if you like but the main issue is you can use the main site discussion group and easily share images. Guests can participate but not own a subsite so they can't share images.

I would like to live long enough to see a brick and mortar facility on a university campus. Full facilities for historic processes, a Victorian daylight studio and a MFA program build around historic processes.

If we are successful in building a knowledge base of digital, andalog, and human resources, this could be valuable to all people working in printmaking photography. I don't disparage groups whose purpose is to raise money for grants to artists but it is our feeling that a dollare here will provide a greater benefit to more people Like any new group we have lots of big ideas that will need to be sorted out.

Some of this will stick some won't.

Lots more but you're keeping me up past my bedtime! I'm not even going to spel chek!

--Dick

Ryuji Suzuki
Received on Wed Jul 27 00:47:46 2005