George Eastman House creating a wiki for photograph evaluation and identification

The online resource, the first of its kind, will provide dialogue and
valuable information for collectors, curators, and conservators

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The photo world will soon have a wiki dedicated to
understanding the diverse materials and methods of photography. Designed for
use by collectors, curators, archivists, and conservators, the wiki is
under development at George Eastman House International Museum of
Photography & Film, which will create and maintain the globally accessible
online resource addressing photograph appreciation and identification. The
creation of the wiki has been made possible via a $323,000 grant from the
Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency.

This wiki, the first of its kind, will include documentation on cameras,
print materials, chemical processes, and other imaging devices and materials
from the entire history of photography. The information will be freely
distributed as a searchable database, providing a dynamic and authoritative
online resource.

"George Eastman House recognizes an emerging urgent need for a
comprehensive method of recording the characteristics of photographs as
physical objects, particularly for conservation," said Dr. Anthony Bannon,
director of George Eastman House. "Features of traditional photographs that
are key to their preservation are being lost in current cataloguing
efforts."

In addition to serving as a repository for documentation, the wiki will
facilitate a classification scheme for imaging materials to be used by
collectors and historians. It will address aesthetic, scholarly, and
forensic questions of detail, type, condition, age, process, and other
elements of photograph appreciation and identification. For example, if
researching a photograph by Lewis Hine, one could access and analyze, via
this online wiki, Hine's signature and his handwritten notes on the back of
the image, in addition to locating keys to identifying the types of paper
he used.

"The wiki aims at describing the photograph as object, not just as image,
and identifying the significant aspects of its individual character, such as
how it's mounted, how it's inscribed, signed, stamped — providing a better
understanding, examination, and knowledge of the photograph," said Grant
Romer, director of Eastman House's Advanced Residency Program, who is
overseeing the wiki project.

As an authority on care and evaluation of photographic collections, Eastman
House seeks to expand its current pilot wiki project. The project was begun
in 2006 by Luisa Casella, who at the time was an Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation Fellow of the Eastman House's Advanced Residency Program in
Photograph Conservation and is now a Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum in
New York City. The new wiki model will take up to two years to develop.
Whereas most wikis allow all users to contribute and edit content, the
Eastman House wiki will be "closed," featuring ongoing contributions from
noted curators, scholars, and gallerists, coordinated through an
established staff at Eastman House.

"With modern information technology the ability to pool information from a
variety of different sources that are relevant to the value of the
photograph are infinitely better than they were in the past," Romer said.
"You will be able to access the information of the actual object that
exists here at Eastman House in our masterworks collection. Currently you
have to travel to Eastman House, look at the back of the images and study
signatures. Now we will scan the images and their elements and post them
online so others can compare and contrast and do research."

In addition to this wiki, Eastman House currently is posting Podcasts about
its collections, preservation projects, and exhibitions. These are
accessible at eastmanhouse.org, youtube.com, and through iTunes.

About George Eastman House George Eastman House is the world's oldest
photography museum, founded in 1947 on the estate of Kodak founder George
Eastman, the father of popular photography and motion picture film. The
museum has unparalleled collections of 400,000 photographs from 9,000
photographers dating from the beginnings of the medium; 20,000 items of
cameras technology; 28,000 motion picture titles and 3.5 million publicity
stills and posters; and one of the world's most comprehensive library of
photographic books, manuscripts, and journals. In modern archives adjacent
to the National Historic Landmark home and gardens, the museum offers
world-leading graduate and post- graduate programs in photograph and film
preservation, including the world's first and leading programs in
photograph conservation.