In the Vernacular: Photography of the Everyday

This is the catalogue of the exhibition "In the Vernacular" at Boston University Art Gallery

An environmental assessment of the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park and the Key Largo Coral Reef Marine Sanctuary (Unpublished 1983 Report)

The Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park was established in 1960 and the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary in 1975. Field studies, funded by NOAA, were conducted in 1980 - 1981 to determine the state of the coral reefs and surrounding areas in relation to changing environmental conditions and resource management that had occurred over the intervening years. Ten reef sites within the Sanctuary and seven shallow grass and hardbottom sites within the Park were chosen for qualitative and quantitative studies. At each site, three parallel transects not less than 400 m long were run perpendicular to the reef or shore, each 300 m apart. Observations, data collecting and sampling were done by two teams of divers. Approximately 75 percent of the bottom within the 18-m isobath was covered by marine grasses, predominantly turtle grass. The general health of the seagrasses appeared good but a few areas showed signs of stress. The inner hardbottom of the Park was studied at the two entrances to Largo Sound. Though at the time of the study the North Channel hardbottom was subjected to only moderate boat traffic, marked changes had taken place over the past years, the most obvious of which was the loss of the extensive beds of Sargassum weed, one of the most extensive beds of this alga in the Keys. Only at this site was the green alga Enteromorpha encountered. This alga, often considered a pollution indicator, may denote the effects of shore run off. The hardbottom at South Channel and the surrounding grass beds showed signs of stress. This area bears the heaviest boat traffic within the Park waters causing continuous turbidity from boat wakes with resulting siltation. The offshore hardbottom and rubble areas in the Sanctuary appeared to be in good health and showed no visible indications of deterioration. Damage by boat groundings and anchors was negligible in the areas surveyed. The outer reefs in general appear to be healthy. Corals have a surprising resiliency to detrimental factors and, when conditions again become favorable, recover quickly from even severe damage. It is, therefore, a cause for concern that Grecian Rocks, which sits somewhat inshore of the outer reef line, has yet to recover from die-off in 1978. The slow recovery, if occurring, may be due to the lower quality of the inshore waters. The patch reefs, more adapted to inshore waters, do not show obvious stress signs, at least those surveyed in this study. It is apparent that water quality was changing in the keys. Water clarity over much of the reef tract was observed to be much reduced from former years and undoubtedly plays an important part in the stresses seen today over the Sanctuary and Park. (PDF contains 119 pages

Special Libraries, September 1954

Volume 45, Issue 7https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1954/1006/thumbnail.jp

\u27Yet in a Primitive Condition\u27: Edward S. Curtis\u27s The North American Indian

From 1907 to 1930, Edward S. Curtis created The North American Indian, a forty-volume edition of photographs and writings that he hoped would cover “every phase of Indian life of all tribes yet in a primitive condition.” All evidence indicates that he set out to make a singular and unified work of art. However, a comparative analysis of photographs made at different moments in this ambitious project reveals that The North American Indian ultimately is characterized not by stylistic and thematic unity but by significant shifts in aesthetic and political orientation. [excerpt

Camera Clubs and Fine Art Photography: Distinguishing Between Art and Amateur Activity

This research examines a medium of symbolic communication--photography--to understand how the social context of the use of that medium shapes its social meaning. Camera club photography is compared with photographic activity which is institutionally legitimized as art, in order to elucidate how art world legitimization shapes the nature of photographic activity. The distinctive featues of art as a communicational system, as manifested in photography, are described. A variety of research methods were employed. Data on camera club activities were gathered through participant-observation over a three year period. Observations of art photography activities such as exhibit openings and conferences were conducted. Interviews augmented observational data: 10 camera club members and 19 art photographers make up the interview sample. Pertinent documents were analyzed as well. Art and camera club photographic activities diverge. Art photography is highly personal and concentrates on representations of artists\u27 ideas. Successful artists contribute innovations to the field. Art photographs do not convey easily interpretable meanings. Successful work is described as mysterious and interpretations involve viewers\u27 own personal reactions to ambiguous content. Conversely camera club photographs are direct, their content straightforward. Camera clubs carry on the pictorialist tradition in photography, updated with borrowings from commercial portraiture, nature and travel photography. Camera club photographers demonstrate their competence through skillful reproduction of the camera club aesthetic code. Innovation and personal self-expression are devalued. Art photography has been constructed in contradistinction to all other uses of the medium. The accessibility of photographic technology to amateurs and professionasl alike, and the ease with which competence in the medium may be attained are inverted in art photography. Art photography transforms this democratic medium into a pursuit requiring special criteria for admission. The relationship between camera club and fine art photography may be described in terms of folklorists\u27 distinctions between folk art and fine art. While innovation attends art world legitimization, the club context frames amateur photography as a traditional activity, maintaining aesthetic values distinct from the art world. Both highly skillful uses of the medium, the social contexts of camera club and fine art photography shape the social meaning of these activities

Collectors, classifiers and researchers of the Malay World: How individuals and institutions in Britain in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries collected, arranged and organised libraries, archives and museums and how that impacts on today’s researchers

This paper briefly examines well-known libraries and archives in Britain with important Malay collections. However, it will highlight those less well-known libraries and other institutions that hold material of interest to researchers of the Malay World, particularly those institutions primarily perceived as dealing with the world of science rather than the humanities. Collections relating to the Malay World held in British libraries and archives are particularly rich in historical, literary and linguistic material. Historians, linguists and those interested in literature will obviously look to institutions such as the British Library, SOAS Library and other well-known centres of Asian history, linguistics and literature. But would they think to look in the libraries and archives of such places as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the Natural History Museum; the National maritime Museum; the Science Museum; the Zoological Society; the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine; and the Linnean Society? The great scientific institutions of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries collected a vast range of material, primarily focussing on their areas of interest, but not exclusively so. The boundaries between what we see as science, the social sciences and the humanities were less precise in the past than they are today, and historical collections held in scientific institutions cover a broader range of interests than many present-day researchers realise. In previous centuries a “scientist” was not just a person specialising in pure science but someone of a broad education who was as likely to be interested in not just his chosen field but in the wider world around him. His collecting, research and writing often reflected this wider interest. Such permissive collecting often led to items, that could be of interest to a varied range of researchers, being absorbed into, and unintentionally hidden in, a specialist collection. How something is classified and arranged in a collection can exclude information and restrict access as much as provide information and allow access. This paper will attempt to show the wealth of material on the Malay World held in British institutions, particularly scientific institutions, and suggests that researchers should look beyond a narrow view of their subject and where they think material would be held

Carson Colcha Embroideries: From Ersatz to Orthodox

In the 5th century BCE, Heraclitus wrote, “Everything in time begets its opposite.” The history of the Carson colchas of New Mexico appears to follow that axiom. Under a range of epithets from “fake” to “authentic,” these embroideries evolved during the 1930s as marketable (alternately enigmatic) replications or copies of 19th century Spanish colonial textiles to finally emerge as a distinctly recognized, legitimate genre of traditional Hispanic needlework in the late 20th century. These pieces were originally associated with the Carson community dominated by a clan of Mormon brothers married to Hispanic sisters, which created a complex intermingling of Anglo Mormon entrepreneurial guidance with Hispanic and Anglo artistic collaboration. My presentation traces the evolution of the Carson colcha legacy as the calculated invention of a Mormon trader who saw an opportunity to create historically “authentic” embroideries from the remnants of genuine Spanish colonial textiles. In the process, appropriation encompasses everything from reusing yarn and patching together original foundation fabrics to borrowing iconography while simulating a particular aesthetic system. Carson designers and stitchers then acculturated neotraditional imagery (Catholic saints and rituals) and ethnic emblems (e.g., Native American) to create eclectic embroideries with immediate visual impact and identifiable symbolic content that met tourist demands for exotic yet “culturally expressive” textiles. This paper explores the consequences of the circulation of a cultural artifact predicated on an interpretation of authenticity, created from artifice, subject to scholarly skepticism, and eventually transformed over time to become the basis of an independent artistic trend, or at least a viable colcha embroidery subgroup

Taking Snapshots, Living the Picture: The Kodak Company's Making of Photographic Biography

In this article I explore how George Eastman and the Eastman Kodak Company encouraged early twentieth-century camera users to think of snapshots as pictorial biographies. Analysing a wide selection of articles from the Kodakery, one of Kodak’s most popular magazines in the first half of the twentieth century, I demonstrate that the company endeavoured to secure its prominence in the photographic market by encouraging members of the public to integrate picture-taking into everyday life, and regard photographs as self-contained repositories of biographical details. To this end, Kodak framed the speedy pace of life that characterised the practice of being in the industrial world as a reality that allegedly weakened the human eye and mind’s ability to process the experience of life itself. Introducing the idea of the camera and picturetaking as the ultimate cures for this purported human deficiency, Kodak provided camera users with advice that helped to cement an understanding of photographs as surrogates of both the changing human body and individual subjects’ experiences in time and space. As in popular culture, and sometimes also in academia, photographs are still widely regarded as pictorial biographies, I argue that considering the popular photographic industry’s role in shaping photographic practices and photographs’ perceived meanings can help clarify the relationship between photography and life-writing