FuzzyPhoto

Study of photography as cultural history is relatively new and under-exploited discipline. It is important because the early history of photography coincides with significant global scientific, industrial, artistic, social, political and economic changes that inform understanding of the spread of scientific ideas, the relationship between science and art, the interplay between new technologies, popular culture and commerce, and the creation of personal and national identities. Access to photohistorical resources is essential for future cross-disciplinary research but these resources are often ephemeral, fragile, widely dispersed, poorly documented and difficult to access, although of enormous scope. Poor and inconsistent levels of documentation make it difficult to assess the significance of material beyond the relatively small nucleus of already well-known and heavily researched artists and scientists. However, image collections are increasingly being published online and search engines are becoming increasingly powerful, creating a timely opportunity to match photographs with other textual sources that can enrich our understanding without travel to numerous archives.
De Montfort University has created an extensive corpus of digital resources for researchers of 19th century photography comprising photographic exhibition catalogues and collections of letters. This includes two databases of the earliest known photographic exhibition catalogues: Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839-1865 (PEIB) http://peib.dmu.ac.uk and Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870-1915 (ERPS) http://erps.dmu.ac.uk.
These combined resources comprise the single most comprehensive record of British photographic exhibitions at this time. But these early exhibition catalogues were often devoid of pictures. A further problem is that amongst the visual arts, photography is unique - multiple versions of the same image can be produced and exhibited simultaneously at diverse locations. Photographs were commonly exhibited/published more than once, at different times, with different titles and even by different people, thus associating a specific exhibition catalogue reference with a specific image published elsewhere can be a complex and involved process.
This project will develop and test computer based "finding aids" that will be able to recommend potential matches between historical exhibition catalogue entries and images of photographs in online collections even where there is not a precise match. Incomplete data sets and imprecise information are common problems in arts and humanities research so the results of this research will be widely applicable across a wide range of subjects, allowing researchers to save considerable time and travel in the early stages of their research when identifying material most likely to be of interest to their studies and suggesting possible connections that would not otherwise be easily recognised using conventional research methods. The project outcomes will enable museums, libraries and archives to enhance the value and utility of their collections and of their online services through increased information, improved accuracy and functionality. Within the UK alone over 10,000 galleries, museums and archives could potentially benefit from this research. Within the private sector, beneficiaries will include commercial dealers and auction houses concerned with attribution and value. More accurate identification of artefacts such as photographs can help buyers and sellers and even help to prevent inadvertent export of nationally important treasures. The general public will benefit from improved accuracy and detail of information about objects in museums, libraries and archives, and lay communities of interest such as those carrying out genealogical or local history research will benefit in particular from increased access and awareness of information about historical photographs and related objects.

In addition to academic researchers, teachers and students, direct beneficiaries of this research will include galleries, libraries, archives and museums with significant holdings of artefacts likely to have been previously exhibited or for which separate text records exist elsewhere. Collection holders will be able to enhance the value and utility of their collections and of their online services through increased information, improved accuracy and functionality. This is likely to include not only photographs but paintings, prints, sculpture, jewellery, furniture, fashion, costume, toys, textiles, scientific equipment, industrial products etc. In each of these contexts similar questions about attribution, manufacture, historical sequencing and development are likely to be pertinent and amenable to research using the proposed approach.There are about 2,500 museums in the UK. Of these 54 are designated National Museums. In addition to six UK National Libraries there are 979 Academic Libraries and 4,517 Public Libraries (2008-09 statistics) Out of a total estimate of 2,389, there are 122 nationally recognised archives, 654 local and 328 university, as well as 1,224 special and 61 business archives. Thus in total within the UK alone over 10,000 institutions could potentially benefit from this research.
Within the private sector beneficiaries will include commercial dealers and auction houses concerned with attribution and value. More accurate identification of artifacts such as photographs can help buyers and sellers and may even help to prevent inadvertent export of nationally important treasures.
The general public will benefit generally from improved accuracy and detail of information about objects in galleries, museums, libraries and archives and lay communities of interest such as those carrying out genealogical or local history research will benefit in particular from increased information about historical photographs and other objects available online. While the value of such benefits is hard to quantify, recent rapid growth in such activities is testament to their importance in a society characterized by high levels of mobility, multi ethnicity, breakdown of traditional family units and ties and social, economic and political isolation of disadvantaged minority groups.
Many of these benefits are potentially realizable on successful completion of this research because the results can be implemented by a significant number of leading heritage institutions who are partners in this proposal and "finder/recommender" tools produced by the project will be freely available as open source to the developer community. The inclusion of US and European partners will ensure that impact will extend beyond the the UK.
Academic staff working on the project will gain new skills in data analysis and development of computational finding aids. More importantly there will be significant transfer of these learning outcomes to the partner organizations in the heritage sector.