Image conscious - Museums Association

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Image conscious

High-quality photography can help museums bring out the best in their collections. Rebecca Atkinson reports
Included in the Photographers’ Gallery’s recent exhibition on Mass Observation (2 August-29 September) was a series of object shots from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) 1946 exhibition Britain Can Make It, displayed alongside street shots of visitors queuing on Exhibition Road.

The contrast between the two sets of photographs was stark; the objects appear cool and detached compared with the bustle of the people impatiently waiting to see them.

They are more than functional objects destined for domestic usage – through the skill of the photographer, they are elevated to a higher plane to represent modernist ideals around design and new ways of living.

The V&A has had a photography studio since it was first founded. The aim 161 years ago is the same as today: to use the best technology to disseminate the collection to the general public.

Back then, that was through the sale of prints. Now, digital technology has opened up even more ways to share the collection with people who can’t see it in person.

Cheaper cameras and smartphones mean it’s now feasible for any museum to produce photographs of their collection, although many continue to use professional in-house or freelance photographers for projects that require a higher level of skill.

At the centre of this work is the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography (AHFAP), which was founded in 1985 by a group of photographers working at national museums with the aim of sharing professional knowledge and experience, and raising the profile of cultural heritage photography in the sector.

“Object photography can be seen as a bit dull by those outside of the sector, but, with the right skills, it can transform objects and bring out their intrinsic value,” says Tony Harris, chairman of the AHFAP and the new media officer at the Government Art Collection. “It has always pushed boundaries and continues to do so.”

At the Wallace Collection in London, photographer Cassandra Parsons’s main role is to photograph objects for its printed and online catalogues. Her first project, which was photographing the European arms and armour collection, resulted in 17,000 images created from 1,345 pieces.

Using considered lighting and object positioning, her photographs of suits of armour, helmets, swords and other weapons depict the artefacts as stylish, masculine and slightly foreboding.

“We try to give the objects a bit of personality – so for this project we wanted the armour to look as though it was being worn,” Parsons says. “I have a lot of creative freedom, but I always work with the curators to understand the objects. The aim is to make things look their absolute best while respecting how they actually look, dents and all.”

But photographs of collections are just one aspect of museum photography. Harris gives the example of Refugee Stories at the Jewish Museum in north London, an exhibition in which nine refugees from the 1930s through to the present were photographed in their homes by Ian Lillicrapp, the museum’s photographic and design manager.

Photographers also support museums’ conservation activities, such as at Tate where infra x-ray images of paintings are helping curators learn more about artists and the works of art they created. 

Digitisation is another key area of work. At the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) in Edinburgh, the photography studio is digitising the collection of five million drawings, photographs, negatives and manuscripts and 20 million aerial photographs.

And photographers also provide images for press offices, marketing, learning activities and social media channels.

Museum and gallery photography has not been immune to funding pressures; photography studios have been getting smaller for some time, and it’s increasingly common for museums to combine photography with other responsibilities.

But as budgets have been shrinking, digital technology has made photography more accessible. James Stevenson, the former head of photography at the V&A, says: “Digital technology has allowed museums to massively increase their photographic productivity.

It has enabled the V&A to photograph 30,000 objects from its ceramics gallery, a task that would have been impossible using film in terms of the cost and time involved. And it’s now feasible for museums with smaller collections like Tate to digitise their entire collections and make those visible to the public online.”

Tahra Duncan-Clark has worked as a photographer for the RCAHMS for 23 years and has seen the transition to digital photography.

“We went 100% digital about three years ago and although I still miss the darkroom, quality-wise we’ve come on leaps and bounds, especially for things like colour, which is much more true to life now,” she says.

But digital technology has also thrown up new challenges. For example, the preservation of digital images, and the implications on storage space, divides opinion. The Wellcome Trust advocates the use of compressed jpeg 2000, while others use preservation standard tiffs or raw files.

Gwen Jones, a senior photographer at the Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care, part of the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library (see p26), says: “There’s no right answer, but the best advice I’ve ever received is to keep moving your files [to new formats] to keep them alive. This does take time though and that’s a cost not many people factor into projects.”

Another ongoing concern is quality. “We embrace all types of photography in museums but there are a lot of standards out there,” says Harris. “Rather than reinventing the wheel, we need to pull together, which is why the AHFAP wants to develop a digital standards matrix that all photographers, professional or otherwise, can utilise.”

The fact that newer photographers coming into the sector are only trained in digital techniques is part of this. “You sometimes need an understanding of how [pre-digital] cameras work so you can identify the best way to capture an image,” explains Duncan-Clark.

Initiatives such as Tate’s internship scheme, part of Skills for the Future, should ensure the next generation of photographers have the right skills.

The AHFAP is planning to launch a learning portal on its website in the near future, which will also help photographers cope with the rapid changes in photography and the continual technical developments, which range from 3D imaging to digital colour science.

“Technology is changing but it’s still up to the skill of the photographer to bring out the best in objects,” says Stevenson from the V&A. “Lighting is the universal truth – it’s what photographers are skilled at, and it’s stayed the same for the past 100 years.”

Open book

The Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care (CHICC), part of the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library, is working towards a best-practice approach to digitisation by combining conservation and collections care expertise with photographers using the best available equipment and techniques.

The department is producing high-quality images of the library’s collection of early printed books, archives and manuscripts. It also offers a commercial service to third-party organisations.

The care and preservation of objects is at the heart of CHICC’s digitisation process, rather than extracting the content by the quickest means.

 “We adapt our practice depending on the condition of the object in question,” says senior photographer Gwen Jones. “Our aim is to produce digital surrogates – images that are as true to life as possible.”

The centre has been working to develop a methodology for multi-spectral imaging, where images are taken on different wavelengths and then layered together. 

Jones is keen to share its insight into this technique and potentially collaborate on research. “There could be opportunities to connect with other scientific areas of the university to work together.”


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