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The archival appraisal of photographs
William H Leary
INTRODUCTION
Appraisal is undoubtedly the most complex and intimidating archival responsibility. Not surprisingly, it is also one of the most controversial subjects in the professional literature. The first instinct of any archivist is to save as much for posterity as possible. Few of us relish the task of identifying - especially in writing - records that cannot, or should not, or must not be saved. Photo archivists have developed an unusually strong impulse to avoid thinking about the need for selection. After all, we have told each other, the most urgent task is to save what remains of the early photographic legacy, a task which many institutions ignored until recently. The salvage of nineteenth century photography will remain an important responsibility of photo archives for the foreseeable future. Increasingly, however, the enormous bulk of twentieth century photography will force photo archivists to confront the necessity of appraisal, meaning selection.
The purpose of this study is to recommend general principles and specific selection criteria that should guide the appraisal of photographs in any archival institution, particularly photographs created since World War II. Special considerations that apply to the appraisal of government or private photographs are also discussed. The proposed guidelines may well generate questions and disagreement in some areas. It is intended that in these areas the study will provide a framework for continuing, vigorous debate.
It is intended that this study will provide guidance to any archivist who encounters photographic materials, not merely the specialist. The author believes that photographs are such an important resource for understanding modern life that archives must make substantial efforts to overcome generations of relative neglect. He also recognises, however, that very few archival institutions have trained, full-time specialists to appraise and administer photographic records. For the foreseeable future, therefore, the archival appraisal of photographs frequently will be performed by individuals with many other responsibilities, who may not be able to follow all the guidelines set forth in this study. Hopefully, more archival managers will recognise the need for full-time staff to administer photographic archives.
7. GUIDELINES
7.1 "Appraisal", writes Leonard Rapport; "is at
best an inexact science, perhaps more of an art; and a
conscientious appraiser, particularly an imaginative one with an
awareness of research interests and trends, is apt to know nights
of troubled soul-searching". (1)
Conscientious soul-searching should always remain a conspicuous
hazard of the task of appraisal. Nevertheless, professional
archivists must also continuously strive to define their art as
systematically as possible. Because of the relatively late
discovery of photography by archival institutions, scant
attention has been devoted to studying the archival appraisal of
photographs.
7.2 Perhaps the most painful discovery for many picture
professionals is that photographs must be appraised. For the sake
of scholarship, however, photo archivists must develop guidelines
for selecting only a relatively small proportion of the current
inundation of photographs, which exceeds 10 billion images
annually. As Sam Kula observed in a recent RAMP study of the
appraisal of moving images:
"....appraisal without selection, without either the
deliberate scheduling of the documents not selected, or without
the decision to acquire and protect certain documents in private
hands while others available to the archives are allowed to
self-destruct in private hands, is hardly a critical issue. If
everything that is identified and scheduled is eventually
accessioned then appraisal remains nothing more than the first
phase of organisation, and description." (2)
7.3 The purpose of this study has been to discuss general appraisal principles that are relevant to the evaluation of photographs, to suggest specific criteria applicable to the appraisal of photographs, and to identify additional factors that must be considered when appraising governmental or privately created photographs. The guidelines emerging from this study often will require qualification or modification to meet the particular circumstances of the wide variety of archival institutions that acquire historical photography. Nevertheless, the goal of such a study is to develop broad guidelines that will encourage consistency in exercising the most difficult and significant archival responsibility. Improvement of these guidelines depends upon continuing debate and further studies. The numbers in parentheses following each guideline refer to previous sections of the study, which should be consulted for elaboration.
7 4 General Considerations
As an essential precondition to appraisal, several general policies should be adopted by archival institutions that are seriously engaged in acquiring historical photographs.
(1) Every archival institution that acquires photographs (a category that includes libraries and historical societies for the purposes of this study) should develop a written acquisition policy that reflects legal or formal-obligations, careful consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the institution's current holdings, and the accessioning interests of other institutions (2.4).
(2) Information about acquisition policies should be distributed widely to encourage greater co-operation and less competition among archival institutions. Archives cannot hope to preserve a full visual record of modern life without broadly and rationally dispersing the responsibility to acquire historical photographs (2.4).
(3) A dominant theme of all archival acquisition policies should be an emphasis on historical photographs, which are defined as any photograph capable of supporting the study or interpretation of history. Self-conscious art photography should be collected by art museums and specialized museums of photography, rather than archives (1.10 - 1.12).
(4) Archives should adhere strictly to the boundaries of their announced acquisition policies. Offers which do not fit clearly into an institution's holdings should be referred to a more appropriate agency (2.4).
(5) Photo appraisers should be advanced students of the history of photography as well as being thoroughly familiar with the general historical literature. Adequate preparation for appraisal should also include detailed knowledge of the photographs currently held by the appraiser's institution and extensive, if less detailed knowledge of the holdings of other institutions (2.5).
(6) Both government archives and those collecting from private sources should develop an aggressive records management program. Historically valuable photographs should be scheduled for accessioning directly into the archives as soon as possible in their life cycle (2.6).
(7) A records survey to gain information about photographs not in archival custody is the most critical component of an active records management program. It provides an opportunity to gather data that is crucial to making informed appraisals, and to educate photo creators about their responsibilities (3.1, 3.2).
(8) The survey must be comprehensive and reliable, which requires collecting data in a standardised format, and extensive personal contacts with agency personnel (3.3).
(9) The survey form must be carefully designed to collect information, at the series level, about the basic appraisal criteria: subject, data, volume, physical format, arrangement, nature and frequency of use, and related finding aids (3.3.1).
(10) The success of the survey depends upon timely and effective archival response to problems and opportunities encountered, especially to ensure that potentially valuable photographs are offered to the archives (3.6).
(11) Like other audiovisual materials, photographs have archival significance primarily because of their informational value rather than their evidential value, to use T.R. Schellenberg's terminology. Consequently, potential research use is the major determinant of archival value in photographs. All photo archives should carefully characterise the types of researchers they serve and the extent and purpose of the uses made of photographs in the archives (2.7).
(12) Authors and professional picture researchers usually want photographs of well-known people, places, and events. They demand high technical quality and they prefer to make selections from large numbers of related images. Professional historians who have used photographs to interpret the past rather than merely illustrate it have made imaginative use of photographs of less well-known people and places (2.7).
(13) The basic archival principle of provenance should guide the appraisal of photographs. Judgments normally should be made about an entire collection of photographs rather than discrete parts of it. Whenever possible, photographic records should be appraised only after full investigation of related audiovisual and textual records (2.8).
(14) Whenever photographs are inextricably related to other records, they should be appraised and processed together (with appropriate cross-references) rather than appraising the photographs independently and transferring them to a separate division of photographs (2.8).
(15) Cost should never be the sole determinant of whether photographic records should be preserved, but the rapidly escalating costs of preserving and servicing photographs cannot be ignored (2.9).
(16) Archival institutions should avoid the highly volatile marketplace in historical photographs, unless they have funds that must be spent for purchases. In exceptional circumstances, it may also be appropriate to purchase an unusually valuable collection that would otherwise be lost to historical research (2.9).
(17) All institutions should periodically review the continuing value of their photographic archives based primarily, but not exclusively, on statistics about use. Appraisal review should also include deliberate re-examination of current appraisal standards (2.10).
7.5 Appraisal Criteria
When evaluating a series of photographs offered to the archives, the appraiser must judiciously balance a variety of considerations, which cannot be quantified and usually have unequal significance. All appraisal decisions should be carefully documented, particularly negative appraisals, and periodically reviewed by the management of the archives. The following criteria are listed in the order in which they would normally be considered by an appraiser.
(18) Age:
There are two watershed dates in the archival history of photography. Photographs made prior to 1888, when George Eastman invented amateur photography, should be preserved unless the appraisal reveals an overriding shortcoming, such as uncorrectable physical deterioration.
Appraisal doubts about photographs made prior to 1932, when the 35mm camera transformed the nature of photography, should be resolved in favour of retention. Meaningful evaluation of the voluminous production of post-World War II photographs requires rigorous, even sceptical application of all appraisal criteria (4.1).
(19) Subject:
Subject matter is the most subjective, but also the most important appraisal criterion. Each institution should compile a list of subjects to which it assigns the highest priority as well as the lowest (4.2).
(20) When evaluating the subject significance of photographs, appraisers should recall the remarkable capacity of photographs to document the commonplace realities of life so often overlooked by more traditional historical sources (4.2).
(21) Uniqueness:
Archival institutions should not knowingly accession photographs that are duplicated at other institutions (4.3).
(22) Photo archives should treat the camera negative (or color transparency) as the record copy of any photograph (4.3).
(23) Identification:
The reliability and usefulness of historical photographs
usually depends upon identification of the subject, date,
location, names of people depicted, and photographer. Extensive
research can compensate for inadequate or misleading captions,
but completely unidentified photographs must be evaluated very
sceptically by the archival appraiser (4.4).
(24) Quality:
Because photographs are examined for details and are meant to
be reproduced, the appraiser should emphasise the importance of
satisfactory technical quality, which includes proper exposure,
clear focus, and good composition (4.5).
(25) Three physical types that present serious appraisal dilemmas are deteriorating nitrate or diacetate negatives, colour film, and 35mm photographs. The appraiser should identify nitrate or diacetate negatives so that preservation measures can be undertaken promptly and the full costs of accessioning considered. Because of the instability of colour film, it may not be possible, financially or technically, to preserve the colour in colour photographs - a factor which must be considered in appraisal. For a variety of reasons, the voluminous output of 35mm photographs should be appraised very rigorously, with particular attention to their quality, quantity, accessibility, and identification (4.5).
(26) Quantity:
Some redundancy in photo collections is desirable because it
permits researchers to make comparative judgments, to test the
credibility of the photographs, to make meaningful selections,
and to discern changeover time (4. 6).
(27) Weeding and sampling are two recommended remedies for dealing with the problem of excessive volume. Weeding is a much more useful technique than sampling, but both have only limited applications because they require item-by-item selection, which is very time-consuming and may also conflict with the principle of archival integrity (4. 6).
(28) Accessibility:
Access to photographs can be limited by formal restrictions,
which are relatively rare, and informally by inconvenient
arrangement, which is fairly common. When appraising large bodies
of photographs, inconvenient arrangement combined with a low
concentration of appealing images should be regarded as a serious
deficiency (4.7).
(29) Photographer:
Attribution to a well-known photographer increases the value
of any collection of photographs, but an archival appraisal
should never disqualify a collection because the photographer is
unknown or not highly regarded (4. 8).
7.6 Appraising Government Photographs
The appraiser of government photographs normally enjoys two advantages: a well-defined acquisition policy and a formal records management program that can alleviate many typical problems related to appraisal. Appraisers of government photography are also likely to encounter several recurring types of photographs.
(30) The most ubiquitous types of government photographs - personnel identification and ceremonial photos, and training aids and copy photos - rarely have archival value (5.4.1 and 5.4.2).
(31) Construction progress photos frequently pose an appraisal dilemma. Their value depends upon the specific subject matter, the agency's use of the photographs, and the amount of repetition (5.4.3 and 5.4.4).
(32) Publicity and program files are the most likely sources of archival photographs. Some of the more common categories of program photographs depict military activities, agriculture, and nature; for all of these the most difficult appraisal criterion to evaluate is volume, particularly the repetitive volume characteristic of such files (5.4.5).
(33) Scientific or technical photo series are normally quite voluminous, specific, and repetitive. Consequently, the appraiser of scientific photographs should consider the unusual options of long-term retention in a records centre, retention in a "satellite archives" or miniaturization (5.4.5).
(34) Documentary photographs, which have enormous appeal to most users of archival photographs, almost always should be appraised as archival (5.4.5.5).
(35) The most vexing appraisal problems facing government archives are agency personnel who are insensitive to the record character of photographs or overly possessive of their holdings, sudden reorganizations that confuse the question of ownership, poor filing habits and inadequate editing, and the growing tendency to contract out photography. An active, imaginative records management program is the most effective response to these problems (5.5).
(36) Appraisers should identify and schedule the timely accessioning of all related documentation, particularly finding aids, use data, photographica, and information about restrictions (5.6).
(37) Whenever possible, the archives should accession a black and white or colour negative and corresponding captioned print. For colour transparencies or slides accession the original and one duplicate (5.7).
7.7 Appraising Non-government Photographs
Governments are the major source of archival photographs, but not the only one. Private sources and types of historical photography are virtually limitless. The appraisal of photographs created by large private bureaucracies such as businesses, universities, and churches, is very similar to the appraisal of government photographs. Three other major sources of privately created photography warrant special attention.
(38) Newspaper photographs are particularly rich sources of historical documentation which should be collected actively by appropriate archival repositories (6.3).
(39) The major challenge in appraising news photographs is to determine the extent of overlapping and duplicate coverage among newspapers, especially those serving the same regional audience (6.3).
(40) Only a relatively small proportion of commercial photography can be preserved in archival institutions because of the enormous volume of current production by thousands of sources. Archives, therefore, should first approach commercial studios or stock photo agencies. The most valuable collections of commercial photography cover an extended period of time, a wide range of subjects, and have excellent technical qualities (6.4).
(41) The most serious and common deficiencies of commercial photographs are inadequate identification, preservation problems, and inaccessible arrangement (6.4).
(42) Some of the most important traditional functions of commercial photography have largely been supplanted by amateur photography (6.5).
(43) A relatively small and necessarily very selective sample of amateur photography should be preserved in archival institutions as a record of family life. The most important appraisal criterion is subject matter; amateur photographs are valuable primarily for glimpsing the more intimate and routine aspects of daily life, rather than the notable people and events that interest most professional photographers (6.5).
(44) Institutions that acquire amateur photography should seek out images of a wide variety of social, economic, and ethnic groups; set minimally acceptable technical standards; and insist upon adequate identification, which may require extensive interviews (6.5).
7.8 This study admittedly proclaims very few precise or unequivocal guidelines for the archival appraisal of photographs. Rather, the objective has been to convey the complexity of appraising photographs while also dispelling some of the mystery that often attends archival discussions of photographs. With rare exceptions, evaluating the historical significance of photographs requires only slight modification of the generally accepted guidelines for appraising paper records. Specialised experience and knowledge of historical photographs should supplement extensive familiarity with established precepts of archival appraisal. Ultimately, however, the appraiser of historical photographs faces the same daunting, unenviable challenge that the American Historical Association presented to all archival appraisers a generation ago: "To eliminate the unimportant calls for courage and critical judgment ... the archivist must be wise enough and bold enough to take a calculated risk". (3) The massive, escalating volume of still photography requires continuing debate and elaboration of appraisal policies - refined calculations of the risks - to enable us to fulfill the archival obligation to preserve a full, yet manageable visual record of our times.