One of the first meetings I attended at George Eastman House was an exhibition meeting for the community participation section of the 2006 exhibition  Why Look at Animals?

It was at this meeting that it was decided  email would be the way people gave us their photographs. It seemed like a reasonable way to do it. And it is, if the number of submissions is, say, 40, or even 100. But when you get 1,000 or more submissions, suddenly the notion of downloading 1,000 picture-laden emails, reformatting every one to conform to a common format, printing it out, and attaching it to the wall becomes daunting. Continue Reading »

Spring, the season of lilacs, sunshine, and general renewal, means something else for students of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation: marathon road trips to points south for a crash course in archival practices at some of the country’s finest institutions. This annual extended field trip offers two complementary rewards: an opportunity to work with equipment that the Eastman House Motion Picture Department does not have; and insight into procedures, work flows, and best practices in the real world. (One Selznick alum has likened Eastman House to NASA in its cleanliness and precision.)

Our first stop was the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland. The film department, managed by Selznick alumna Criss Kovac, is charged with preserving and making accessible the motion pictures created by the Executive Branch of the US Government. This encompasses far more than the duck-and-cover curios of the 1950s—everything from the IRS instructional films and US Information Agency propaganda shorts to documentary classics of the New Deal and all manner of military footage. Miles of it. The US Military is, by far, the most prolific “studio” of the Executive Branch. (In fact, NARA’s film archive is the only one I know of where one sometimes needs high-level security clearances for the rather prosaic task of sprocket repair.)

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An archivist’s dream is to have every film properly identified, labeled, catalogued and accessible through preservation efforts.   But in reality-we have a lot of work to do before this can occur!  Take for instance the latest identification project at the Conservation Center.   Here is a film we do not know the original title, nor can we recognize any of its actors, scenery or specific plot line.   It is a mystery that every archivist faces within their collection. How do we try to identify this film?  Using our skills and techniques, we can determine that this film is a pre-1923 German silent melodrama which has been loosely translated into Hungarian.  

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One of my favorite parts of working at George Eastman House is getting to see all of the wonderful collection objects.  This may sound somewhat obvious, but until on any given day you can go and look at a megalethoscope slide, an original Kodak  Brownie camera, or the Sackville West album,  you  haven’t  discovered the meaning of the word distraction.  

That being said, I come to you today with two distractions to share.

The first, some meta-photography relating to Jessica’s post on megalethoscopes, taken by our photographer, Barbara Galasso.

Box o' megalethoscope slides ready to go.

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Install week is over and the summer shows are up and look fabulous!  It is pretty magical to see an  exhibition  take shape. There are always moments when you are sure it will never be ready in time, but hard work and a dedicated prep team ensure success. After a hectic week we finished cleaning plexi and hanging wall text just in time for a lively and well attended panel discussion and members opening reception for Nature as Artifice.  I don’t have any pictures from those events yet, but I do have some to share from the docent training sessions that took place Friday afternoon. Click here if you are interested in becoming a docent at George Eastman House.

Maarje van den Heuvel talks to docents about Nature as Artifice.

Curator, Alison Nordstrom, talks to Docents about New Topographics.