Vintage Ford Service Station, Lenexa Garage, Courtesy Johnson County Museum

Meeting In The Middle, the 2008 annual conference for both the Mountain-Plains Museums Association & the Association of Midwest Museums, was held last week. One of the Wednesday sessions that I attended was Create Access To Your Collections — Digitizing Collaboratively, which was all about the process of creating JoCoHistory.net, a collaborative project of the Johnson County Museum, Johnson County Library, Johnson County Archives, and Olathe Public Library to provide greater access to historical materials related to Johnson County, Kansas.

Now, before you non-technical &/or non-Kansas folks let your eyes glaze over or begin to reach for that ‘back’ button on your browser, let me tell you this is one fascinating project for collectors.

1979 Halloween Party Photo, Courtesy of Johnson County Museum

And just plain fun for those of us who just love looking at old photos.

Sure it’s focused on one county in Kansas, but as far as online databases go, it’s so much more than that. With this easy to use site, even if you aren’t a collector of Kansas, you certainly can find images and information on rather any historical collection you have. Along with search options, there are easily understood categories (people, places, groups, etc.) & collections (by museum, society etc.), all cross referenced with a timeline.

Along with providing greater access to old photographs, valuable ephemera, & historical information (and preserving those fragile photos & paper), JoCoHistory.net makes connections that might otherwise have been missed.

Antique Photo Postcard, Children Riding Ostrich, Courtesy Johnson County Museum

In schools, for example, teachers are finding the resources to make the connections between the national or ‘big picture’ history lessons and the local stories, heroes and events — including finding places for field trips & tours.

And students can get help with with their homework! No, they won’t be given cheat-sheets or the answers, but they will be assisted in where & how to find the answers. Local biographies, something largely missed in school texts, standard history books and even on the Internet, are luring students into pursuing more individual research. Students of all ages are becoming interested in history! And JoCoHistory is quickly discovering that interest in the site isn’t only local — parents & kids from other locations around the US are contacting the site for help in making the connections to their own locations.

OK, call me a history nerd, but how thrilling is that?

But wait, there’s more! Like the Ginsu knives, JoCoHistory offers much more for collectors and amateur historians.

• It’s all easy to use, with the candy (images) right there for sweet instant gratification. That’s so important for me; when researching I often prefer to scan photos to see if a database really has what I am looking for.
• You can get prints of the photos &/or higher quality scans of the images to print yourself. With each listing you’ll get information on Owner, Ordering Information, Resource Identifier, & Photo Use and Limitations — complete with links for easy access.
• Research tools for further help.

Retro Smaks Drive In Sign, Photo Courtesy Johnson County Museum

Perhaps the coolest feature is the History Mystery section, where JoCoHistory features images they’d like help with. If you can identify something or someone in the image shown, you can easily send in your information. What’s more, this feature is active on all images on the site simply by clicking the link by Feedback. David LaCrone, Digital Content Manager for the Johnson Country Library, says they’ve received 522 comments since the site began two years ago, with tips coming from folks scattered across the globe.

Feedback and comments on items in the database are verified before any information in the official record is changed; if it cannot be substantiated, comments are saved and included as Public Comments only. Hey, these are museums, historical archives & other organizations dedicated to factual details — that’s why we trust them. But these comments are always interesting, varying from the completely informational to the sublime “This is not so-and-so; I know, because I am so-and-so” and the “How great to see family photos; ours were lost to Katrina.”

Vintage Fashion Show, Pember Co. Department Store, Courtesty Olathe Public Library

At the beginning the site had 15,000 images and now it has over 28,000. They’ve learned that the more images and information they upload to the site, the more popular the site gets — and that’s something they intend to exploit. Along with increasing the number of images uploaded, and the number of collaborative partners from other historical societies, museums and organizations (each with their own unique collection of images), JoCoHistory will also be adding other objects — artifacts of the 3D variety in photographic form — as well as audio files to the database. Too cool.

Many other organizations could should take note of all that JoCoHistory has done; it sure would make my life much easier. (When I spend hours at JoCoHistory, it’s because I’m delighted and interested, not frustrated.)

Note: The site is just two years old, yet they will be updating their site by early 2009, including (if it’s possible) an even more intuitive design and a blog. I saw a brief preview and was impressed. So bookmark the main page of JoCoHistory now, kids; the other pages linked to here could change and you won’t want to miss anything.

Eve Arnold is known for her celebrity photographs, and perhaps most known for her photos of Marilyn Monroe.  This is how I, as a woman with an obsession with Monroe, discovered Arnold.  After reading my last book on Monroe, I had decided to swear-off my obsession and stop buying more Monroe stuff — at least books.  But then I discovered Eve Arnold’s book of Monroe photographs…

Full of photos — nearly 100, including 48 previously unseen — yes; but it’s the quality, not the quantity.

Arnold’s photographs of Marilyn are unique.  Unusually benevolent, these intimate photos of Marilyn Monroe expose the icon’s personality rather than her flesh.  In these photos we see a person, not a sex object; a human, not any kind of object at all.  And while I could go on and on about them, the important thing to know here is that these photos are different for several key reasons.

One is the all important matter of timing — and developing.  The two met at a party and forged a wonderful friendship that would last a decade.  As Arnold says, “We were both at the beginning of our careers, and I believe that neither of us knew precisely what we were doing.”

At the risk of more bad-pun-making, I’ll say what allowed the friendship to develop was the chemistry between the two.  While many dismiss Marilyn’s intelligence, Eve didn’t.  Both women knew what effect being a woman had on the world around her, and as Eve says, “We could make use of it, or we could let it be.”

Arnold would later say, “I didn’t want to be a ‘woman photographer’. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.” (And more recently confirms this belief, saying in a BBC interview, “No, I am a photographer. And you don’t say, a man photographer. So it seems likely that I am a photographer.”) This certainly puts the the two women on decidedly different paths, at least in appearance; yet it would stop neither’s success.

Arnold was the first woman to be nominated for membership in Magnum in 1951, and became a full member in 1957.  In 1995 she was made fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and elected Master Photographer, the world’s most prestigious photographic honor, by New York’s International Center of Photography; and in 2003, she was awarded an honorary O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) by the British Government.

Looking at her photographs, you can see why.

Through her photos of celebrities, we see more than famous people, more than a time capsule of “us” or “society”.  Even with such famous & familiar faces, we see something — someone — new.

If the mark of a really good novel is that you think of the characters long after the book ends, then photographs of people ought to do the same. Eve Arnold’s photos do that.  Even if you think you know the people in the portraits.

And when you don’t know the people in the photographs?  You long to…

In fact, if I have one complaint about Arnold’s works, it’s that I can’t find out enough.  I know that photographers believe that a photo is worth a thousand words, but often they do not seem to document the details which I long to know…  A perpetual problem for me, I know; but still, why can’t I find out more about Charlotte Stribling aka ‘Fabulous’?  Or Girl Holding Head, Insane Asylum, Haiti 1954?

The titles are stark, in such contrast to such compassionate, deep, rich images.  Perhaps this is by design, so that I, we, move past words and labels into what seeing and feeling.  But I still want to know more about Charlotte and Girl Holding Head.  For now, all I can do is stare at the photos and wonder.

Along with her famous celebrity protraits, there are a few others we can learn more about. Such as the Veiled woman, Muscat, Oman 1969.  She, and others, can (presumably) be seen in Arnold’s 1969 film about Dubai, Behind the Veil. This film is said, not only to capture “a traditional Muslim society just as it begins to become modernized, but also the antagonism between Islamic and Western societies that has been the stuff of news stories throughout the first years of the 21st century.”

I bet it’s amazing.

If there’s one thing I’ve read which seems to sum up the brilliance of Arnold’s photos, it’s this quote from the artist herself: “If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

This is the gift of this talented photographer.  A gift no doubt noticed & appreciated by Monroe, allowing such a friendship, but by all who were before Arnold’s camera.  Indeed a gift she shares with all who see her photographs.

So now I’ll collect Eve Arnold works — likely in books, due to my modest means.  Not because she knew Marilyn; but because she knew how to take pictures of her.  And of everyone she photographed.

PS  Through June 14, the David Gallery exhibits All About Eve, the single largest collection of vintage and period Eve Arnold prints available for acquisition.  I wish I were close enough to see it.  If you go, I’m accepting souveniers.

Derek’s review of Saving Stuff got me thinking…

The book is mainly about how to properly store items for centuries of survival, which is all well and good — except I wanna see my stuff!

Sure, it’s better for the photograph if I scan it, then properly put it away and use the digital scan to get copies for display. But is that better for me?

Call me crazy, but that photo of Aunt Meda Mae (who, by the way, is neither my aunt nor the aunt of anyone I know — I only know she’s Meda Mae because her name’s scrawled on the back, and, as I don’t know her very well, the title of ‘Aunt’ seems both the most respectful and friendly), that photo is imbued with magic.

In any old photo the magic lies in the fact that a person posed for this specific piece of paper. As noted before, my love of old photographs tells me that there’s something of the person’s spirit in that paper — or maybe it’s the other way around, and I love old photos because I feel spirit in that paper… Heck, I don’t know which is the chicken or the egg there, let alone which one came first.

Suggesting that I settle for a copy rather than the original makes me reply, “Why bother?”

Why own it to perserve hide it? That seems like cheating. I definitely feel ripped-off at the idea of putting the vintage photo of Aunt Meda Mae away for centuries, displaying the copy instead.

You know who should worry about preserving things? Museums. That’s their job. Well, that and displaying stuff; and I love museums for doing both.

Folks who work in museums are very much like the History Detectives, though most of them are far less well-known. But they should be. Their work and their dedication to it makes them some of the most fascinating people.

This is why I enjoy finding and reading good blogs by these folks. Like this post by Leslie Madsen Brooks. (It covers, among other things, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 145 cans of 100-year-old Captain Cookesley’s Consolidated Pea Soup and Custer’s dumbbell, so go read it.)

My point today, if I must have one, is that while I’m an excellent curator of my own personal collections I’d likely make a terrible museum worker. Not only would I want to keep everything (as in, “keep it in my home”), but I’d have a terrible time taking things off display and putting them into the archives (storage). If I can’t decide what one item of mine to take along for appraisal, what do you think it would be like for me to choose which things to favor with display? Or is it showing more favoritism to properly preserve it?

See what I mean.

While I’m certain that things must be preserved least they go the way of the dodo, I am equally certain that I am not the person for the job.

PS Leslie also has another blog where she’s just concluded post five on Museums and Social Networking Sites — sadly, Collectors’ Quest & its Community is not on her list (dare we pray for part six?).

It’s fun to browse through a stack of antique photos, seeing all those solemn faces gazing out at you, wondering where life took those people who sat down one day to be photographed, so long ago.

Some collect antique and vintage photographs for historical value, focusing on a specific time period like the Great Depression or the Civil War. Many collect antique photos for the clothes in the images – the antebellum Scarlett O’Hara dresses, the late 19^th century gowns with huge bustles and the short, fringed flapper dresses of the 1920s. Others collect photos of their own ancestors, straining to see the resemblance between the long gone family members in the photos and the six-year-old eating Cheerios at the breakfast table.

The age of modern photography began in the mid 1800s with the daguerrotype, developed by Louis Daguerre in 1839. People flocked to studios to have their images recorded on copper plates. Although the daguerrotype produced a good quality image, it was costly and easily damaged. The daguerrotype was followed in the 1850s by the ambrotype, which used a glass plate painted black on the back to create an image. The ambrotype was cheaper than the daguerrotype, making it more accessible to a wider segment of the population. Card photographs soon followed, where the image was mounted on a card, much like a postcard. These were commonly traded with family and friends. A thin plate of iron was used to create a tintype, or ferrotype. This type of photo was inexpensive and easy to create, and while it lacked some of the detail of the other types of images, the tintype’s low cost made it popular from the 1850s through the late 1800s.

Old paper photos can be found at antique shops and malls, antique auctions and online and usually go for a few dollars per photo. Daguerrotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes can be more difficult to find with prices anywhere from $10 to over $100.