| Newsletter for Collectors - Vol 11.7 | October 23, 2017 | | | Home • Photographers • Online Exhibitions
Contents • Alphabetical • Styles and movements • Articles
Visual Indexes • Galleries & Dealers • Timelines • Techniques
Library • Contact us Welcome to another Luminous-Lint Newsletter.
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A FREE TRIAL for the entire website is currently available so send an email to alan@luminous-lint.com with your name and reasons for wanting to take a look and I'll set up a password for you.
  
The power of the CONTEXTUALIZE link... |
Luminous-Lint uses many images to explore myriad histories of photography but its power resides in the context of each image.
In this Newsletter I'll show how Subscribers can access deeper levels of connections.
The image selected for this example is a portrait of "The Countess of Castiglione" photographed by Pierre-Louis Pierson in the 1850s that resides in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum.
Virginia Verasis, Countess of Castiglione, was a propagandist for Italian nationalism and used her beauty to promote the cause. Her life has been described in the book "La Divine Comtesse": Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione by Pierre Apraxine & Xavier Demange.
Louis Pierson, "The Countess de Castiglione", 1850s, Salt print, from collodion wet plate, hand-painted, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
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Click on the images to see larger versions
Her remarkable life will not be covered here but rather how a single portrait can be used on Luminous-Lint as a starting point for visual exploration and research.
Subscribers to Luminous-Lint will see a "Contextualize" link beneath the image caption.
This is one of the most important links on Luminous-Lint so don't ignore it!
Luminous-Lint context for Louis Pierson's hand-painted salt print photograph "The Countess de Castiglione" (1850s) - [Created 19 October 2017]
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Here the caption information has been enhanced with additional links that provide exploratory pathways through Luminous-Lint and these can be separated into five distinct types:
- Information on the photographer
- Other photographs and related images, for example book covers and ephemera, on the photographer
- Themes relevant to this photograph (These are the histories of photography on Luminous-Lint)
- Fragments (The relevant blocks of information and further photographs used to construct the histories)
- Slideshows using PHV, The PhotoHistory Visualizer, that show higher resolution versions of related images
The first two of these are self-explanatory but one additional facility for Subscribers is the ability to see Visual Indexes for which images are in which collections. With many photographers this is helpful in tracking down related images, and different versions of the same image, that are scattered around the world.
Luminous-Lint screen showing a partial view of "Collections including works by Louis Pierson" - [Created 19 October 2017]
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Themes relevant to this photograph
When the photograph was contextualized it suggested five additional Themes that might be worth considering and these were
Alternate personalities and questioning identity
Colour
Hand-painted photographs
Painting on photographs
Salt prints
Each of these Themes is an evolving history of the subject. The screenshot below is the start of the Theme on "Alternate personalities and questioning identity."
Luminous-Lint screen showing a partial view of the Theme "Alternate personalities and questioning identity" - [Created 19 October 2017]
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The Themes offer a visually rich way of exploring other issues surrounding the photograph of "The Countess de Castiglione" that takes you through the history of the subject from it's origins to contemporary photography. Photographs by Samuel Fosso, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing and many others are included here.
Texts, footnotes, reading lists are also included along with many other features.
Fragments
The Pierson portrait is a painted salt print and there is a Fragment on Luminous-Lint that brings those together from around the world into a single Visual Index for viewing. The images are ordered to support the surrounding texts as they are added in. This allows the user unparalleled access to widely scattered and difficult to locate materials.
Not surprisingly this is a feature used by photo curators to get ideas for exhibition planning.
Luminous-Lint screen showing a selection of painted salt prints from public and private collections around the world - [Created 19 October 2017]
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The portraits of the Countess have similarities with contemporary photography. In the 1970s Samuel Fosso and Cindy Sherman both took series of self-portraits in different clothing to question their own identities.
Luminous-Lint brings out the connections between distinct series scattered through time and place.
Slideshows
Luminous-Lint screen showing a partial view of the PhV (PhotoHistory Visualizer) for "The Countess de Castiglione" by Louis Pierson - [Created 19 October 2017]
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With the PhV as you scroll through the related images on the left hand side of the screen on the right there are suggestions for other photographers, online exhibitions, themes and fragments that are relevant to your search. As each image is accompanied by full captions providing the current location and any inventory or accession numbers this is a significant time save for researchers. On this single screen there are literally hundreds of ways of enhancing your knowledge about a subject.
Luminous-Lint offers a great many advantages over Google Search and Pinterest where image searches are increasingly polluted by uncaptioned images.
Some thoughts on possibilities
In this piece I've discussed and illustrated some of the many ways Luminous-Lint can be used to contextualize a single image. I could just as easily used a Rayogram of Man Ray, a storefront of Walker Evans or a portrait by August Sander as each of the over 78,000 images on Luminous-Lint can be used as a starting point.
Educational subscriptions |
As educators are now busy doing tweaks to their classes on photohistory and art history it is time to ensure that your subscription to Luminous-Lint has been confirmed. Please check with whoever manages subscriptions to digital resources to ensure all is well. If you are a professor, researcher or student requiring access to Luminous-Lint please contact your head of department or librarian.
If you need any assistance with curriculum planning or resources to supplement your courses send me an email.
Luminous-Lint is under continual revision and the following Themes have just been improved. If you have suggestions for subjects that should be added or enhanced please let me know.
Actors
Albumen prints
Albums
Algeria
Archaeology
Architecture
Artists
Art
Backgrounds and foregrounds
Beaches
Brazil
Cabinet cards
Cameraless photographs
Chairs and sofas
Characters and occupational types
Christian architecture
Christianity
Colonialism
Colour
Columns, plinths and pedestals
Cuba
Daguerreotypes
Daguerreotypists - Egypt
Daguerreotypists - Greece
Daguerreotypists - Italy
Daguerreotypists - The Holy Land
Egypt
England
Evidence
Expeditions and exploration
Experimental and manipulated photography
Fashion 1930-1940
Fashion
Feet
Flora
Graffiti
Greece
Hand-painted photographs
Imprimerie photographique Blanquart-Evrard
Interiors of photographic studios
Islamic architecture
Islam
Israel and Palestine
Japan
Jerusalem
Jordan
Lantern slides
Lebanon
Lines and shapes
Literature
Magic lanterns
Marketing
Multiple exposures
Non-canonical photography
Occupational
Occupations and roles
Painting on photographs
Paper and waxed paper negatives
Paris
Peru
Photo postcards
Photograms
Photographer and studio labels
Photomontage
Poetry
Props
Religious architecture
Remnants of the Ancient and Classical world
Rivers and streams
Rome
Rooms and their contents
Russia - Russian Federation
Salt prints
Scientific
Spirit photography and paranormal manifestations
Staircases
Stereoviews, stereographs and stereocards
Studio necessities
Surrealism
Syria - Syrian Arab Republic
Tintypes
Trees
Water and waterfalls
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Leonard Freed (1929, 23 October - 2006, 29 November) was born - US, NY, Brooklyn. One of America‘s greatest photojournalists with a long career working with Magnum. He carried out photographic projects dealing with negro life in the USA, the Jews of Amsterdam and was also in Israel following the 1967 Six Day War.
Ralph Morse (1917, 23 October - 2014, 7 December) was born - US, NY, New York. Photojournalist who worked for for LIFE magazine from the age of 24 and went on to cover the Second World War including the Liberation of Paris. He also worked for TIME magazines.
Henry Holmes Smith (1909, 23 October - 1986, March) was born. American photographer, influential teacher and writer. He made what he termed "refraction drawings" that used a plate of glass on which he drew with dark and light Karo syrup. The syrup ran when he raised the glass to the vertical and then a bulb More...
Théophile Gautier (1811, 30 August - 1872, 23 October) died - France, Paris. Novelist, Playwright, Poet and critic. Traveled to Spain and took Daguerreotypes an account of his travels is published in Théophile Gautier "Wanderings in Spain" (London: Ingram, Cooke, and Co., 1853)
John Bevan Hazard (1830 - 1892, 23 October) died - England, Gloucestershire, Bishopston. He was baptised at St Stephen's, Bristol on 12 Nov. 1830, son of Pump & Block Maker Edward York (or Yorke) Hazard (died 1862) & Elizabeth Hazard. He died at Bishopston, Gloucestershire, England on 23 Oct. 1892.
Albert Kish (1937, 14 May - 2015, 23 October) died - Canada, Toronto.
Harland P. Nasvik (1908, 28 February - 1993, 23 October) died - US, MN, Minnetonka.
Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (1805, 30 December - 1894, 23 October) died. German painter and photographer. He set up a photographic studio with Hermann Biow in Hamburg in 1842 producing remarkable daguerreotypes. |
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