'Social History' implies trying to represent the wider more 'evocative'
concepts that a photograph might encapsulate - always a difficult
task. Most of the schemes developed take an almost scientific
approcah to dissecting an image into its key concepts (date,
place, physical objects presnt, names) - so long as you are
consistent with how you 'dissect' the objects in an image and how
you index them (with systems such as ICONCLASS) then that part
of the equation should be solved.
However, trying to flag up more emotional or subjective qualities to
a photograph (for this is one of the beauties of a photograph
collection) is not something that has been resolved to any degree.
Many photographs (particularly in the social history field) are taken
to capture a complex intertwined system of narratives and feelings,
either directly evident in the actual subject of the photograph, or
less obviously evident in the thoughts of the person taking the
photograph. It would be good to think that indexing and navigation
of photograph collections might be able to reflect this level of
complexity.
For our part here at the National Fairground Archive, we steadfastly
dissect our image into scientific slices of describing the aspects of
the fair we see - using our own in house vocabulary - and cater for
an assumed audience of enthusiasts, show-families, local
historians, cultural researchers, etc. We are aware that we cover
the "who, what, where and when" of the image, but as for covering
the sheer "wow" of an image, then i'm sure we fail miserably.
___________________________________________________________
Ian Trowell
NFA Digital Project
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
tel: (01142) 227293
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