Resources

Collected Visions

http://cvisions.nyu.edu/

Collected Visions is a fascinating project directed by Lorrie Novak, who attempts to create a web site with significant input from its users. "Drawing upon snapshots collected from over 300 people, Collected Visions examines how family photographs shape our memories." Visitors can submit their own family snapshots to the archive or use the existing images to create their own essay. Only some submissions are selected for posting in a public gallery, which raises questions about the differences between curating and sharing. Most of the essays we viewed were a single image with a brief comment. One, perhaps unintentional, effect of this site is to emphasize the difference between Novak's own movies —"Three Jellyfish" and "My Favorite Snapshot"—and the general public's contributions. Nevertheless, these family pix with their prosaic commentaries do hold a powerful interest.

The Daguerrean Society web site is an amateur production—in the original and best sense of the word. The site is engaging, well-designed, and informed by a knowledgeable and passionate point of view. Period illustrations are complemented by numerous historical texts. Also rewarding are the personal points of view by many daguerrotype owners. There are also numerous links to other resources on the Net, including NMAA's own daguerreotype site, Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype.

Magnum Photos

http://www.magnumphotos.com/

Magnum, founded in 1947, is a cooperative of nearly sixty photographers. Gaining membership requires an rigorous internal nomination process. Magnum Photos' offices in London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, can be contacted directly through the web site. Each office handles editorial assignments, archival research, advertising and annual report work, as well as portfolio and print sales.

Magnum photographers have worked for nearly every major publication in the world over the past half century, with many journalistic scoops to their credit. The photographers are particularly well known for their photo essays—including classic reportage by founders Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson and seminal photo essays such as "Vietnam Inc." by Philip Jones Griffiths in the 1960s, and Josef Koudelka's "Gypsies" in the 1970s. Today Magnum continues to produce the very best in documentary photography.

	Other Photography Links This list presents only a sampling of World Wide Web photography resources. It includes both archival, museum, and artist sites. Links are listed alphabetically and are regularly updated.

	California Museum of Photography http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/ From its early acquisition of a copy of Photoshop software for the permanent collection to its ongoing support of innovative Net-based artist projects, the California Museum of Photography web site is on the Internet's front line of visual culture and should be a frequent stop. Don't forget to check out the Virtual Magnifying Glass.

	Collected Visions http://cvisions.nyu.edu/ Collected Visions is a fascinating project directed by Lorrie Novak, who attempts to create a web site with significant input from its users. "Drawing upon snapshots collected from over 300 people, Collected Visions examines how family photographs shape our memories." Visitors can submit their own family snapshots to the archive or use the existing images to create their own essay. Only some submissions are selected for posting in a public gallery, which raises questions about the differences between curating and sharing. Most of the essays we viewed were a single image with a brief comment. One, perhaps unintentional, effect of this site is to emphasize the difference between Novak's own movies —"Three Jellyfish" and "My Favorite Snapshot"—and the general public's contributions. Nevertheless, these family pix with their prosaic commentaries do hold a powerful interest.

	The Daguerreian Society http://www.daguerre.org The Daguerrean Society web site is an amateur production—in the original and best sense of the word. The site is engaging, well-designed, and informed by a knowledgeable and passionate point of view. Period illustrations are complemented by numerous historical texts. Also rewarding are the personal points of view by many daguerrotype owners. There are also numerous links to other resources on the Net, including NMAA's own daguerreotype site, Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype.

	George Eastman House http://www.eastman.org/ George Eastman House cares for the George Eastman legacy collections. It also collects and interprets images, films, literature, and equipment in the disciplines of photography and motion pictures. They provide a web site full of photography and film information, including digital access to collections and exhibitions, making it a great historical photography research center.

	International Center of Photography http://www.icp.org/ The International Center of Photography celebrates photography's diverse roles—as an agent of social change, a medium of aesthetic expression, a tool for scientific or historical research, and a repository for personal experience and memory. Like the changing photographic medium itself, ICP's mission is expanding to encompass the new electronic imaging media. ICP's web site offers virtual exhibitions as well as information on collections and classes at ICP.

	Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ The National Digital Library Program digitizes and delivers electronically the distinctive, historical Americana holdings at the Library of Congress. The American Memory Historical Collections, a major component of the Library's National Digital Library Program, are multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text from the Library's Americana collections. There are currently more than seventy collections in the American Memory archives.

	Magnum Photos http://www.magnumphotos.com/ Magnum, founded in 1947, is a cooperative of nearly sixty photographers. Gaining membership requires an rigorous internal nomination process. Magnum Photos' offices in London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, can be contacted directly through the web site. Each office handles editorial assignments, archival research, advertising and annual report work, as well as portfolio and print sales. Magnum photographers have worked for nearly every major publication in the world over the past half century, with many journalistic scoops to their credit. The photographers are particularly well known for their photo essays—including classic reportage by founders Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson and seminal photo essays such as "Vietnam Inc." by Philip Jones Griffiths in the 1960s, and Josef Koudelka's "Gypsies" in the 1970s. Today Magnum continues to produce the very best in documentary photography.

	Pictures Projects: Farewell to Bosnia/Gilles Peress http://www.picture-projects.com/bosnia.html The work of Gilles Peress—in Iran, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland—is among the most committed photography being produced today. Picture Projects, dedicated to "documentary photography from our world," is curated by three students at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. They do a remarkable job of presenting Peress's photographs of Bosnia in as unsettling a manner as his graphically powerful books with their thin line of provocative narrative. While the presentation can on occassion seem to overpower the pictures, this is not unintentional. There is a constant tension between the image and the word in Peress's work. In this presentation, Picture Projects makes visitors feel as if they are in a hypertextual world, yet by and large force them down a single path through the image/text narrative.

	RHIZOME http://www.rhizome.org/ Rhizome.org is a nonprofit organization that presents new media art to the public, fosters communication and critical dialogue about new media art, and preserves new media art for the future. The Rhizome.org community includes artists, curators, writers, designers, programmers, students, educators, and new media professionals. The geographically dispersed community spans seventy-five countries and five continents. The best way to participate in this community is by subscribing to one of their free email lists.

	Sight: Fine Photography Online http://www.sightphoto.com Sight is an online photography "magazine" founded by two University of Missouri School of Journalism graduates. It does not have the pedigree of its print brethren such as Aperture, or See, but it is a thoughtful example that hints at the competitive potential of a self-published upNetstart. Sight includes portfolios by several of our favorite photographers, including two series by Paul Kwilecki.

	Third View http://thirdview.asu.edu/ Third View, organized and produced by Mark Klett in conjunction with a collaborative team, makes rephotographs of historic American Western landscapes, creates new photographs, keeps a field diary of its travels, and records video and sound to reinterpret Western scenes. Based on the Rephotographic Survey Project (RSP), an earlier collaborative project that revisited and rephotographed these nineteenth-century photographs during the late 1970s, the Third View project repeats the first two images and creates a third in the series. Third View is concerned with physical changes to the land, but also with changes in cultural perception. Human interventions, personal histories linked to historic sites, and the examination of western icons are central project goals. The project also addresses the nature of photographic surveys and the documents they create.

	Zoetrope http://www.zoecom.com Do you still remember the magic of hyperlinking to an image on the Web? Or hearing audio in real time? Or chatting online? These capabilities seem trivial now but at first they were like magic. The QuicktimeVR on the zoecom site is not just another pan around a room. They practice truth-in-advertising when they say: "You must experience zoetropes. These marvels of optical illusion are sure to bring a moment of enjoyment into your life." A zoetrope is an early form of the movie, which used a rotating cylinder with slits through which to view sequential still photographs. As the images "strobe" by the viewer's eyesight, they appear to be moving. In these QTVR clips, click on the image and hold the mouse down. As you move it closer or further from the center of the image, it spins more or less quickly. With a little patience, you can get it to "revolve" at just the right speed so that is appears to be a regular movie loop—or you can make the wagon wheels turn in reverse, just like in the movies.
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