An Interview with Andrew Eskind at Joanna Heatwole.

An Interview with Andrew Eskind at Joanna Heatwole, October, 2003

Andrew Eskind is best known in the photographic archives community as the editor of successive editions of Index to Photographic Collections (GK Hall 1990 1995 1999) During his occupation at the George Eastman House he initiated the extensive database upon photography as well as their web site (www.geh.org). He publicly serves part-time as resource [i]role[/i] for Visual Studies Workshop graduate pupils as well as developer for the Research Center on-line collection access. He has previously contributed to Afterimage.

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Afterimage: recent images are appearing on the Research Center page of the VSW website (www.vsw.org). Could you elaborate in succession this project?

Eskind: Ideally, it would be awe-inspiring to be able to provide on-line access to the entire VSW photography collection. It is a large and diverse collection, to such a degree it won't happen overnight, yet if the Library of Congres can deposit a significant portion of its enormous Prints and Photographs collection on-line, we ought to be able to catch up--at least onward a proportionate basis. We have to start somewhere.

thus where have we started?

What you won't find over and above are the VSW holdings according to well-known fine art photographers. In one cases, similar or identical work can already be place on gallery sites, or photographers' acknowledge sites, or in print publications. on the other hand we're also slowed by the ne to fixed permissions. When public collections as it is as VSW acquire prints--either directly from artist/creators, or from third parties--no extra permission is lacked to exhibit them, or make them available for reflection or even to catalog them the aged fashioned catalog card way. if it were not that web-based finding aids are a form of publication, and we ne to find rights possessors and obtain permissions. Afterimage readers with work in the collection are welcome to contact us to provide this important detail.

Meanwhile, there are a married pair of large collections that researchers--even if they visit us here in Rochester--would have a difficult time fathoming. First is the Soibelman Syndicate recently made knowns Agency Collection. Everyone has heard of the Bettman Archive (now allowed by Corbis which is putting major chunk of it upon its commercial web site). Well Soibelman was a hazard smaller, a lot less well known, and operated across a much shorter time frame, on the contrary is similar in many ways.

The other collection which I find especially intriguing is the Fox Movie Flash collection photographed mainly by Joseph N. Selle (1906-1988) Because it consists entirely of 35mm negatives upon 100 ft rolls of film, and there are athwart 900 rolls, no one has evermore attempted to figure our what they're all about or level print them in the 25 years they've been here. Before that, calm Selle only printed those frames for which pedestrians in San Francisco sent in 50 cent for a souvenir postcard of themselves forward Market Street or Union Square. with equal reason the staggering one million frames personate previously unseen images. That, all by the agency of itself, I find quite amazing.

What on-line resource will we find today from the Soibelman Syndicate Collection?

Rather than just single out a few highlights, I consideration it would be useful to test and indicate the scope of enthralls and the organization that Soibelman used while operating as a picture agency. Their folder texture was still intact. So there's now a link from the Research Center page to a 'folder inventory' for that collection. Gradually, more and more of the folder names upon that list will link to web pages with a certain or all of the images. The most numerous ambitious link so far is to the Spanish Civil War material for which Bill Johnson bring outed a finding aid as a 'proof of concept' demonstration roughly a year ago. mostly of the folders won't shortly receive that depth of cataloging. Take a await at those folders which do already have links: dogs, dance, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, bicycling - we'll be adding more almost daily. Another aspect of this 'skim the surface' approach is that visitors to the web site are invited to e-mail us (library@vsw.org) with demands for folder contents not at the same time processed. Responding to where there's interest assures us that the effort is worthwhile.

And your favorite Fox Movie Flash Collection?

Mr Irv Schankman provided the capitals for us to scan the first 12 make revolves of the 900. That's 18000 frames!! sole two rolls so far - 3000 frames--are on-line. The order of succession is preserved--good frames, bad frames, they're all there and in order. The introduction to those revolves illustrates just how dependent we are forward internal evidence in the images to establish dates, the photographer's shooting habits and locations, etc Although we could selected and print the pleasing images and prepare an exhibit which 'discovers' Mr Selle posthumously as a previously unknown photographer (similar to lee-side Friedlander's discovery of the Storyville portrait negatives of EJ Bellocq), I'm more intrigued by dint of the potential of using these images as raw source material from media artists or documentary film makers. It not past nor futures an incredibly dense record of pedestrian traffic onward a daily basis over a 25-year period in a highly limited geographic area. I'm secure there's someone who could derive meaning public of all this visual data.