History of Photography - Luminous-Lint

To encourage discussion with those who are interested in the history of
photography I've decided to mount up the most recent newsletter here
and you can visit the website at www.luminous-lint.com to learn more.

All the best,

Alan Griffiths


Luminous-Lint
Newsletter: issue 1.4
May 31, 2006


Greetings,

Well it's been a busy month and thanks to everybody for helping out in
so many ways. Progress on the www.luminous-lint.com site has been
immense in the last four weeks so let's go through some of the key
points.



BASIC STATS

The website now has around 5,000,000 hits a month, includes over 9,700
photographers names, has indexed details on over 6,300 photographic
books, accesses over 10,700 photographs, and the current estimate is
that it has around 35,000 highly structured webpages and millions of
internal links.

To date over 1,200 people have contributed information from around the
world and most of the major 19th century photography dealers are
allowing use of their textual and photographic materials. I'd also like
to thank the private collectors who are providing remarkable resources.
The full implications of this will become apparent as increasing
numbers of exhibitions start to come alive and are integrated into the
textual history.



PRONHOP

For those of you who have been watching the changes in the progress on
the Peer Reviewed History of Photography (PRONHOP) webpage at:

http://www.luminous-lint.com/_switchbox.php?action=ACT_PRONHOP

You will have seen how quickly the exhibitions are being developed.
When we completed the wonderful Autochrome exhibition I had planned for
over 100 exhibitions to be online by the end of this year but almost 40
have become live in the last six weeks. I'm now expecting as many as
200 by the end of this year.

Recently released highlights include:

Introduction to 19th century photography types
Carte de visites
Cabinet cards (backs only at this point)
19th century Regional studies (Egypt, India, Japan, China, Europe)
John Guttman (hosted in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston - MFAH)
Bill Jay (has provided portraits of photographers from his wonderful
archive)
Contemporary Daguerreotypes (this has been started)
Contemporary photographers
No exhibition on this site is ever closed and we are always seeking
improvement - so if you have suggestions, corrections or other images
that would improve it then let me know.



CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS

Contemporary photographers are part of the history too. To this end I
want to be able to demonstrate how we can show stylistic trends that go
from the earliest photographers up to the present day. I'm inviting a
small number of photographers whose work highlights trends and then as
the history texts are prepared these will serve as examples to improve
our understanding.

I welcome suggestions for photographers that should be included.



UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Many of you are involved in preparing exhibitions and texts and do
remember to send through the material as it is prepared. As we progress
the materials will improve.



HELP OUT

If you have a set of jpeg scans from a significant album or book of the
19th century and are willing to share them I'd love to hear from you.
All images are fully credited. If you have suggestions for topics to be
included we always welcome them.



INFORMATION NEEDS

I'm still looking for sets of images and background texts for 19th
century South America and Africa - if anybody has access to useful
material then send me an email.



WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Within the next month exhibitions will start to appear including those
on ambrotypes, cyanotypes, tintypes, magic lantern slides and stereo
cards. I'm also hoping to be able to mount up some exhibitions of early
American photographic ephemera.

The biographies are being expanded continually and I'm now just
starting to add in the portfolio and studio stamp material.

As always I welcome your suggestions as to how the website should
develop so send me an email.

All the best,

Alan





Apologies for any cross postings