Blog

June 27, 2016

The ‘Glamour’ of Image Acquisition

At last I can see the light at the end of the tunnel – copyright and image procurement is almost complete!  All that remains are 2 images for the exhibition and 20 or so for the interactive elements. This is quite the feat considering we have whittled it down from the initial 600.

For those who think curatorial work is glamorous, allow me to enlighten you. It is true that image selection can be interesting  and mentally stimulating, but the acquisition of each image can be an administrative nightmare.

To give you some idea, we started this process back in September 2015, and over the past 10 months we have been corresponding with over 80 archives, Museums and individuals to acquire these images. Each image must be sourced in high-resolution and requires copyright permission from the archive in question.

This process often involves a copyright or reproduction fee. The Museum has paid anywhere between $0-500 per image, which has been a key factor in our decision making. At this point, I must extend sincere thanks to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has provided us with an abundance of material free of charge.  The exhibition would not have been possible without their generosity.

Much has been written about whether or not archives should charge, especially in regard to access for young film makers. As someone who works at a Museum, I feel that people should pay for these services.  After all, it keeps people like me employed. I can also confirm that it takes money to preserve these collections; climate controlled archives, packaging, databases can be costly.

On the other hand, the Sydney Jewish Museum is a not-for-profit organisation that that doesn’t have a big budget.   We were founded by Holocaust Survivors and it feels like we should be able to access the material to tell their story.  We are providing a benefit to the public by exhibiting them.

It’s a tough one. And I’ve been on both sides of the fence.

Another challenge has been tracking down the archives which possess the original imagery.  One thing that has just come to my attention, which I didn’t notice at the time, was the crop of the construction of the Warsaw ghetto wall.  I ordered the image and our designer subsequently pointed out that the crop is different from her low-res and won’t work in the design.

We then wrote another archive, only to discover that we could not use their copy because it was very poor quality.  As you can see below, the crop is better but many of the details are lacking, particularly the  faces of the labourers.

We have since sourced a third image which we will be receiving next week. Their crop is different again, but it works in our layout.  Quality wise, we’ll have to wait and see. If it proves to be unsuitable, our search will continue.

Author: Shannon Biederman, Curator.