Aesthetics, Industry and Innovation in Twentieth Century Photography: The Ilford Archive

本研究调查了第一次世界大战期间和两次世界大战之间的伊尔福德有限公司、摄影公司和早期彩色摄影企业的技术创新实践。它探讨了1914年至1939年间新的美学和技术实践是如何发展的，以及对这一时期视觉和感官“经济”的影响。它将伊尔福德的摄影化学工作与彩色摄影和感光性的其他发展以及摄影实践和风格的变化联系起来。它着眼于技术和美学的发展是如何设计的，以解决特定的问题或需求所产生的战争和经济变化，如1929年美国股市崩盘的影响，以及新的商业和零售实践。该项目涉及摄影历史的一个领域，这一领域很少被研究，主要是在商业历史的背景下，尽管对柯达，Corbis和宝丽来等公司进行了有用的摄影研究，本项目将借鉴这些研究方法。其目的是探索这一时期英国摄影中企业，日常和前卫美学和技术实验之间的具体联系。更广泛的理论目标是理解人类参与者所体现的美学和技术专业知识如何转移到技术设备中，以及它如何反过来重新出现为人类技术实践。这项工作的关键是一个更大的问题，即技术图像如何影响日常感官体验。该项目旨在成为领域定义研究，产生关于研究不足的伊尔福德档案的新知识体系，同时有助于摄影历史和摄影理论的新方法和发展。这些新方法从模拟和数字图像之间的断裂的旧分析转移到对二十世纪摄影实践的材料，工业和技术基础的更细致入微的理解。因此，这项研究考虑到了摄影技术的长期发展及其与其他技术和工程系统的密切关系，同时也没有忽视美学和解释问题，这些问题在历史和社会科学的技术变革中往往被搁置一边。这个项目的另一个主要目的是发展我的研究领导技能和能力。该项目将提高我自己的研究技能和地位，以及我指导初级同事的能力。我确保这一点的一种方法是通过一系列针对不同机构和学科的早期职业研究人员和研究生的大师班或研讨会。该研究项目还将为摄影和电影研究领域的国际会议提供基础。在这方面，我将与来自我自己和其他大学的同事，以及摄影从业者和行业参与者合作。我们的目标是创造对话，并与我的大学内外的其他研究领导者一起工作，积极提高这个跨学科领域的研究环境的质量，特别是专注于摄影和电影制作的材料工业基础设施之间的关系，以及摄影和电影的无形和美学方面。

This research investigates practices of technical innovation in the work of the Ilford Ltd. Photographic company and early colour photography enterprises during WWI and in the interwar period. It explores how new aesthetic and technical practices developed between 1914 and 1939, and the impact on the visual, sensual 'economy' of the period. It situates Ilford's work with photographic chemistry in relation to other developments in the period relating to colour photography and photosensitivity, and in relation to changes in photographic practice and style. It looks at how technical and aesthetic developments were designed to address specific problems or needs arising from war and from economic changes, such as the impact of the 1929 US stock market crash, and new business and retail practices. The project addresses an area of photographic history that has been little studied, mainly in the context of business history, although there have been useful photographic studies of companies such as Kodak, Corbis and Polaroid that this project will draw on for methodological insights. The aim is to explore the specific connections between corporate, everyday and avant-garde aesthetic and technical experimentation in photography in Britain in this period. A broader theoretical aim is to develop an understanding of how aesthetic and technical expertise embodied by human participants is transferred into technical apparatuses, and how it in turn re-emerges as human-technical practices. At stake in this work is the larger question of how technical images impact on everyday sensory experience. The project aims to be field-defining research that produces a new body of knowledge about the under-researched Ilford archive and at the same time contributes to new and developing approaches in photography history and photography theory. These new approaches move away from older analyses of a break between analogue and digital image to a more nuanced understanding of the material, industrial and technological basis of twentieth-century photographic practices. Accordingly, this research takes account of the long technical development of photography and its close relation to other technical and engineered systems, without losing sight of questions of aesthetics and interpretation, which tend to be sidelined in historical and social-science accounts of technical change. The other main aim of this project is to develop my research leadership skills and capacity. The project will enhance my own research skills and standing, and my ability to mentor junior colleagues. One way in which I ensure this is through a series of masterclasses or workshops for early career researchers and postgraduate students across different institutions and disciplines. The research project will also provide the basis for an international conference across the fields of photography and film studies. In this, I will work collaboratively with colleagues from my own and other universities, and with photographic practitioners and industry participants. The aim will be to create dialogue and to work alongside other research leaders in my university and outside, to actively raise the quality of the research environment in this interdisciplinary area, in particular focussing on the relationship between the material-industrial infrastructure of photography and film manufacture, and the intangible and aesthetic aspects of photography and film.