FuzzyPhoto

将摄影作为文化史研究是一门相对较新且未被充分利用的学科。这一点很重要，因为摄影的早期历史恰逢全球科学、工业、艺术、社会、政治和经济发生重大变化，这些变化有助于理解科学思想的传播、科学和艺术之间的关系、新技术、流行文化和商业之间的相互作用，以及个人和国家身份的创建。获取照片历史资源对于未来的跨学科研究是必不可少的，但这些资源往往是短暂的、脆弱的、广泛分散的、记录不充分的、难以获取的，尽管范围很大。较差和不一致的文献水平使人们很难在相对较小的核心群体之外评估材料的重要性，这些核心群体已经是知名的、经过大量研究的艺术家和科学家。然而，图片集越来越多地在网上发布，搜索引擎变得越来越强大，这创造了一个及时将照片与其他文本来源匹配的机会，可以丰富我们的理解，而不需要前往无数的档案。德蒙福特大学为19世纪摄影研究人员创建了广泛的数字资源语料库，包括摄影展览、目录和书信收藏。其中包括已知的最早摄影展览目录的两个数据库：1839年至1865年在英国展出的照片(PEIB)http://peib.dmu.ac.uk和1870年至1915年皇家摄影学会的展览(ERPS)http://erps.dmu.ac.uk.这些资源结合在一起，构成了目前最全面的英国摄影展览记录。但这些早期的展览目录往往没有图片。另一个问题是，在视觉艺术中，摄影是独一无二的--同一图像的多个版本可以在不同的地点同时制作和展示。照片通常在不同的时间以不同的标题展出/出版不止一次，甚至由不同的人展出/出版，因此，将特定的展览目录参考与在其他地方出版的特定图像联系起来可能是一个复杂和涉及的过程。该项目将开发和测试基于计算机的“查找辅助工具”，它将能够推荐历史展览目录条目与在线收藏中的照片图像之间的潜在匹配，即使在没有精确匹配的情况下也是如此。不完整的数据集和不准确的信息是艺术和人文研究中的常见问题，因此这项研究的结果将广泛适用于广泛的主题，使研究人员在研究的早期阶段节省大量时间和旅行，因为他们发现了最有可能对他们的研究感兴趣的材料，并提出了可能的联系，否则使用传统研究方法很难识别出这些联系。项目成果将使博物馆、图书馆和档案馆能够通过增加信息、改进准确性和功能来提高其藏品和在线服务的价值和效用。仅在英国，就有超过10,000家画廊、博物馆和档案馆可能从这项研究中受益。在私营部门内，受益者将包括关注归属和价值的商业交易商和拍卖行。更准确地识别照片等文物可以帮助买家和卖家，甚至有助于防止国家重要珍宝的无意出口。普通公众将受益于博物馆、图书馆和档案馆文物信息的准确性和详细程度的提高，而进行家谱或地方历史研究的非相关社区将特别受益于更多地获取和了解有关历史照片和相关文物的信息。

Study of photography as cultural history is relatively new and under-exploited discipline. It is important because the early history of photography coincides with significant global scientific, industrial, artistic, social, political and economic changes that inform understanding of the spread of scientific ideas, the relationship between science and art, the interplay between new technologies, popular culture and commerce, and the creation of personal and national identities. Access to photohistorical resources is essential for future cross-disciplinary research but these resources are often ephemeral, fragile, widely dispersed, poorly documented and difficult to access, although of enormous scope. Poor and inconsistent levels of documentation make it difficult to assess the significance of material beyond the relatively small nucleus of already well-known and heavily researched artists and scientists. However, image collections are increasingly being published online and search engines are becoming increasingly powerful, creating a timely opportunity to match photographs with other textual sources that can enrich our understanding without travel to numerous archives. De Montfort University has created an extensive corpus of digital resources for researchers of 19th century photography comprising photographic exhibition catalogues and collections of letters. This includes two databases of the earliest known photographic exhibition catalogues: Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839-1865 (PEIB) http://peib.dmu.ac.uk and Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870-1915 (ERPS) http://erps.dmu.ac.uk. These combined resources comprise the single most comprehensive record of British photographic exhibitions at this time. But these early exhibition catalogues were often devoid of pictures. A further problem is that amongst the visual arts, photography is unique - multiple versions of the same image can be produced and exhibited simultaneously at diverse locations. Photographs were commonly exhibited/published more than once, at different times, with different titles and even by different people, thus associating a specific exhibition catalogue reference with a specific image published elsewhere can be a complex and involved process. This project will develop and test computer based "finding aids" that will be able to recommend potential matches between historical exhibition catalogue entries and images of photographs in online collections even where there is not a precise match. Incomplete data sets and imprecise information are common problems in arts and humanities research so the results of this research will be widely applicable across a wide range of subjects, allowing researchers to save considerable time and travel in the early stages of their research when identifying material most likely to be of interest to their studies and suggesting possible connections that would not otherwise be easily recognised using conventional research methods. The project outcomes will enable museums, libraries and archives to enhance the value and utility of their collections and of their online services through increased information, improved accuracy and functionality. Within the UK alone over 10,000 galleries, museums and archives could potentially benefit from this research. Within the private sector, beneficiaries will include commercial dealers and auction houses concerned with attribution and value. More accurate identification of artefacts such as photographs can help buyers and sellers and even help to prevent inadvertent export of nationally important treasures. The general public will benefit from improved accuracy and detail of information about objects in museums, libraries and archives, and lay communities of interest such as those carrying out genealogical or local history research will benefit in particular from increased access and awareness of information about historical photographs and related objects.