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Flickr: the Commons
Flickr Commons is a fantastic initiative to bring archive materials to a wider audience. "The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer."
There are already 1000's of photographs available for use from Library of Congress (LOC), Smithsonia Institute in the USA and archives in the Netherlands, UK and Australia. New images are added on an on-going basis. From the UK there are: Maritime Museum; Media Musuem; National Archives; ...
A new copyright variant "no known copyright restrictions?" - is being used to set open use terms and conditions of use whiule dealing with the problem of orphan images . Orphan images are those where it has been impossible to ascertain the copyright owner - there are millions of copyright orphans in the world. More information at Flickr
:: The Commons website: http://www.flickr.com/commons/
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National Archives
The UK's National Archives have joined up! ... March 2010. The National Archives UK brings to the Commons selections from the 900 years of history it holds — from official Khartoum expedition photographer Felice Beato’s 1880s photographs from Egypt and the Sudan to wartime propoganda posters to Sir Henry Cole’s Rat, with stops on the way for medieval illuminations, child prisoners of the 19th century, and maps and plans both useful and fanciful. They’re curating on Flickr, too!
:: National Archives in Flicker Commons
:: About the Licence - how National Archives 'marries' Crown Copyright' with 'Commons Licence'
:: National Archives
Image: Metropolitan Police poster warning Chartists against gathering in London. In April thousands of Chartists had gathered on Kennington Common to demand democratic reform. 10th June 1848. NA ref. TS 11/136
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Ansel Adams: 1940's
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'Migrant Mother' by Dorothea Lange, 1936
It is often supposed that the images being made available through projects such as The Commons are not the 'valuable' (in either the money or knowledge sense of the word) images and aren't high quality images. Not so - The Commons is demonstrating value and quality aplenty - and as one example ...
...The US Library of Congress has published FSA/OWI Favorites (photograhs), which includes one of the iconic images of the 20th century, “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange. The Library preserves Lange’s original glass negative, and makes the digitized photo freely available. “Migrant Mother” or to give it, it's preferred archive title, 'Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California, 1936' is part of a landmark photo documentary project run by USA government departments between 1935-1943 as part of their efforts to overcome 'The Depression'.
:: see 'Migrant Mother' ... :: view the whole set as a slide show
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Eugène Atget: photos 1890 - 1927
Oh joy of joys! - Geroge Eastman House has published a set of Eugène Atget’s photographs on Flickr Commons.
These are wondrous images of Paris - streets, courtyards, parks, shop windows - taken over the final thirty years of his life - roughly 1890 until 1927. The photographs were taken with an glass plate camera and have a timeless yet prescient quality - utter stillness in which light might open up or close down and something might happen or might have happened - like films without time. The German writer Walter Benjamin said Atget's images “operate beyond ostensible purpose, appearing unintentional, but uncannily like the scene of a crime. His work was taken up by others after his death and he was influential on the surrealists and photographers ever since.
Long before the Commons was launched Tom Gore travelled Paris re-photographing the locations used by Eugène Atget] and published them as pairs of now and then images on Flickr creating a ravishing set of mindscapes. Hurry now to Atget's Paris by Tom Gore. BTW he also introduces us to the work of another photographer Charles Marville.
More information on Eugène Atget - 1857-1927 - and his photographs:
:: Eugène Atget on The Commons
:: About Eugène Atget on Wikipedia
:: About Eugène Atget on Masters of Photography
:: Full Gerge Eastman House collection
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Detective work: the strange death of Dorcas Snodgrass: 1912
Flickr Commons takes up a photo-clue from New York in 1912 by linking it to New York Times reports of the period. Read on ....
Before publishing the photo on Flickr Commons it was just a photo of an unknown nurse. Why was her photo in amongst a set of news photos of notable people of the time? Who was Dora Snodgrass? Call in the Flickr Commons cold case squad. The results demonstrate how publishing material openly adds value to an archive and how citizen researchers can help.
:: Dora Snodgrass.Photo: A Bains News Service photo archive, LOC. Flickr Commons.
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Library of Congress: US colour photographs 1939 - 1945
Don't miss the vivid color photos from the Great Depression and World War II - 1939 to 1944 - which capture an era generally seen only in black-and-white. Photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) created the images between . Many of these photograhs are scanned from Kodachrome slide film and have fantastic clarity of colour ....to see them click here
Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. LCO: Bransby, David photographer. Have a look at this on Flickr to see the range of responses provided as comments and notes on the photograph. In amongst the "fantastic shot" and "beautiful girl" type comments are others that comment usefully on the image, how it was made and the time in which it was made. In particular is the little drawing of her mother working in a welding workshop during the second world war posted by a contributor. Most of the images of this period that we see are black and white ones (both photography and film). The quality of the Kodachrome transparencies is such that it creates it's own image character and makes a challenging bridge to the high definition imagery of today.
:: See Women aircraft worker - full size ... ... ... Women aircraft worker - with comments
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Remembering WW1: 1914 - 1918
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Top Six: Shapesoftime picks from the Commons
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This page was written on 5th July 2009. Last update, Ansel Adams, 21st Feb 2010
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Shapes of Time
Copyright - Copyleft
Resources! Marvels!
Wellcome Images
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