Choco-Choc

A group of labels for brands of chocolate sold in France in the middle of the 19th century.

Synthetic talk, Parody, Defacement, No Authority

Pages of galley proofs for George W. S. Trow’s landmark essay “Within the Context of No Context”, published in The New Yorker, November 17, 1980.
The working title was “People in the Grid of Two Hundred Million”.

How are Multitides?

EXHIBITION CLOSING PARTY

How is a Book?
and
Multitudes: A Celebration of the Yale Collection of American Literature, 1911 – 2011

Friday, September 23, 2011 at 5:00

More about Multitudes and How is a Book

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Yale University, 121 Wall Street, New Haven
Free and open to the public

Image: [Crowd gathered for a tug-of-war competition at the University of Montana, Missoula], [1911-12]

Why is it called Ovaltine?

An album of photographs showing the Ovaltine manufacturing plant in King’s Langley in Herfordshire, England (A.Wander Ltd, London & King’s Langley. Views of Works & Offices.  1923.)

Phenakistiscope

The Phenakistastcope or Magic Disc Edinburgh: Published by Forrester & Nichol, Lithographers, 10 George Street, & John Dunn, option 50 Hanover Square. [1832-1833].

A set of round prints for use in a phenakistiscope, an early device that took advantage of persistence of vision to show continuous motion, including several designed by Edward Sang, and published by the maker of optical instruments, John Dunn.

Window Picture

Research in Beinecke Library Collections:
Photographic Memory Workshop – Graduate Student Working Group 2011-2012

The Photographic Memory Workshop is pleased to invite graduate students, post-doctoral students and academic fellows of the Yale community to submit presentation proposals to its 2011-2012 Graduate Student Working Group. In addition to our usual calendar of visiting scholar lectures, our workshop series offers members of the Yale community working on photography an opportunity to present and discuss works in progress.

Our aim is to bring together people from a variety of disciplines to give feedback and to inspire productive critical conversation about the visual material.

At each meeting, the speaker will give a 20-30 minute informal presentation centered on a set of photographs, instruments, or materials.  These presentations can be formal papers, works in progress, or curatorial projects. Electronic images of the subject being presented (but not the text of the presentation itself) will be pre-circulated to the group by email prior to each meeting. The presentation will be followed by critical conversation and feedback about the speaker’s research project/paper/exhibition.

We are open to any submission related to photography. This includes, but is not limited to, photography’s material processes and cultural history, scientific and applied photography, photographs in books, as well as conceptual, fine-art, and commercial photography.  We especially welcome proposals relating to objects in any of the Yale University collections.

Photographic Memory Workshop Meetings:
The Workshop meets several times throughout the semester, generally at 6pm on Wednesdays. Specific dates and time TBA–contact the organizers for details or to receive announcements about meetings and related events.

Submission Guidelines: 
Please send a 250-500 word proposal along with a selection of images relating to your research topic by October 1st, 2011 to photographicmemoryworkshop@gmail.com.

About the Photographic Memory Workshop: 
This is the thirteenth year of the Photographic Memory Workshop under the mentorship of Professor Laura Wexler. The workshop, which brings together graduate students, faculty, and staff from a wide variety of disciplines, explores the myriad of possibilities inherent in the study of photographs and/or memory. Should you have any questions about the workshop or our activities, please email photographicmemoryworkshop@gmail.com or contact the graduate student fellows at heidi.knoblauch@yale.edu and audrey.sands@yale.edu.

About Photography in the American Literature and Modern Books and Manuscripts Collections:
Photographic materials in the Collections compliment the book and manuscript collections, with a close relationship to archival materials and other primary documentation. Holdings in the collections document the lives of writers and literary communities, cultural spaces, and significant events of various kinds and include everything from snapshots and passport photographs to fine art and portrait photography by some of the most important photographers of the 20th century. Materials in the Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection are primarily from Europe and Africa; photographic materials in the Yale Collection of American Literature document the lives and work of Americans at home and abroad. Brief overviews of the Collections can be found online:  Photography in the Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection: http://photostest.odai.yale.edu/directory/dir_single_collection.php?collection_id=14; Photography in the Yale Collection of American Literature: http://photostest.odai.yale.edu/directory.

About Photography in Yale Collections:
A Directory of Yale Photographic Collections provides a portal through which to mine the breadth of the University’s images across repositories and disciplines. The interdisciplinary nature of these resources opens the possibility for endless discoveries of images illustrating sweeping applications of the medium and at the same time presents exciting avenues for the creative use of photographs in object-based learning. http://photostest.odai.yale.edu/directory/index.php

Image:
Jonathan Williams, [Polaroid photo of cat in window], undated. By Permission of Jargon Books/Jonathan Williams Estate.

Visualizing History

Pages from Elizabeth Peabody’s Universal History: Arranged to Illustrate Bem’s Charts of Chronology. New York: Pub. for the author by Sheldon and Co, 1859.

A system for charting historical events on a grid (representing historical periods, arranged chronologically); squares, divided into 9 parts each, to represent distinct categories of historical events; and colors, to show different “Nations”.

A curious abstract visual system for reducing history to shapes and color on a standard, single field of two-dimensional representation.

The end product, while perhaps not becoming a real mnenomic device for learning history (or a compelling Visual Display of Quantitative Information), produced some intriguing designs.

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