View images / View questions

3. Can imagery be addressed in new ways with on-line methods? Can a collective discussion of imagery produce more scholarly knowledge than just an individual analysis? Is it possible to analyze electronic images in a scholarly manner without examining the material object? texture of the paper? printing technique? style? color?

I would second Jack’s remarks on the limitations of the camera and scanner and Vivian’s concern about reproductions. Regrettably, as Barbara also notes (see Question 5), researchers like students are likely to have to rely increasingly on facsimiles as originals are withdrawn from both public and scholarly access. As has been acknowledged, the videodisk of the BNF collection has been a marvelous research tool, facilitating comparison according to style, genre, medium, and, where available, place, date, and artistic authorship. Further research – derived from notarial and police records, censorship directives, business archives, newspaper advertisements, as well as guild, academic or sales records – promises to enhance our understanding of publication and distribution of specific prints (inside and outside France), as well as the career paths and contributions of individual artists and engravers. Databases now have the ability to incorporate both visual and printed information. With enhanced forums for scholarly exchange and WEB publication, we can look forward to the “next” generation version of what the BNF and Pergamon Press created in the 1980s and intended by the larger distribution of the BNF holdings. I agree with Lynn’s hopes for further advantages to be gained by exploiting digitized images. As her comments on a “virtual light box” and “zooming” indicate, what is most needed is a technology that can better approximate the sensuous experience of physical handling and directly examining a material object. For example, among the many frustrations of the 1980s’s videodisk and analogue technology, I would include the deficient quality of the text and image, the restriction of zooming to pre-selected examples, and the decision to excise accidental hand or printed markings from the photograph, including perhaps page numbers, penciled (not engraved) signatures or publishing house markings. However, improved conditions of reproduction and a well-designed database could conceivably permit more efficient ways to answer Vivian’s or other questions: Was this particular work one of many in a book or pamphlet? Was it intended to stand-alone or to be part of a series? Can we discern anything about the print run? Was the plate reused to make the same or a different engraving, and did this change the work’s political orientation? Yet, as more is gained from digital reproduction and on-line viewing, we will need to find to reproduce the impact on the researcher of viewing two works of different size on the same subject, or the palpable result of examining hand-colored additions to a black and white engraving.

Go back to the question