Educating Experts To Rescue The World’s Photographic Heritage
De Montfort University (DMU) is addressing the dearth of experts who can preserve the world’s imperilled photographic heritage with a new Masters degree long-awaited by experts in the field.
Next month Leicester-based DMU welcomes the first students on a unique MA in Photographic History and Practice, and which is already being hailed by leading lights in the sector.
The pioneering course will educate future curators, historians and archivists of photography, as well as those working with historic photographs at auction houses and libraries, and is already attracting students from all over the UK and Europe but is expected to also draw in those who work (or want to) with photographic collections elsewhere around the world.
DMU is collaborating with the Wilson Centre for Photography Studies in London, and also working with the collections of the National Media Museum, the Central Library, Birmingham, the British Library and private collections throughout Britain. Students will take three core modules in the following areas:
- History of Photography, Images and Practice
- Theory and Photography
- Photography Resources in a Digital Age
Support for the specialised course is worldwide. Renowned photography dealer Hans P. Kraus Jr., based in New York, was delighted to hear of DMU’s pioneering initiative, and said: “Having been active in this field for more than 25 years, I am increasingly witnessing a shortage of qualified scholars capable of making practical judgments and assessments, and perhaps too many with an entirely theoretical bent.
“It is particularly important for students to have access to original photographs, an opportunity that will give them an unparalleled understanding of their field of study. I shall envy the students who qualify for DMU’s Masters programme.”
As former Senior Curator at The National Media Museum, Bradford, Professor Roger Taylor – now Professor of Photographic History at DMU – also believes the new Masters is badly needed: “There is a crisis and our photographic heritage is in jeopardy because there are so few qualified curators, archivists, conservators in photography.”
Colin Ford, Founding Head, National Media Museum, said: “When the National Media Museum (as it is now called) opened in 1983, the entrance doors carried the words: ‘This is a museum about the art and science of photography’. This reflected my view that it was time to stop treating the chemical/technical and aesthetic histories of the medium as separate disciplines, but to embrace the fact that neither can be fully understood without reference to the other. During the museum’s first decade, I tried hard to get another university to create a degree course reflecting this view, giving students access to the museum’s unrivalled collections of pictures and equipment. Now, after a quarter of a century, it seems that De Montfort University has created such a programme. I welcome it unreservedly.”
Michael Pritchard, former Director of the Photography Department at auction house Christies of London, who is now studying a Phd at DMU, says collectors and museums desperately need graduates of such an MA.
“DMU’s course fulfils a long felt need and will provide students with a sound theoretical basis and practical experience in many aspects of photographic history and research methods. The course’s focus on handling and investigating rare and historic photographs and photographic equipment, based on access to some of the world’s best collections, is unique. For any student looking to enter the field professionally or to enhance an existing career the course will more than prove its worth. I wish it had been available when I first started,” said Michael Pritchard.
The MA works towards understanding the scope of photographic history and provides the tools to carry out independent research in this context, working in particular from primary source material including the University’s renowned resource database at kmd.dmu.ac.uk/kmd_photohistory_page.
Course Leader for the MA, Research Fellow and photography scholar, Dr Kelley Wilder, said: “This pioneering Masters is likely to be of interest to people from a variety of disciplines including conservation students, archivists, historians of science and those from various fields of visual studies, for instance visual anthropology, photography or art history. What we are trying to do is to bring students from diverse disciplines together, and get them to share their methods and ideas so they can collaborate more effectively not only with each other but with the caretakers of the collections in which they work.”
Students will handle photographic material, learn analogue photographic processes, write history from objects in collections, compare historical photographic movements, and debate the canon of photographic history.
They will also learn about digital preservation and access issues through practical design projects involving website and database design. Research methods are a core component, providing students with essential handling, writing, digitizing and presentation skills.
Further modules will encourage independent thinking in theory and in history writing, introduce students to methodologies commonly encountered in visual studies, art history, history of science, and visual anthropology, all of which are useful for photographic history. This work will culminate in an independent MA dissertation.
Students of the MA can apply for a £5,000 award called the Wilson Fellowship in Photographic History towards the defrayal of tuition and other costs. Applications for the Wilson Fellowship have closed for the academic year 2009/2010, information on the Fellowship for 2010/2011 will be available from January 2010.
