Heritage | Community aims to preserve history by publishing historical images

The Ruins of St. Paul, photo by Oswald Lübek (1911)

Iconographic Research, a Facebook community, published an image depicting the view from the stairway of the Ruins of St. Paul, taken by Oswald Lübek in 1911. Images from the same photographer also feature street views of Hong Kong back in the same year and an image of an urban canal strewn with rubbish in Guangzhou.

The pictures’ source was a university library in Dresden, Germany.

Launched in 2015, the online page prospects historical images for printed publication in books, magazines and catalogs.

In a statement released by its editor to the Times, Luiz Estrella explained that the choice to publish material produced before 1920 is that works older than 100 years are in the public domain, without any restriction of use.

“It is possible to affirm that we are a vector in the diffusion of the education and the culture, especially in encouraging the debate and the reflection on the preservation of these collections,” Estrella said.

The Iconographic Research page showcases images pertaining to iconic events such as the French Revolution and the American Civil War.

Meanwhile, the community also started to publish moving images depicting the period between the end of the 19th century and the 1920s in August 2016.

“Initially, the objective was to eventually promote postings of this type of material, but due to the reach obtained with the first videos, we conclude that we should do it regularly,” said the editor.

By October 2017, Iconographic Research had published over four hours of original footage produced between 1899 and 1918.

The techniques of photography and capture of moving images were respectively pioneered in the 1820s and 1890s and reproduce with fidelity urban and rural landscapes of that time.

“I understand that this page makes it possible for the public to access content that is often restricted to the academic community,” said Estrella.

The catalogue collection currently consists of more than 10,000 images depicting at least 1,600 locations around five continents.

This material was produced by over 1,100 authors including renowned visual artists Alfred Stieglitz, Alice Austin, Bernardo Bellotto, Eugene Atget and Jan van der Heyden.

“In over three years of research, 810 sources were identified in 56 countries on five continents with good quality visual material available online that meets the page’s publishing criteria,” the editor said.

Sixty percent of the cataloged research sources are located in Europe and 33 percent are located in in the Americas, while sources from institutions located in Asia, Oceania and Africa account for only 7 percent of the total.

“It is possible to affirm that practically all our vast iconographic collection comes from public and private, national and international institutional sources; some of which are considered as references in their areas of activity,” Estrella added.

The 84 albums on its Facebook page are organized according to geographical criteria, with each image stored in the folder corresponding to the country in which it was produced.

The material, organized according to the thematic criteria, is grouped in four albums: two dedicated to the First World War, an album with portraits of personalities and another with photographs of astronomical observations. LV