Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 62 No. 1, 2019.
Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.36506/av.62.3
Digitization of Photographic Negatives - The Importance of Custodial Decisions
Hrvoje Gržina
orcid.org/0000-0001-8064-0144
; Hrvatski državni arhiv
Sažetak
The article considers digitization possibilities of photographic negatives on various supports with the special emphasis on the ubiquitous errors and mistakes that accompany that kind of reformatting from the earliest moments until today. The first part clearly explains the particularities of negatives as objects of material culture that have to especially be taken into account before digitization begins. By using polarity as a property of the photographic image, various types of negatives were elaborated, according to their supports photographic processes and function. Hence, for the first time, together with the often mentioned negatives on paper, glass and plastic, which usually have »original« as their added adjective, other photographic forms with an image in negative are also included, such as photograms, negative-prints, negative-copies, internegatives or separation negatives that can also be objects of digitization. The second part of the text contains a critical review of transferring a photographic image of the reversed tonal value in the digitized form with the aim of encouraging the thinking about materiality, context of inception and the origin of photographic meaning which can become irreversibly lost due to carelessness or non-comprehension of the nature of these objects. By reviewing various digitization guidelines, the need is emphasized for a clearly defined point and aims of reformatting negatives into a digitized form according to the expected usage of digitized files i.e. depending if digitized images will be used as visual references in a database, for reproducing or as a »replacement« for an original in the sense of spatial and tonal informational content. The appearance of the negation of the negative is emphasized as the primal danger of the unclearly defined aim and purpose, which in the large number of cases is manifested by the polarity change during digitization, after which there are no remaining documentation about the real outlook of the template. The possible goals and aims of digitization are next considered within four modes of transferring templates into digital form – transferring the template’s image, transferring photographer’s intention, transferring (reconstructing) the original manifestation of the digitized image and transferring the original sight – from which the guidelines for their successful reformatting are separated. The importance of creating two master files is emphasized – a protective and a production one – of which the former documents the appearance of the template with all elements of form and negative polarity, while the latter by revolving the software image into a positive would fulfil the users’ and other possible functions. Besides this, the importance of »underlaying« each of the acquired digitized pictorial images with appropriate sets of metadata is emphasized several times, in order to bridge the eternal gap between the material and the virtual as much as possible once the digitization process is complete, and for the majority of information registered in layers of analogue photographic negatives to be transferred into the digitized formation, while keeping the data on form, content and functional context and with this also on the origin of their meaning.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
248542
URI
Datum izdavanja:
21.12.2019.
Posjeta: 1.214 *