COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHS

 

Yesterday...

The practice of collecting was born when the carte-de-visite photographs entered the market. They were small photographic portraits, whose low price made them more popular than painted portraits. Therefore, a great deal of copies were printed for each CDV photograph.
CDV photographs were distributed to family members and friends as visiting cards, and this generated the obsession of collecting all CDV photographs that one comes across.
The market helped and exploited this popular habit by inventing the Photo Album which was provided with “pockets”. In this way, the collected CDV photographs could be seen and admired by everybody.
As a consequence, the production and sale of CDV photographs was also extended to the portraits of famous people, such as rulers, generals, politicians, people from the world of letters and heroes conceived by popular imagination.

Imagination is the right word. Owning a CDV portrait brought the depicted person closer to the people and to their fantasy because a photographic portrait is, by definition, the perfect reproduction of the “original”.

This brought about mimesis and empathy at a time when the people who wanted to discover what their myths looked like had to go to the Museum or to content themselves with watching lithographs based on “real-life drawings”.
In a very short time, the photographic Grand Tour crossed the border of the unknown and unexplored world. First, the European vedutism increased the amount of collectable pictures, and then it was the turn of the pictures taken in faraway countries.

Therefore, the family Album was there to preserve the memories of the family. It confirmed the genealogical tree and the social status of the family so that an affective relationship in space and time could be established between the ancestors and their descendants. The family Album also contained the pictures bought during the family trips as an evidence of the places which had been visited.

If we hold a handful of old CDV photographs in our hands, this wish of ensuring both the horizontal and the vertical memory will be very apparent. We will notice that holding a photo album on one’s knees was often considered to be an important element of the pose. It was surely the same album where the portrait would go, once it was taken and printed. It looks like the portrait is saying: “This picture will go here”.

The lady portrayed in 1840 was basically doing the same thing: she was holding the elegant box where the “finished” daguerreotype would have been put. The only difference was that, although the daguerreotype could have the same value as a painting or even a higher one, it was a unique example which could not be reproduced and, as a result, could not circulate. A few years later it became technically possible to photograph daguerreotypes. Therefore, many people felt the need to do that, thus obtaining copies of their daguerreotypes.

The Americans, a multi-ethnic people with a very recent history, were the ones who felt the strongest need to find their family roots through pictures. They were important “consumers”, that is, buyers of pictures linked to their countries of origin.

Photography explored and conquered all aspects of Creation, from human beings to Nature, cities, monuments and other works of art. Therefore, it provided us with a real “classification” of reality. An old Album, if still complete, gives us a short overview of the social, cultural and technological horizons of the time and of the country the Album comes from.

Therefore, each photograph acquired a double value. On one hand, pictures are considered as “monuments” in the etymological meaning of recollection, of the faithful representation of people and of the inanimate reality. On the other hand, pictures are “documents”. Let’s think about the grandchildren who watched the family album at the beginning of the 19th century. They were smiling when they observed the inexorably outmoded cloths of their grandparents and great-grandparents; they were surprised of their beards and hairstyle, their postures and the places where they were. Let’s also think about the new photographers who were able to study the techniques of their illustrious predecessors so that they could combine the quality coming from the old tradition with the emerging taste of the time.

Today...

The practice of collecting, in its general meaning, has always existed, from the time of the Roman nobility who commissioned copies of Greek statues, throughout the time of the “Wunderkammer”, to our age. However, this practice has always had different facets because people have different behaviours. They might collect something because they love beauty or unusual and rare things, or they might be pushed by a blind and despicable need of ownership.

Collectors experience three different and successive moments during their life. Collectors are collectors from birth (although they might not notice it immediately), therefore there is always a casual spark which makes the tide rise. This is the stage of the restless research, of the discovery of precious ways of getting information and the items themselves. The second moment consists in the accumulation of the collected items. During this stage everything is considered important for one’s own collection because the collector does not know all possible types of available items yet. Finally, once the collector reaches a high technical and cultural knowledge, serenity takes place. At this stage the collector has a perfect knowledge of the value of what s/he owns, and of what s/he still has to look for.

But there will always be some surprises! A very strange and unusual photograph might magically appear to us if we look for it, in a house somewhere in the world, below a staircase or in a loft, in a drawer or in a cupboard, or in the dark and overfilled hovel of a junk dealer, as well as between the tidy files of an antique dealer. These pictures, which will reveal some unknown truth to us, are like ghosts of a time foregone. They show us that human beings use Photography for doubting, for finding certainties, for maintaining their affections, their memories and their lives.

This introductive information is necessary for giving a general idea of the practice of collecting photographs in our time. Indeed, there are two kinds of collecting: an “institutional” one which concerns museums and the important international archives, and a more modest one which concerns private citizens and dealers of historical photographs. This kind of collecting is now very widespread, although it is underestimated because it is often hidden.

The institutional collections can now be checked on-line. This asset, very positive for the photographic culture, is irreplaceable for the private collector and for the expert (of communication, semiotics, history, history of photography, art history and so on).

Private collections are a paper wealth which is often bound to deteriorate inexorably for several reasons. For example, these collections might be kept in unsuitable places, or they might not be subjected to restoration or registration which are considered to be necessary because of their high cost.

 

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