The Photography Criticism Cyber Archive aims to gather the "literature of photography" on the Web, says critic and author A. D. Coleman.
Photography critic A. D. Coleman has established the Photography Criticism Cyber Archive, an online collection of writings on photography for scholars, researchers, educators and students. The subscription-based Web site, www.photocriticism.com, officially launched in August 2003 with a selection of 300 historical and contemporary essays on photography.
The site provides photo-related documents ranging from history, theory, and criticism to profiles, reviews, and credos. Subscriptions are available for individuals and institutions such as colleges, libraries, and museums.
Coleman says the archive addresses several considerable problems for photography researchers, especially comprehensive access to significant materials. "Your average college will probably have a fairly spotty library, in terms both of what books they have and certainly in terms of what periodicals they subscribe to," he says. "What I think of as the literature of photography … is by and large unavailable."
In addition, information on the Internet is often not acceptable for scholarly purposes, according to Coleman. Writings are sometimes put up illegally, in violation of the authors' copyrights. And it can be tricky for students and teachers to identify credible sources.
Rates
Current (January 2004) subscription rates for the Photography Criticism Cyber Archive are:
Individual Subscription $120 for 1 year
$300 for 3 years
Institutional Subscription $500 for 1 year
$1,200 for 3 years for up to 150 licensed users
"Everything becomes sort of homogenized," Coleman says. "The random comment by somebody who’s mouthing off in a chat room becomes equivalent to something that’s been posted by Sadakichi Hartmann or [Alfred] Stieglitz or Minor White."
The Cyber Archive will only post documents that Coleman considers to be a substantial and appropriate reference. One of his goals is to make it easier for photography teachers to put together useful and affordable course packets for their students, while respecting the rights of authors.
Professors or packet services often cannot track down copyright holders to gain permission, Coleman says. Even if they do, he adds, it often is not worth the time for an author to respond to scores or hundreds of requests from colleges to reproduce an article for students.
This situation leaves the schools either unable to reproduce a document or faced with using it in violation of copyright protections. "I am taking departments and teachers out of the small-scale publishing business, which they never should have been in anyway, but providing all the necessary permissions they and their students need," Coleman says. "There's no bootleg material, and there never will be."
What's in the Archive
At the start of 2004, the archive has more than 400 essays, and Coleman pledges to add a minimum of 25 essays or the equivalent (including some complete books) every month. "I'd like anyone to be able to go in there and truly get, at the very least, a comprehensive overview of the literature of photography from around 1820 to the present," Coleman says.
Among the current holdings are selections from contemporary commentators, such as Nancy Brokaw, Donna-Lee Phillips, John Stathatos, Lew Thomas, and Coleman himself, plus significant writings from photography's past, including texts from William Henry Fox Talbot, Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, Alfred Stieglitz, and Sadakichi Hartmann.
The Cyber Archive also contains less common offerings, such as five chapters in French from Nadar's 1900 autobiography and an analysis of photojournalism, documentary, and power relations in media representation by Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas.
