Can you catalog context?

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has approximately 20% of their estimated 85,000 photographs online. Their latest online photography exhibit, Auschwitz through the lens of the SS: photos of Nazi leadership at the camp, is a good example for comparison on how they as an institution have chosen to catalog and present these images. The exhibit contrasts two photo albums created during WWII featuring the life and events at the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. The first album, the album of SS officer Karl Hocker, is a 2008 acquisition that was recently digitized. The second album, the Auschwitz album, is an album acquired in the 1980s. The subject matter of the two albums greatly differ and that is the basis for the exhibit; to juxtapose the experience of prisoners in the camp and the recreational life of the officers at the camp. From a cataloguing point of view the treatment of the photographs and the albums also greatly differs and the experience and information provided is vastly different.

SS Officer Album:

Page from Hocker album

The album of photographs compiled by SS officer Karl Hocker at Auschwitz records his recreational life with other officers at the camp. This recently digitized album has been scanned and presented as a complete object, and not just as a series of photographs. The album is laid out in 146 images which can be played through on a slide show setting or you can manually browse through them. The page as a whole is shown first, enabling the viewer to see the album layout and the original captions which are in German. If a page has more than one photograph, each photograph is also given a close up image. Captions for the photographs are provided at the bottom. The “title” and/or subject of the photograph is given, then the German caption and a translation of the original caption is provided. The only other information given is the assigned numerical identifier for the photograph by the museum. 

This presentation of the album provides many layers of context for the collection of photographs as a grouping. Context is hard to maintain or achieve with the digitization of photograph collections. This album is a stunning example of a photo album in a digital environment. This treatment and way of cataloguing the photographs lacks a good amount textual information. Beside the title, subject and unique identifier there is no additional information given for the photographs. Genre information and additional notes or history are missing, and date information is only provided through the translated captions. To get the complete catalog record for each image the unique identifier must be searched in the museum’s online catalog. This can be cumbersome, but the information is available. Interestingly, size dimensions and photographic processes are not included in the records.

Prisoners Album:

Within the exhibit the album of the SS officer is contrasted with the “Auschwitz Album” which was also a series of photographs compiled by an SS officer, but the content is of the prisoners, and the arrival and selection process. This is a collection of 192 images which were in an album format at one time. Each photograph is presented separately and the viewer has to scroll through each one individually. There is no context of the original order or format of the album. Also lost in this format is the original captions that accompanied each photograph. Unlike the album above, each photograph is presented with a large record and provides a great amount of textual information; where as the album presented as an album gives the viewer a lot of visual information. The records are text focused. The history and content of the image overrides any information on the actual photographic process or dimensions. While this information is not pinnacle to the images, it is part of the photograph as an object, and it limits the searchablity of the images.

 Conclusions:

Both albums have a similar number of images but the treatment of the photographs is very different. The digitization of each project was approach very differently and greatly changes the experience with each photograph. The museum has very detailed catalog records for every photograph in both albums, but what struck me and was worth analysis is the evolution of how cataloguing visual media is progressing. This progression leads one institution to have many types of records and places importance on different factors at different times. The Auschwitz album photographs lack the context of the original album format and it was not until I viewed these albums in relation to each other that I realized how much visual context was missing from the second album. The grouping and original caption information has been lost and it changes how the collective collection of photographs relate and play off each other.