During my internship at the Conway Library, I focused on finding photographs of damaged art, specifically sculpture and stained glass. What follows are three poems I wrote on what I found to be the three most interesting of these images. After this is a discussion of these pieces, examining their historical background and their worth…
Has not that ruin, say he, a good effect? A Dialogue on Stowe, 1746 War-time ruins have always exerted an inexplicable fascination on the observer – a puzzling and not infrequently morbid sentiment that has been targeted as a serious object of academic enquiry since at least the aftermath of World War II. Besides provoking…
Audio Version Read by Gill Stoker Text Version Much loved and perused by staff, students, and the general public in the know, the Conway Library is a collection of 9764 red boxes containing brown manila folders. The photographs glued on the brown manila mounts are black and white original prints showing places of architectural…
Audio Version Read by Christopher Williams Text Version Did I really sign up for this? This is what I asked myself as soon as I walked into the building. A pretty lady, nicely presented with a red lipstick smiled at me and swiftly asked for my name. As a volunteer, I was preparing myself…
I have composed a visual song made of the images from the Conway archive. I like the idea that associations between images are what cause us to put them together – that there are certain ways that shapes interact which make us grasp them. Images have rhythms and tones, like a song. I have tried…
Audio Version Text Version In 1956, before Brooke House was built, or any part of Basildon for that matter, there was a sign in its place that read: “This is the site of Basildon Town Centre”. Over the next few years, the first buildings of what was already Basildon were put up, fulfilling the…
Audio Version Read by Gill Stoker Text Version One of the main aims of digitising our amazing photographic archive and putting it online for the public to access for free is to allow our materials to connect with new audiences. We want to allow our images to become resources for a myriad of endeavours, from…
Audio Version Read by Anna Thompson Text Version When I started volunteering on the digitisation programme, I never thought it would reignite my interest in the history of art. Yet here I am in the second year of a part-time M.A. in History of Art and Photography, and loving every moment of the challenge. I…
I’ve been engaged by the Courtauld on one of its digital internships since August of last year, and in the two and a half years prior to that, I was a volunteer on the Conway Library digitisation project, clocking up over 250 hours either side of the pandemic. My background is not what you might…
There are many different strands to the Digitisation Programme and I’ve been lucky to have researched and written a number of photographer’s biographies. Recently I came across a very interesting thread amongst a group of German/Austrian art historians and photographers linked by politics, persecution and war. In the late 1920s and 30s the rise of…