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Rosa Coomber: The Making of Suzon’s Clues

Internship The Conway Library No Comments

My name is Rosa Coomber, and I was lucky enough to work with the collection as the Digital Narratives and Storytelling Intern from August 2022 to the end of July 2023. I was excited to join this internship not only due to the opportunity to work with an incredible collection, but also due to the apparent commitment to creativity and freedom fostered by my colleagues. Digital narratives and storytelling are necessarily vague phrases; with a collection as vast as we have at the Conway, and a staff and volunteer body so broad and dedicated, there are more than enough stories to tell! After studying for a few years, I was keen to take a break from essay writing, and instead sought to ponder the question “how else can we tell the story of this collection?”

It turns out that there are almost infinite ways to do this, but the one that I spent most of my time on was Suzon’s Clues. My aim was to delve into the details of individual pieces in the collection and to document the physical experience of the library that we all know and love. A video game seemed to be the perfect medium for this, setting a mystery against the sights and sounds of the Conway.

A screenshot of a title screen for a video game. On the left of the screen are the Start/Load menus, Preferences and Help Panes, and links to read more information about the game or quit the application. To the right, the title “Suzon’s Clues” is written in capitals. The background image is the tea room of the Conway Library with photoshopped smoke covering the bottom half.

[Image: Suzon’s Clues Title Screen. Background image: Tea Room, Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Jan. 2023. Photograph taken by the author. Sidebar graphics created using Procreate © for IOS]

“It’s your first day as a new volunteer in the Conway, and you’re greeted by a rather mysterious individual. Work together to explore the library and uncover clues, but beware, you may find more than you’re bargaining for…”

 

Gameplay

It’s time for your first shift at the Conway Library. You arrive at the Courtauld Institute of Art, collect your volunteer pass, and make your way downstairs. You can feel a presence following you, but you push the thought to the back of your mind; you’re in Somerset House after all, a building with hundreds of years of history, and there are bound to be things hanging around. You open the door to the Witt Library, where you are suddenly intercepted by a mysterious young woman who introduces herself as Suzon. She seems to have been expecting you, and can barely contain her excitement. Suzon explains that she needs someone to help her decode objects that are materialising in the library; they appear to be Conway photographs, but each of them is obscured somehow. It’s going to be more complicated than simply finding their box numbers and filing them away.

Through a series of multiple choice questions, the player explores the library to find clues, whether these are poems, newspaper clippings, or even witness testimony from yet more obscure characters. Once they are cleaned, translated, and stitched back together, they are returned to their rightful places in the library. The aim of the game is to learn more about the photographs in the collection and to integrate them into their historical and cultural context. The more clues the player finds, the clearer the picture becomes. This not only applies to the photographs, but also to the appearance of the elusive Suzon, who seems more familiar as the story progresses. There are four main chapters and one bonus problem, where the player has to opportunity to solve the mystery of Suzon herself. The game is intended not only as an educational exercise, but also as a kind of tribute to the library as a physical space and a centre of memory. This game is not recommended for children under 12, given occasional horror-related subject matter and descriptions of violence and death.

 

Inspirations

Before I settled on creating a video game, I was more focused on the “point of view” element of the project. I had come across an interesting photographic project from the Wellcome Collection’s volunteering department, which photographed the route from Euston Road, inside the main building, and eventually ending at the library itself. This project had practical purposes, of leading volunteers to their work space, but it also made me think about materiality, and what significance these seemingly innocuous and functional photographs would have in future years. Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media at the Courtauld, had spoken to us often about the importance of documenting the collection and library “warts and all”: scuff marks on folders and torn labels on the red boxes. My initial plan was to create a kind of photographic project, documenting the volunteer experience from the volunteer’s point of view. Through compiling these images, I hoped that we might create a faithful visual representation of the Conway Library experience. It is interesting to note, between September 2022 and the time of writing in July 2023, the Wellcome Collection photographic route is nowhere to be found online, including via the Wayback Machine. This is perhaps testament to how fleeting these moments in time and space truly are, even with the seeming permanence of the internet.

A collage of nine different photographs. The images chart the walking route from outside the main entrance to Somerset House, through the reception area, and down into the Witt Library. From here, the route continues down into the Conway Library and ends in the photography vault.

A selection of images taken in and around the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Photographs taken by the author, Oct. 2022-Feb. 2023.

 

It was only once I started actually compiling these images that I realised what a resemblance they bore to a typical video game route. I have always been interested in more immersive, interactive learning, and so finally I settled on creating a POV supernatural horror/mystery game. The Conway Library, and its setting underneath Somerset House, is the kind of environment which is naturally ripe for spooky goings on; indeed, I have heard many stories of ghosts clattering about the vaults or floating across the courtyard in the middle of the night. Given the importance of featuring the space in almost every scene in the game, it made sense to import some of its ghostly energy. I am a big fan of horror games, and horror in general, but I have seen very few educational games with a horror slant (most of these would be better known as horror games with an educational slant, see Baldi’s Basics, for example). The mystery genre plays into this as well, as my aim was not simply to unsettle or scare, but also to explore and investigate lesser known pieces in the collection through the lens of the supernatural.

 

Research

After settling on this genre, I began to explore the collection, choosing boxes almost at random, and trying to avoid anything I’d spent too much time on before. After a couple of days of this, I settled on ten sources, which I quickly realised I would have to whittle down to four, an experience I feel is not uncommon when exploring the collection. The sources are as follows:

A black and white photograph mounted on card. The photograph depicts a bust of a woman, facing off to her left with her mouth slightly open. She is frowning slightly.

[CON_B06070_F004_002] – Marble Bust of Costanza Bonarelli by Gianlorenzo BERNINI, Lit.: Bellesi, Paragone, L, 589-591, 24-25, Mar.-May, 1999. ITALY: Florence, Bargello.

This source was the first I chose, and another piece that cemented the decision to focus on pieces in the collection with darker histories. On the surface of things, this is a simple bust of a woman named Costanza Bonarelli, sculpted by famed Italian sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini. Once I had researched the image further, I discovered that Bonarelli eventually had an affair with Bernini’s brother, and in response Bernini hired someone to slash her face with a dagger. Immediately, this sculpted image of intimacy and adoration had taken on an air of obsession, possession, and violence.

 

Black and white photograph mounted on card. Depicts a small child standing at the foot of a ladder against a wall that is covered in small memorial plaques and bunches of flowers.

Detail of [CON_B06922_F004_029] – TOMBEAUX HISTORIQUES (Père Lachaise), 16 – LE COLUMBARIUM – Monument ou les cendres des Incinérés sont déposees. On y releve les noms de Felix Pyat, Paule Mink, Lissagaray, etc., FRANCE: Paris, Père Lachaise.

This clue uses only the latter image of the two pictured here, of a little girl standing next to a wall covered in flowers. The secret of this image is more straightforward, as the little girl is standing in the colombarium of one of the most famous cemeteries in the world, the Cimitière du Père Lachaise in Paris. What at a first glance could be a photograph of a child in a flower shop takes on a deeper, more macabre significance.

 

Black and white photograph mounted on card. A small, grainy photograph of a crypt wall and part of its ceiling. The wall is covered in hundreds of skulls and other bones arranged in patterns.

[CON_B03465_F004_007] – Malta, Chapel of Bones, Vincenzo Galea, Malta-Valletta.

I was first attracted to this photograph because of how unusual it was, in a folder full of church façades and street shots. A small, soft, black and white postcard with the simple inscription: “Chapel of Bones”. A crypt, the walls covered in skulls and bones, and one of the more gruesome photographs I’ve come across in the collection. Upon researching the site, I discovered that the chapel had been left to go to ruin, with much of its original structure lost. It is presently unknown whether the crypt still exists after years being trapped underground, and this was exactly the kind of mystery I was looking for.

 

Black and white photograph mounted on card. The focus of the photograph is a large stone gate at the end of a wide, white path. At the centre of the gate is a carved stone face, underneath the face there is an archway flanked by two stone columns. Behind the gate there are many trees. There are several people walking towards the gate on the white path, which itself is flanked by rows of stone statues.

[CON_B01159_F001_003] – Angkor Thom, South Gate to Bayon. A.F. Kersting, G31041, taken 2001. CAMBODIA.

This is the final photograph that I chose, and is the most hopeful of the clues. I couldn’t not include a Kersting shot in this selection, and there was something about this one which captivated me. Taken in Angkor Thom, Cambodia, the last surviving and most enduring capital of the Khmer Empire, this photograph depicts the famous face of the city’s South Gate. What I found most mesmerising about this shot is how well the gate has survived, given that the city has been abandoned for at least 400 years. There was something quite poignant about the face of King Jayavarman VII, cast in stone, looking out over the overgrown city, and so I included this as the final clue, symbolising endurance through centuries of history.

 

Process

When I first started this project, although I had a pretty clear view of the finished product, the route to its completion was decidedly murkier. I had heard of several programs for creating visual novels and role-playing games, and so in the end I settled on using perhaps the most popular; a program called Ren’py. Ren’py is designed for users with minimal experience of coding, with much of the game development relying on inputting background images and props. The program works by providing a central interface for the script, and a number of folders for backgrounds, character sprites, and sound effects. A degree of knowledge of coding was required to write the script, but there were useful guides on Ren’py’s site and the wider internet. I definitely appreciated being given the time to learn some coding, as I had no prior experience.

First of two screenshots from Atom, a scripting program on Windows. It depicts a list of video game character names, followed by details of how their characters appear in game, including text colour, font, and font size.

[Some examples of code used in the game: character names and specifications at the beginning of the game. Edited with Atom via Ren’py]

Second of two screenshots from Atom, a scripting program on Windows. It depicts some introductory dialogue welcoming the player to the game.

[Some examples of code used in the game: opening dialogue between Suzon and the player, as well as the first choice in-game. Edited with Atom via Ren’py]

 

This approach suited my aim to immerse the game in the Conway’s architecture, as it allowed me to place emphasis on changing scenes, visual clues, and exploring the library. I didn’t want to overcomplicate the gameplay and end up creating a kind of decision-making labyrinth. Every standard background is an unedited shot of the Conway Library or Courtauld Institute, and many of the props were also photographed on site. For example, the original boxes belonging to each source were also photographed and used in the “Chapter Cleared!” screens at the end of each chapter.

Two collages. The first is comprised of three images of a red box. In the first, it is open, and displaying a lack and white photograph of the first source used in the video game. In the second, the box is closed. In the third, the spine of the box is visible, with the text reading “17th Century Sculpture – Italian – Gianlorenzo Bernini – Busts – Female, Popes, Royalty. CON_B06070. The second collage is comprised of three images: the first is a photograph of the carpet in the Conway Library. The second is a photograph of a volunteers pass on a purple Courtauld lanyard. The third is a torn and scrunched up piece of paper covered with illegible handwriting.

[A few examples of some “props”, including Bernini’s bust of Bonarelli in its box, a section of carpet, a volunteer pass, and a handwritten “clue”.]

 

In addition to this, most of the sound effects were also recorded in the library, for example the sound of the wind heard in the demo was recorded one chilly afternoon in Vault 3, and the sound that plays when a clue is discovered is the sound of a Kersting print being flipped over. I had learnt from attending a workshop with sound artist Robin the Fog that smartphone recording apps are often sufficient for capturing audio of a reasonable quality. This is what I used to create the sound effects used in the game.

A screenshot of the iPhone Voice Memos application. There are nine recordings in total, titled: Boxfall, clap, windwhistle, windchime, smallthud, thud, photo flap, box close, and box open. They are all between one and three seconds long.

[A screenshot of the sound effects compiled here.]

Through this approach, I hope that I have injected as much of the Conway into the project as possible, I wanted to imbue the whole thing with a kind of “library flavour”. There are some photographs of Conway milestones included as well, such as the before, during, and after of the process of photographing the red boxes, and the decorations put up in the Witt Library for the Witt and Conway Staff Reunion.

 

 

A collage of three photographs of the same area of the Conway Library. In the first photograph, there are piles of boxes covering the floor. In the second, the boxes re gone and have been replaced by photographic equipment and piles of red boxes. There is also a large table covered in black fabric visible. In the final photograph, all equipment and boxes has been cleared away, and the space is empty.

[Photograph of the approach to the vaults, taken before, during, and after the photographing of the red boxes, photographed by the author.]

The door to the Witt Library in the Courtauld Institute of Art. Above the door, multicoloured paper bunting has been draped across the walls.

[Photograph of the Witt Library, taken shortly after the Witt and Conway Staff Reunion, photographed by the author.]

 

Once the sources were selected, the next step was to obscure them. I wanted to create a kind of puzzle where the player would have to learn more about their item in order to locate its box, “bring it home”, and advance to the next chapter. So, after the research I compiled a selection of facts about each object. For example, with regards to our first problem, the bust of Costanza Bonarelli, its first clue relates to location and time; a map of 17th Century Siena. The bust was created in the 17th Century, and Costanza herself was originally from Siena. Next, a poem from well-known poet of the Italian Renaissance, Torquato Tasso, included for the line “not that I hope for anything from you, my sweet life, except misery”. This is a reference to the tumultuous affair between Bonarelli and sculptor Bernini. Next, after some exploration, a dagger is discovered in the vault, making an obvious reference to the dagger that was used to disfigure her. From here, almost at the end of the puzzle, Suzon and the player follow the sound of music, which gets louder and quieter depending on how far away the player is as they move through the Conway. The music is an aria from Handel’s cantata, “Apollo e Dafne”, which references Bernini’s most famous work, Apollo and Daphne. This is the final clue which connects Bonarelli and Bernini. From here, the player is given a choice of boxes and, when the correct option is chosen, the item is returned to its home, and in a sense is laid to rest.

This formula is followed for the remaining sources, with some variations. I wanted to try to make the sleuthing process as varied as possible, taking advantage of different forms of media. It seemed like to do otherwise would be a waste when Ren’py allows for the integration of text, pictures, and audio. Another benefit of this approach is the inclusion of a number of characters to further enrich the experience: There is Suzon, of course, who many will recognise from the painting, “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”, by Édouard Manet, who also makes an appearance. Torquato Tasso arrives to read his poetry, and the vaults are frequented by a ghost by the name of Georgiana. She is named after the Spritualist and artist, Georgiana Houghton, subject of an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery entitled “Spirit Drawings” in the Summer of 2016. By including Georgiana, Suzon, Manet, and indeed a short cameo from Samuel Courtauld in the introduction, the Gallery, Institute and Library are all represented in the gameplay.

A photograph of the painting “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”, by Édouard Manet. A young woman is looking out at the viewer, standing behind a bar and surrounded by bottles of alcohol, flowers, and a bowl of oranges. Behind her, the rest of the bar and its patrons are visible. The painting is framed by an ornate, carved wooden frame and hanging on a white wall.

[A photograph of Suzon in situ, photographed by the author in the Courtauld Gallery, Strand, London, December 2022.]

 

Testing and Launch

Once the chapters were written, the script, images, sound effects and music were all combined within the game directory provided by Ren’py. I had, perhaps naively, thought that the bulk of the work was finished, but as always when using unfamiliar technology, there are going to be a few hiccups. The music or sound effects come in too early, too late, too loud, or too quiet. One character sprite fills the entire screen, another doesn’t show up at all. After a couple of weeks and many hours of rewriting code, the game finally ran successfully. I must extend my gratitude to my fellow interns and staff in the Conway Library for playing through the demo and providing some much needed feedback: it’s always helpful to look at these things with as many sets of eyes as possible! It was also fun seeing everyone’s reactions to the experience of moving around the library in-game, and I’m happy that this was well-received.

Once the testing was over and everything was tidied up, it was time to finally launch the game. Suzon’s Clues is hosted on the independent game developer site, itch.io: Suzon’s Clues on itch.io.

A screenshot of the developer’s page of an independent video game website. To the left, there are several descriptive boxes, including: Title, project URL, Game Description, and Classification. To the right, there is an image of the game cover, which depicts the character Suzon against a gold background, with the title “Suzon’s Clues” to the left.

[A screenshot from the developer’s page of “Suzon’s Clues” on itch.io, depicts title and cover art.]

A screenshot of the developer’s page of an independent video game website. To the left, there are two uploads of the game files, titled “SuzonsClues-1.0-mac.zip” and “SuzonsClues-1.0-pc.zip”. To the right, there are several gameplay screenshots, including one from the opening to the game, and another of one of the video game characters.

[A screenshot from the developer’s page of “Suzon’s Clues” on itch.io, depicts the uploads of the game files.]

 

Once the content warnings, game description, installation instructions, and game file were uploaded, everything was done. It was strange to stop working on this project, at times it felt like it would never be finished! I felt that I would always be writing new mysteries for Suzon and whichever unwitting volunteer she had managed to capture, and certainly felt some sadness writing the final scenes.

Conclusion

The aim of Suzon’s Clues was, in part, to explore the ways in which we can interpret the pieces in the collection. Are they to be used to understand the processes and inspirations of sculptors, painters, architects, and photographers? Can we use these photographs to understand social, cultural, and political trends? What about making statements about which objects are preserved, and why? Are they a collection of pictures that are nice to look at? Of course, all of these are true.

The photographs in this collection are preserved with varying degrees of detail, and it would be a truly gargantuan feat to attempt to research the mysteries of every last piece. What I hoped to achieve with the tiny number of sources used was to demonstrate the sheer amount of information that is just waiting to be discovered within these boxes, and the intrigue and fun we can have if we attempt to unearth them. Further to this, Suzon’s Clues is something of a love letter to the Conway Library. So much more than just a building; it is a centre of memory and has been the home of the collection. More than that, the Conway has been the beloved workspace of hundreds of volunteers, staff, students, and visitors. I hope that I have been able to capture a sense of the experience of working on this project, and working in this space. Whether we are sorting through Kersting prints on the mezzanine, poring over masters at the table on the bottom floor, or digitising it all in the vaults.

When I first arrived in the Conway Library in Summer 2022 I was almost overwhelmed by the size of the collection and the methods of telling its story. We as interns have all been given so much freedom to run with our ideas, which has been both deeply rewarding and tremendous fun. Happily, I think we will all leave with new skills and very fond memories.

Rosa Coomber
Courtauld Connects
Digitisation Project
Digital Narratives and
Storytelling Intern

Richard Cray: Researching and Re-Cataloguing the 19th Century Print Collection (including the 20th Century Russia box)

Architecture Internship Photographic Library Digitisation Project Photographic Prints Prints The Conway Library No Comments

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 expect from someone in my position – I’ve done two tours of duty in broadcasting, in both production and administration capacities, and I was a market research coder for more than a decade in the days when surveys were mostly completed on paper.

Regarding the internship, the intention was that I would assist with preparing image metadata prior to the Conway Library being uploaded; however, very early on, Tom encouraged each intern to find a small project to work on.  It was suggested that my small project could be the 19th Century Prints collection – and nearly a full year later I’m still working on it.

The first issue was locating the entire collection.  A large part of it, covering about 140 boxes, had been accessioned to a degree some years back, but there were another 15 boxes of mixed content on another shelf that had barely been looked at.  Then several boxes of unsorted prints from John Bilson’s collection were located. Then some oversized prints in Melinex pouches were located a shelf or two down, followed by another bunch located just at the very moment when I thought I was finally ready to get everything in some sort of order.

Then I looked at the spreadsheet containing the data from the prints already accessioned.

Up to that point, accessioning had been done very literally – everything on the mount and on the image had been entered into the spreadsheet largely verbatim.  Many descriptions that were not in English had not been translated, architects were frequently listed in the photographer column, and if there was nothing but a town or city written on the mount that was all that had been entered, even if the image was of a specific building. Photographic credits that were embossed on the mount or image had not been listed, presumably because nobody was looking out for them.

Buildings such as ecclesiastical premises and town halls were listed under numerous names in anything up to four different languages. It was clear that, in order to ensure images of the same building were kept together, some standardization of the information on the spreadsheet would need to be performed before the missing images were added, well before any reordering or renumbering took place.  Also, anything that made no sense or was incomplete was flagged for special attention.

Aside from images in one city being split between two folders in different boxes – one listed under the city’s English name and the other in its native form – there were other glaring issues with the way the collection had been boxed that required resolution.  An entire collection meant to be ordered alphabetically began with a box marked ‘Algeria, Morocco and Peru’, for some reason.  Another box randomly paired Holland – rather than the Netherlands – with Denmark.  The part of the collection dealing with England veered from cities to counties and back again and the box marked ‘England S-Z’ had the helpful addition of the words “excluding Wales”. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?  That said, the folder marked “Wales” was, rather confusingly, to be found in that very box.

The numbering of images went awry in the third box.  There had been no standard method of numbering mounts with multiple images on one side or an image on both the front and reverse – sometimes they were given consecutive numbers, sometimes the same number with a alpha suffix.  One particular folder contained 34 images, all of which had been given the same number with a numerical suffix from 1 to 34.

After consulting with Tom, the decision was taken to start again. Not only would there be a need to add the many images that had not already been accessioned to existing folders and boxes, with images being re-ordered and renumbered accordingly, but some ground rules would need to be set about how individual buildings would be listed.

As volunteers had already been adding biographies for photographers with content in the Conway Library to Wikipedia, it was decided that, wherever possible, a building should be listed on the spreadsheet by how it appears on English Wikipedia.  If no entry existed for the building on English Wikipedia, it was decided to use the name listed on the native Wikipedia entry.  In cases where a building was not listed on Wikipedia at all, it was decided to search for an official website or a listing on a local government website, or, failing that, establish a clear consensus from looking at other reputable websites.

Sometimes an alternative name or a native name has been added to the spreadsheet in parentheses, and once the images are digitized and uploaded alongside the descriptions, it should be possible to add all alternative names for a building, particularly ecclesiastical premises and Italian palazzi, as well a full timeline of changes to building names or uses, to all applicable images with some form of global edit.

At the end of January, with all located images accounted for in the spreadsheet, and three-quarters of the images previously marked as “missing” located in various nooks and crannies, the reordering, renumbering, and re-boxing of the collection finally commenced.

And that was where the fun really started.

First off, it was decided that the collection would be split between prints that could fit in our standard red boxes without folding and oversized prints, which would be kept separate.  Previously, some of these folded images were kept in the boxes, while others remained loose.  Our thinking was that one photographic studio could handle the content in the boxes, without having to adjust the focal length, while the second studio could handle content where the focal length and focus would need to be adjusted for every shot. Currently, the boxed images outnumber the oversized ones by about five-to-one.

It seemed to me that uploading an image of a building onto an internet database with only a city for identification may be considered somewhat inertial, so I decided early on to try, wherever possible, to locate and/or verify the locations featured in every architectural image in the collection, which make up most of its total sample of 10,500 individual images. For example, if a named building was listed purely as an “exterior” shot, could a more precise description be added – a façade, an angle of view, even the location from which the image was shot, if that could be determined.  Was it worth pointing out other landmarks adjacent to the focal point of the image, or in the background?  Could I determine a building from a close-up of a balcony or balustrade, a column or capital, a pier or a pilaster?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

With a little bit of searching, images featuring a specific frontage that were previously described as street scenes could be pinpointed, such as Dante’s birthplace in Florence.  An image previously thought to be of Rotterdam was proved to be of a canal in Amsterdam that has since been filled in, merely by locating a recent photo on, of all places, Trip Advisor, identifying a rooftop, a bridge and a particularly decorative street lamp, and then verifying the location on Google Maps, because, as any fule no, one shouldn’t assume that what one finds on the internet at first time of looking is any more accurate than what one already has to hand.

Aside from pinpointing locations and buildings featured in images that would have been close to impossible in pre-internet days, even for someone with a specialist knowledge of a particular geographical area, and possibly even for natives, it has also been possible to correct errors and confirm descriptions that have been adorned with a question mark, perhaps for several decades.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been accessioning the last half-dozen boxes of Italian architecture, specifically Venice, which had more than its fair share of questionable filing and misleading descriptions.

These included:

  • Two close-up shots of the Bridge of Sighs [both sides of 5275] filed with images of the Doge’s Palace, when two more distant shots of the bridge [including 5274] were in a dedicated folder but had been accessioned on the spreadsheet under the name of the canal, Rio di Palazzo Ducale. One of the images itself is even mislabelled, claiming the picture was taken from one bridge when in fact it was taken from the next bridge along. And, to make things even more confusing, the Wikipedia entry also contains images that say they’re looking south when they’re actually looking north.

Fig. 1: Bridge of Sighs, Venice, Italy. 19th Century Print 5274, The Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, CC-BY-CC.

 

Fig. 2: Bridge of Sighs, Venice, Italy. 19th Century Print 5275a and 5275b, The Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, CC-BY-CC.

  • A folder marked ‘Palazzo Vendramin Calergin’ contained eight images of two different buildings: six of Ca’ Vendramin Calergin on the Grand Canal [including 5193] and two of Ca’ Vendramin Zago, now the Hotel Ca’ Vendramin, on the Rio di Santa Fosca [including 5205].

Fig. 3: Ca’ Vendramin Calergin on the Grand Canal, Venice, Italy, 19th Century Print 5193, The Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, CC-BY-CC.

 

Fig. 4: Ca’ Vendramin Zago on the Rio di Santa Fosca, Venice, Italy, 19th Century Print 5205, The Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, CC-BY-CC.

  • An image marked ‘Palazzo Cappello’ [5208], when there are currently two buildings by that name in Venice, as well as six or seven others that carry the Cappello name in some shape or form. Wikipedia only had entries for two or three of these buildings, so whittling down the possibilities was tricky.  Through a process of elimination and a battle with Google Maps, which is a nightmare to use for Venice – I don’t know why – it was established that the building was once known as the Palazzo Bianca Cappello, not to be confused with a Hotel of the same name a few doors down.

Fig. 5: Palazzo Bianca Capello, Venice, Italy, 19th Century Print 5208, Th Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, CC-BY-CC.

  • There were several sets of different shots of the same building or buildings taken from virtually the same angle that had been filed in two or three different folders.

That is not to say that I’ve been able to identify everything.  There are a couple of hundred prints from the previously unaccessioned sample that have absolutely no identifying information at all, as well as images of untraceable buildings in certain towns, cities and countries.  Two such images were of the same building in Venice, yet were placed in different folders – one, inexplicably indexed under C, was of the “Palazzo Bordulmier” [5237], of which I could find no trace, and the other, indexed under S-Z was question marked as “Palazzo Tron” or “Palazzo San Benedetto” [5238] – probably the Palazzo Tron a San Beneto, which is similar but has four bays of windows, not three as pictured. A wider version of one of the two shots exists in the V&A catalogue, which list the location as unknown, so that’s how it’s been left in our database for now.

Fig. 6: Unknown, 19th Century Print 5237, The Conway Library, The Courtauld  Institute of Art, CC-BY-CC.

 

Fig. 7: Unknown Palazzo, 19th Century Print 5238, The Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, CC-BY-CC.

There are also a few images where I’ve gone with the information provided on the mount but online research has provided more questions than answers.  Hopefully, once these images are made available to the public there will be individuals out there who will be able to identify them and people at the Courtauld who will be able to verify that identification and update the record accordingly.

I hope that one of the main benefits of taking the time to research these prints in greater detail will be to make the searching easier for those who will be searching from their homes or places of study, rather than physically removing the box from a shelf in a library.  The proof of the pudding, of course, will be in the eating, but what I’ve done is certainly an improvement on what we had for publication a year ago. And, as I alluded to earlier, it will invite users to suggest further contextual information that can be verified and added as and when.

There are plenty of images in this collection, as well as the Kersting collection and the wider Conway Library, that would benefit from being exhibited to the public and, where copyright permits, being made available to the public in the form of prints, either bespoke or off-the-peg, or in the form of other gifts, such as calendars or diaries or coffee-table books.  Personally, I’d take a photo of a long-demolished London building over Van Gogh’s bandaged ear any day, but that’s just me.

I would also argue that further licensing opportunities may arise by establishing a proactive relationship with publishers of books and periodicals to establish whether there are titles in their pipelines that would benefit from the use of an image in which the Courtauld holds the necessary rights of exploitation, rather than waiting for an author or editor or production manager to request something, and having a clear and pre-established rate card that is appropriate for any and all uses.

 

Richard Cray
Courtauld Connects
Digitisation Project
Metadata Assistant

Alessandro Torresi: Wanderers / wonderers through the Roman night

Architecture The Kersting Archive No Comments

At night, when people fall asleep, the city wakes up and starts to live. And this is particularly true for Roma. There is something mystical about this eternal city which seems to transcend the reality we live in. Only at night, when the streets get empty and there are no tourists wandering through the narrow alleys and hidden corners of the city, you can truly feel what it means to say: “I am in Rome”.

Roma is a protective mother who guides us from street to street, ancient palace to ancient palace, in a perpetual quest to understand the essence of our fragmented life. And as we walk, we might notice lonely and adventurous wanderers who are stuck in the same quest. And as we pass each other, we feel our nostalgia growing, even if we don’t know why. It is like we are aware that we are missing something in our lives, or that we can never fully have it: but the melancholy caused by a lack of love, success, or happiness is heartened by the warm arms of Roma.

Roma is a protective mother who cannot be fully understood. You feel loved, you feel protected, but you cannot fully understand why. You just know that you must keep walking and you must keep passing people by. Roma is unreachable, because thousands of years of history are shown off with pride every inch of the city, but you constantly sense a decadent presence that confers to the city a folksy halo.

Roma embodies the ‘Cabiria’ character in Fellini’s “White Sheik”. When the bourgeois character Ivan is sitting at night in an empty square, crying because his wife has snuck off to meet her soap opera idol, he is the lonely vagabond who’s oppressed by social conventions. And when he is lost for words, in despair, the prostitute Cabiria suddenly appears, whose only way to show love and support is by making jokes and by keeping things light. Cabiria and her friend Assunta look at the pictures of Ivan’s wife, making silly but loving comments, raising Ivan’s spirit up. Roma, as Cabiria, will never take you seriously, but it will always make you feel comforted and at home.

A still taken from “The White Sheik” where an open-mouthed Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) sits next to Ivan, who is crying.
A still taken from “The White Sheik”, 1952. An open-mouthed Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) sits next to Ivan, who is crying.

I become that adventurous wonderer every time I have the occasion to visit Roma. Coming from a very small village located in Southern Italy, I have cultivated, since I was a child, a fascination for Roma. The capital was just a four-hour drive from my village, but my family and I were not used to travelling a lot. So, when we visited our cousins in the city it almost felt like we were travelling to the other side of the world. Roma was on the national newscast every day; Roma was the place where my fellow countrymen were going to try their luck to find a job; and Roma was the city where my older cousin was attending University. There is a very special unsaid tradition in my family that tells you that every time you leave the village, you have to wave goodbye to every relatives’ home. And I remember those moments, when my cousin had to return to Roma, as heart-breaking and painful, feeding my view of the capital as “The” destination with no return. Even today, although travelling has become a more common thing for me to do, when I visit Roma, I feel in the same way I used to feel when I was a child.

Last August, for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, my family and I decided to take a two-day trip and there couldn’t be any other destination but Roma. We arrived in the late afternoon and we were supposed to leave the following day after lunch, so we had just one night. I was really looking forward to walking through the city centre when I could have spent some time really enjoying the empty city.

It was 3 am. While my parents and my brother embarked on the impossible mission to find an open ice-cream parlour, I ventured to walk around Piazza di Spagna. I climbed the iconic Trinità dei Monti steps and, reaching the top, I was dazzled by the view: the city enlightened by hundreds of tiny yellow lanterns. It reminded me why I love Roma so much. You can get bewildered by the grandeur of the architecture, but you never feel uneasy.

On the way to re-join my family, I suddenly felt observed by two stone hollow eyes. It was like being trapped in one of those oneiric scenes of Fellini’s movies. The city was alive, and it was peering at me. I instantly remembered when I visited the Cinecittà film studios for the first time and I got hypnotized by the majesty of the Casanova’s Venusia. This massive sculpture of a crowned head, which had been made for the opening scene of the movie directed by Fellini in 1976, now stands at the entrance of the historical studios. The hollow eyes that confronted me that night were, in fact, just the entrance of the Hertziana Library of Zuccari Palace, one of the largest History of Art research sites in Europe, but I really had the impression that the huge mouth of the creature was a magical portal to enter a parallel Roma. A photograph by Anthony Kersting held in the Conway Library as G19688 captures this strange doorway.

Photograph of the doorway of Palazzo Zuccari, in Via Gregoriana, Rome. By Anthony F Kersting.
Two furious eyes reveal the entrance of Zuccari Palace, Rome. Photograph by Anthony Kersting, “Photograph of the doorway of Palazzo Zuccari Via Gregoriana, Rome. KER_PNT_G19688. The Courtauld.

It is funny how an elusive glimpse can take you to impossible places. But this feeling is quite common when you visit this unique labyrinthine city. It is the atypical and the bizarre that transform Roma into a human, into a mother. The intrinsic contradiction between the sacred and profane, between the solemn and familiar is the blend that continues to attract hundreds of wanderers every year. If you arrive alone, you will have the city to keep you company. The towering fountains, the cramped cloisters, the wide arcades, the charming churches are a multitude of faces that will guide you through the city, that ascends to the eternal because every vagabond will leave a peace of their soul that will live the streets forever. And at night, when it’s just you and the city, strange miracles can happen.

Alessandro Torresi: Craco and the fascination for the abandoned

Architecture The Conway Library Volunteer Voices Volunteers Zooniverse No Comments

I was 16 years old when I moved to my current house on the hill in Marsicovetere, Italy. I remember that the first thing I did, after throwing my stuff on the bed, was to put on a pair of comfortable shoes to reach the tiny, abandoned stone house I could see from my terrace. I ran along a footpath by the wooded coast directly to the entrance of what I later learnt was, in the late 1960s, the humble house of a family of farmers. I imagined some children looking out from the turquoise window, spying on their parents working the land, checking if they had enough time to plan a bit of mischief. That ordinary abandoned house became a powerful spark that made my imagination and curiosity wonder and flourish.

When I was a kid, one of my favourite days of the year was Good Friday, when the entire village would walk the Way of The Cross. Through the narrow streets of the old town, we would march to reach the abandoned monastery at the base of the mountain which, once a year, became the designated spot for the representation of the last stations of the Passion of Christ. For me, the folklore of this unique day was better represented by the image of the abandoned monastery; a ruined place, inaccessible for 364 days of the year, that for just one day could be reborn as an agora (meeting place) for all the peasants.

I have always been fascinated by abandoned places and by the special mystery of worlds that could have been but, for adverse reasons, stopped accomplishing the purpose for which they were built – I bet that each one of you reading this piece has at least one memory that took place in an abandoned site. Maybe it is because we like the idea of finding ourselves in a situation of danger (perhaps we even dare to imagine being witnesses of nefarious night-time crimes). Maybe it is because everyone has felt abandoned at least once in their lives; so it’s like we can claim to be the temporary owners of places that have seen a multitude of lonely explorers stepping inside and thinking they are the first to have discovered such a mysterious spot all for themselves.

While working on the classification of the photographic collection of The Courtauld’s Conway Library on Zooniverse, a series of pictures of St. Hilarion Castle in Cyprus caught my attention. Before I could even realise, I started to imagine what it must have been like when the castle was at the height of its use as a defensive fortification during the Byzantine Era.

The first picture below shows the ruins of the cistern of the castle. What was once one of the most vital places of the site – since a high storage of drinkable water can play a significant role for an island with drought problems like Cyprus – is now a cistern of abandoned memories that cannot be re-discovered anymore. I thought about the splendour of Byzantine chapels, with their iconic coloured cupolas, and I felt a sense of nostalgia and melancholia when I saw the second picture, which shows the remains of a once-glorious chapel. St. Hilarion Castle appears to be perched up high, and its rock walls defend a past made of secular traditions that cannot be replicated. It is as if the stone walls of the third picture were hiding a mythological creature who is asleep and waiting to live again.

Of course, this is only my perception but what I really want to stress is that heritage sites like St. Hilarion Castle are fundamental for our cultural consciousness. They stimulate our curiosity towards the past, but they stimulate also new visions of the future pushing us to think about how we can avoid the same mistakes that led these beautiful sites to perish, and how can we start again.

St Hilarion Castle, Cyprus. This image is blurred at the top (a finger over the lens, or maybe some fog!). In the bottom 2 thirds of this landscape oriented photo you can see an old stone wall with an arched wooden doorway nestled in the middle. The place looks like a ruin, but it's a close up shot so hard to tell what the surrounding area looks like.
St. Hilarion Castle, Cyprus. CON_B01180_F002_016, bottom right on mount. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

 

St Hilarion Castle, Cyprus. This image is taken inside the ruined castle. Here the damage is clear: what was once a domed or vaulted roof is now open to the sky. The walls are in various states of disrepair, with jagged brickwork exposed. This must once have been a grand room, but now it's empty.
St. Hilarion Castle, Cyprus. CON_B01180_F001_007. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

 

St Hilarion Castle, Cyprus. This photo is down the hill, looking up at the castle. From here, it looks like the castle is perched on the edge of a sheer rock face. The castle is clearly overgrown with plants, and the roof is clearly damaged. It's a plain, square, stone building, stark against the landscape.
St. Hilarion Castle, Cyprus. CON_B01180_F002_016, bottom left on mount. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

What intrigued me the most about the images of St. Hilarion Castle was their resemblance to the memories I had of a once abandoned Italian village called Craco, nowadays a popular touristic destination.

Craco, perched high on a hill. Photo c. Alessandro Torresi.

In 1963 a landslide forced the inhabitants of this little stone village of the Basilicata region, situated at the top of a hill surrounded by gullies, to move to a newer town named Craco Peschiera. They had to leave their homes abruptly, abandoning Craco and turning it into a “ghost town”. As the years went by, nature gradually took over, creating an evocative environment where time seems to have stopped. This atypical setting re-entered the centre of the conversation when it was chosen as the location of important international film productions such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion (2004). Suddenly, institutions started to realize the unlimited potential of abandoned heritage sites like Craco. They represent a past that for many years we tried to forget, because they could not fit in the narrative of the fast world, of industrialized and smart cities. Places like Craco, or even the nearby Matera that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, have been “shameful” for many Governments who saw in them the failure of their vision of progress. They were cut off from the public conversation, existing only in the bitter memories of the people who once lived there.

However, in 2020 we witness how quickly cities stopped being the safest and most desirable place to be. The high density of social contacts in urban areas meant a higher density of Covid-19 cases, and, as a result, large numbers of people decided to move, permanently or temporarily, to the countryside, putting the spotlight on those places that never had the chance to “shine”, and for which conservation and preservation are now of primary importance for the social and cultural wellbeing of the rural inhabitants.

Maybe, my fascination with abandoned sites lies in the idea of rebirth and second chances. A place with no present can have many possible futures. Craco has had its rebirth in 2011; from that year onwards it has been possible to visit the main street of the village with a guided tour that touches on the ancient palaces and convent as well as the ruins of the once inhabited houses. Wearing a protective helmet, you can take a trip through time, travelling back to the 1960s and experiencing a different side of the Italian dolce vita.

Inside an abandoned building, Craco. A single wooden chair is off-centre inside a once-grand, now crumbling room with barrel-vaulted ceilings. A tree is growing, indoors, on the back wall. Photo c. Alessandro Torresi.

I visited the beautiful yet mysterious Craco last summer. I am used to the slow life of the Italian southern villages, however, I was not expecting to feel such a realistic impression of being stuck in an ancient medieval village, where the only signs of modernity were the “explorers” taking pictures (as you can see from the pictures below, taken during my visit to the heritage site in 2020). I was even more surprised to see many international tourists, which is (unfortunately) quite uncommon for heritage sites in my region.

Scenes from Craco, Italy. Tourists in hard hats explore the ruined streets. Donkeys roam on the cobbles. The buildings are so decayed it’s easy to imagine they are growing out of the hill, rather than falling back into it. Photos c. Alessandro Torresi.

Craco can represent a succesful model, exportable everywhere, of sustainable fruition of an heritage site where human intervention is resepctful of the place’s history and natural environement, while representing an invaluable asset for the local cultural and economic development. It’s abandonment, and its resulting mysterious atmosphere, may therefore save it.

Alessandro Torresi
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer

Muny Morgan: Photographic Memories of Ravello, Italy

Photographic Library Digitisation Project The Conway Library Uncategorized Volunteer Voices Volunteers No Comments

Audio version

Read by Will Rodgers

Text version

Having volunteered on the digitisation project at the Courtauld for two years in April (can’t believe it!) I always had my eye on the Italian section of the Conway collection. We process the boxes the order they appear on the shelf, which is alphabetical, so I knew it would take us a while to get to Italy.

I was so delighted on a recent shift when I had been asked to brief a new fellow volunteer on the accessioning task. We walked down to the Italian section of the library and, much to my delight, the next folder to sort was Ravello! I felt like I had won the lottery – though I’m not familiar with that feeling!

This stunning, magical, charming, quiet little town, for those of you who don’t know, sits 365m above the Tyrrhenian sea on the magnificent Amalfi coast, away from the bustling tourist havens of Sorrento and Positano, and has a very special place in my heart. I went there on my first holiday with my now husband and we loved it so much we initially planned to have our wedding in Villa Cimbrone, known as the terrace of infinity, though it didn’t happen in the end, as it was too complicated logistically.

Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

I have to say that at first, apart from the odd Kersting image, I didn’t think that the box had captured the beauty and magnificence of this place.

Ravello. CON_B03049_F001_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

When I got home after my shift that morning I had a look at my photos to compare them to some of the places I recognised in the archive collection. I thought we had stacks (as we do now when we go on holiday with our children and with the less selective use of our digital cameras) but we didn’t. At the time we visited, digital cameras were not so affordably available and I also much preferred my SLR.

Ravello. CON_B03049_F006_005. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

It made me wonder: had all my visual memories of this town been imprinted in my mind? Is the mind the best place to record our most enjoyable and visually memorable experiences, rather than on photographic paper or as a digital file stored on our computer? When I explored this idea and thought about all my travels abroad, I realized that the most memorable places and times in my experience do not have an extensive photographic record.

Ravello. CON_B03049_F001_008. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

Perhaps I am romanticising my memories of this special place. But I can vividly recall the quiet glamour of the Villa Cimbrone, and the Ravello Festival concert in the grounds of Villa Rufolo that we happened upon as we made our way along the small winding streets with dramatic views of hilltop houses and the beautiful coastline to the Hotel Parsifal, the converted convent where we were to stay. And I can’t help but imagine that my experiences were similar to those of Escher, Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, Virginia Woolf, Robert Wagner and Jacqueline Kennedy and other famous visitors who have come here seeking inspiration.

Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_023. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_024. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

We always said we would return to this charming, magical place, but it would have to be for a very special occasion indeed to experience it all over again and alter the memories we have.

Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_018. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.

Muny Morgan
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer

Can Tony Kersting Take You to Your Home Town?

Photographic Library Digitisation Project The Kersting Archive Volunteer Audio No Comments

Audio Version

Read by Tanya Goodman-Bailey

Text Version

Managing the digitisation project of one of the most varied, mysterious, and extensive photographic collections in the world, in one of its most prestigious art institutes can look a lot like this:

and not much like the constant carousel of wonderful architectural detail that one might imagine. The volunteers, busy sorting through the images and penciling the accession numbers on the mounts, or zooming in to check the focus in the digitisation studio, are the ones who get to really see the collection, really make serendipitous discoveries. I have to make the time to go and explore, and be sure to do it too or else I might get to the end of whole months having only seen filenames, spreadsheets and conversion code on Terminal.

Belluno_Ponte della Vittoria e Duomo_Anthony Kersting Archive

Today I thought I’d go looking for my hometown – Belluno, in the Italian Dolomites – and see it through A.F. Kersting’s eyes. The 4293 Kersting negatives, which we plan to digitise as part of our project, are numbered sequentially and neatly stacked in their cases. To every negative number corresponds a handwritten entry on a ledger, so if you were to pick a number from the shelf you could easily look it up in the ledger and find out where the image was taken. It’s a bit more difficult to start your search from a specific city; on the negative there are only accession numbers and entries on the ledgers are also sequential by number, not by location. Besides, part of the mystery surrounding photographer A.F. Kersting is that he would travel so extensively: opening a page at random of his ledger you can see that one day he was in Jersey, the next in Scotland, the following entry would be in Munich, then Dubrovnik, then Madrid… which makes tracing his steps and locating a particular town very tricky – and transcribing the ledgers (another fascinating task reserved for our volunteers) very necessary!

Belluno_Piazza Duomo_Anthony Kersting Archive

What I do have to go by in my quick morning search is the prints collection, the selected negatives for which we have prints, and which are arranged by country. These prints were created by Kersting and are unnumbered but annotated in pencil at the back. I ventured to the Italy box and looked for my small town almost as a challenge, and there, to my delight, I found the squares and fountains of my childhood, almost untouched by time, with the only exception being the clothes of the passers-by and the cars parked where they shouldn’t be.

Belluno_Piazza delle Erbe_Anthony Kersting Archive

We are not there yet with the digitisation so what you see below are just some quick group snaps, but hopefully they will give you a taste of how wonderful a photographer Kersting was, and how extensively he documented every corner of the world he could reach. When we’ll have completed the digitisation of the whole collection you’ll be able to search by place and by date, as well as by accession number, and the collection will be truly open. For now, enjoy this small selection as a Friday treat.

Faye Fornasier
Digitisation, Database and Cataloguing Manager
Courtauld Connects