karyn blog #2: Through the Lens of Time

Through the Lens of Time: Images of African Americans from the Cook Collection of Photographs

This collection is composed of photographs taken by George and Huestis Cook. Huestis was one of the first Southerners to photograph African Americans in a realistic or natural setting. Some of the photographs are staged, while others are completely spontaneous.

Collection Principle

Two Williamsburg authors, Alfred Kocher and Lawrence Dearstyne, were referred to Huestis Cook for illustratiions of their nineteenth century book. They discovered numerous negatives and prints in his attic and put together the Southern Exposures Exhibition in 1952 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. In 1954, 156 of the photographs were printed in a book called Shadows of Silver. The Valentine Richmond History Center bought the collection from Cook’s widow in the 1950s. This collection of 291 images represents the “under-documented” community of African Americans in Central Virginia from the late eighteen hundreds through the early nineteen hundreds. This collection introduces an overlooked, yet very important link in the Virginia population. This is a joint project between VCU Libraries and the Valentine Richmond History Center.

There are no restrictions to the images in this collection. According to Virginia Commonwealth University, the images may be printed, reproduced, and used for non-commercial, personal, or educational purposes.

Object Characteristics

To view the images, you can either browse the collection and select individual photographs, or you may view the collection slideshow. The individual images are thumbnails listed numerically, then alphabetically with 20 per page. Each image has 3 categories: title, handwritten notes, if any, and subject or what the image is about. Clicking on the thumbnail provides a closer view, which is a JPEG. Zooming is not an option. However, you are given the option of adding images to a list of favorites. Also, VCU provides information for ordering copies of the photographs.

In RealPlayer, the slideshow displays 10 images, while a voice-over talks about the collection.

Metadata

Each enlarged image has these details attached to it: title, photographer, date, location, subject, contributors, negative number, negative type, image size (in inches), type, format, ordering information, and collection. The photographs with handwritten notes have that field in the metadata also.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this collection is everyone from historical researchers to school children. VCU and the Valentine Richmond History Center want people to access and gain knowledge from this collection.

All the information, aside from the images, is on the same page. This almost guarantees that you cannot get lost or confused while browsing. The VCU Digital Libraries Collections use contentDM which allows the user to adjust their preferences. This was a great idea until I changed a few settings. Either the images did not show up on the page or the page still looked the same. Other than that, this small, simple collection was very well put together.