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"Making History a Slightly Profitable Thing": The Bettmann Archive and the Commodification of Images
Ist Teil von
Visual resources, 2014-09, Vol.30 (3), p.222-238
Ort / Verlag
Abingdon: Routledge
Erscheinungsjahr
2014
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Emerging in the beginning of the twentieth century to "satisfy the picture-hunger of modern man" (quoting Jan Tschichold, New Typography: A Handbook for Modern Designers, 1995 [1928]), photo agencies and commercial picture libraries have held a major role in transforming images into commodities. With mass production and spurred by heightened competition, these companies adapted ever-more efficient methods of storage, indexing, administration, and distribution. This article traces the concept of the Bettmann Archive, established by the German historian, art historian, and librarian Otto Bettmann (1903-1995), during the early 1930s. Bettmann's application of his bibliographical skills to pictures and his efforts to create a pre-electronic visual database can be regarded as quite advanced for its time, especially in the commercial context. In particular, I argue that the reduction to keywords and the de-contextualization of images is an essential condition for their commodification.