Nicholas Natanson from the National Archives' Still Picture archival unit
Nicholas Natanson in the Still Picture Stack area (far left)
Over the past three decades, there has been a factor of "the more things change, the more they stay the same" at work in the National Archives Still Picture reference world. Amid tremendous changes in the volume of researcher interest in our holdings, changes in pictorial deployments and interpretive paradigms, changes in the technology of pictorial access, reproduction, and dissemination, two major continuities have endured . . .
1) The vast majority of researchers spend the vast majority of their time with a relatively narrow slice of Still Picture photo and poster holdings (e.g., World War II-era military files, Mathew Brady-related Civil War files, U.S. Information Agency Master File, New York Times-Paris Bureau photo-morgue, Ansel Adams' National Park Service series, Dorothea Lange's War Relocation Authority work, etc.); and , in this regard, Richard Schneider's efforts---through exhibits, publications, and conferences--to bring attention to one of the frequently overlooked components of our holdings, panoramic photographs, represents the sort of deeper penetration of the Still Picture world that is all too rare.
2) The vast majority of our research inquiries, whether coming from on-site visitors or off-site correspondents (letters, FAX's, e-mails), are subject-oriented---requests for images of particular personalities, places, events, buiildings, facilities, movements, issues---rather than provenance-oriented.
Our holdings, encompassing more than 9 million photographic and photo-mechanical images, are organized not by subject but by the federal government agency that generated, acquired, gathered, maintained the images (each agency, or major component thereof, corresponding to a Record Group), and thereunder by series (groups of images, from the same office, sharing a common arrangement pattern, whether chronological, geographical, subject-numeric-classified, alphabetical by subject, or some other scheme). For reasons of principle as well as practicality, our basic descriptive activity is on the series level rather than the item level; consequently, the perennial challenge is to help researchers match up their subject-based requests with our Record Group-series structure---by no means an easy process, especially when the requests take researchers, and staff, beyond the minority of series that came here with accompanying, agency-generated card indexes.
How to forge the nexus between subject-based research and provenance-based image organization?
We use a variety of mechanisms: the irreplaceable knowledge, experience, and instincts of our reference staff; assorted hard-copy finding aids, select lists, and publications that help us avoid having to start from scratch in responding to some of the more common, or more topical, queries; and, over the past decade, an Internet-accessible database containing our more than 3500 series-level descriptions, along with item-level entries and digital reproductions of 40,000 selected images from our holdings, as well as series and item-level entries from units throughout the National Archives system. Now known as the Archival Research Catalogue (ARC), the database allows for a variety of searching options, including free-text searching of all fields of all descriptions---and, in the process, can, at the very least, give picture researchers some initial clues of where, in the vast network of Record Groups and series, particular images are likely to be found.
Once researchers have pinned down promising series, they can consult further resources (box and folder lists) available in the Research Room. And once they have requested boxes and found images of interest, they can pursue a variety of reproduction options, including on-site work with their own scanners, digital cameras, or conventional cameras; use of the Kodak Picture-Maker unit and more traditional electrostatic copying machines in our Research Room; or ordering of higher-quality reproductions through vendors, who make use of original prints, negatives, and slides for reproduction work, or, in the case of most of our panoramas, use National Archives Photo Lab-generated copy negatives (8" X 10") of the original panoramas.
(The 40,000 items from our holdings that appear as digital images in ARC represent the fruits of a one-time, late-1990's project funded with a specific appropriation from Congress. These selections tend to be of the "best hits" sort, drawn from some of our most frequently-requested series. We do not have the budget for the sort of ongoing digitizing of photos for Web access that, for example, the Library of Congress has been pursuing---and so, given that panoramic photos have not tended to be considered high-interest items, panoramas were not among the items selected for individual digitizing and presentation on the National Archives Web site. Should the resource situation change, and further rounds of digitizing are ever pursued here, then perhaps some examples of our panorama holdings might be considered at some point.)
By providing access to series descriptions, ARC can be used as a reasonably efficient entry way to understanding the nature and extent of our panoramic holdings. For example, if one performs an ARC "Advanced Search" using the term "panoramic" along with the "series" and "Still Picture unit" search filters, one gets 59 hits---including series devoted entirely to panoramic photographs, and mixed-format series whose descriptions mention panoramic content. While this is not an absolutely comprehensive accounting of our panoramas (in some cases, panoramic content does not happen to be mentioned in the description for a very large, mixed-format series), it is at least a start.
Scattered as they are through multiple Record Groups and series, our panoramic holdings ultimately encompass upwards of 4,500 images. . . ranging from "serial" albumen panoramas of the Civil War era, to genuine panoramas from the golden era of the Cirkut camera in the first two decades of the 20th Century, to post-World War I and New Deal era panoramas, to scattered panoramas from more recent decades; from relatively small-scale panoramas (e.g., 5" X 13") to the 8" X 50"-80" or 10" X 50"-80" views so common during the World War I era, to some products as long as 148". The bulk of the panoramas in National Archives Sitill Picture holdings are prints without corresponding negatives, although there is one quantitatively and qualitatively significant cluster here of Forest Service-generated panoramic negatives without corresponding prints.
The largest concentration of our panoramas are those documenting U.S. Army camps, bases, facilities, and units, and Army-supporting industrial sites, during and immediately after World War I: images found in several panorama-oriented series in Record Group 165 (Army General Staff), Record Group 92 (Quartermaster General), Record Groups 94 and 407 (Adjutant General), and Record Group 156 (Army Ordnance).
These holdings are the direct product of a significant convergence of developments in camera technology, political history, and military organization: the increasing popularity of the Cirkut camera; the onset of U.S. involvement in World War I and the unprecedented concentration of thousands of servicemen in particular Army locations, creating a "captive audience" and a natural market for potential sales of any given panoramic view to all the members of a unit or all the residents of a camp or base; and the Army's interest in photographic documentation of its mobilization, training, housing, production infrastructure. There was something of a quid pro quo arrangement between the War Department, on the one hand, and commercial panoramic photographers, on the other: commercial photographers gained Army permission to enter camps (and were also subject to Army censors) and pursued their potentially lucrative trade, while the Army often ended up with copies of the photographers' products, under authorities such as Change in Army Regulation No. 59 (August 10, 1917): "The General Staff Corps is charged with photographic work and records pertaining to the military history of campaigns and of field operations in general, and for this purpose will make use of any commands, such as Engineer or Signal Corps photographers, or will employ official civilian photographers therefore, as circumstances may warrant."
Among the commercial photographers operating in wartime camps was Eugene Goldbeck, the San Antonio-based panoramic master; Goldbeck would later (1930-1932) carry out an even more ambitious survey of Army units and officers, Army Area by Army Area---resulting in a set of panoramas bound in formal presentation albums, some of the most physically impressive specimens in National Archives panorama holdings. Another intriguing sub-set of the Army-gathered panoramas are views, credited to the Washington, D.C.-headquartered Frederick Schutz Studio, showing devastated towns and landscapes in France and Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War I.
Among other significant panorama clusters in Still Picture holdings are: views of World War I-era Naval shipyards, bases, and training camps---a less extensive Navy version (Record Groups 24 and 32) of the aforementioned Army record; some 850 original negatives taken by Albert Arnst and other Forest Service photographers in the early 1930's, using the recently-developed Osborne panoramic camera (invented by Forest Service staffer W.B. Osborne, who is credited for "instruction" in some of the Forest Service captions), and documenting look-out points, peaks, mountains, rock formations, lakes, and other features in national forests in Oregon, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia (Record Group 95); views, taken by the American Photo Company of Havana, Cuba, showing the Army Corps of Engineers-directed raising of the wreck of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor, 1911 (Record Group 77); views of Western geological formations by Willis Lee and other U.S. Geological Survey expedition leaders in the 1920's and 1930's---the panoramas often folded up and enclosed with standard-format images in the USGS albums (Record Group 57); views, often including striking landscape vistas, of Alaska railroad development, gathered by the Alaska Engineering Commission in the 1910's (Record Group 126); views of 1900's-1910's Panama Canal construction and operations, including an entry from Goldbeck's National Photo News Service (Record Group 185); views of 1900's-1910's Indian school facilities and military-style parades in Arizona and elsewhere, gathered under Bureau of Indian Affairs auspices (Record Group 75); views of Civilian Conservation Corps camps, projects, and residents in assorted Midwestern and Western locales, 1930's (Record Group 35); views of 1920's Veterans Administration hospital construction projects, including a panorama by the well-known black photographer based in Tuskegee, Alabama, C.M. Baty (Record Group 121); and a 20th Century "serial" panorama experiment by the noted photographer and filmmaker Todd Webb--- a "cityscape" view of New York's Sixth Avenue, displayed in the U.S. Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels International Exposition (Record Group 59).
The significance of our panorama holdings?
In overall management terms, the National Archives experience with panoramas provides a case study in how to gain physical and intellectual control over what was, a couple decades ago, a less-than-accessible aggregation . . . the preparation, in the early 1990's, of already-flattened panoramas (then a minority of our panorama holdings) for the 1994 Archives I-to-Archives II move (specially-designed oversize boxes that we still use for storage and transport to the Research Room); the systematic treatment of several thousand rolled-up panoramas after they had arrived at Archives II (flattening, placement in polyester sleeves---and, in some cases, addition of backing supports---and placement of sleeved panoramic prints in map case drawers in our temperature (65-degrees) and humidity (35%) controlled main stack area; placement of panoramas too long for the map case drawers in specially-ordered pop-up storage units atop the map cases, or, in some extreme cases, wrapped around revolvable cores within boxes; placement of the Forest Service acetate-based panoramic negatives in proper cold storage (35-degrees temperature, 35% humidity) in our Cold Vault; upgrading of series descriptions to account for panoramic content, and, in the case of the largest of the Army-gathered panorama series, development of an item list---sorted by state or country, by camp, and by unit number---for the Research Room; creation of a "panorama sampler," with 8" X 10" reference print copies of selected items, for the Research Room; and the development of at least a partial file of 8" X 10" copy negatives for ongoing panorama reproduction purposes.
Just as importantly, in content terms, our panoramic holdings suggest the tremendous range of commercial panorama producers across the country---not just the well-known, major players in the field (e.g., Goldbeck in San Antonio, Schutz and Rell Clements in Washington, D.C., Almeron Newman in Deming, New Mexico, the Kaufmann and Fabry Studio in Chicago, the Haines Photo Company of Conneaut, Ohio, and the Miller Studios of Cleveland, Ohio and Augusta, Georgia), but more obscure photographic operations, from Duce and McClymonds of Rockford, Illinois, to O.W. Holt of Manhattan, Kansas, to Robb and Cornwell of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to B.F. Hockenberry of Duncannon, Pennsylvania.
Also importantly, our panoramas can be used to provide further perspective on subjects also covered in standard-format photographs in our holdings. For example, when one examines the aforementioned panoramas of the raising of the wreck of the U.S.S. Maine, and when one then looks through the many smaller-format views of the same operation gathered by the Corps of Engineers for its official report to Congress, one recognizes the capacity of the panoramas to capture the monumental nature---literal and symbolic---of the event. When one looks at the aforementioned Schutz views of the devastation wrought by World War I, and when one then looks through the thousands of smaller views taken, sector by sector, for the Army's "Griffin Group" project (under the direction of Major T.H. Griffin), one recognizes the unique emotional power of the panoramic views. When one looks through the Army-gathered panormas showing the interior of a Liggett-Myers tobacco processing plant in St. Louis, and when one then looks through standard-format views, from our U.S. Department of Agriculture holdings, of tobacco processing, one recognizes that the panoramas convey---much more clearly---the racially-segmented nature of the tobacco processing work environment. Similarly, the panoramic group portraits of Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees convey, much more graphically than the many standard-format CCC images in our holidngs, the decidedly segregated nature of the CCC world. And, with the unit orientation of so many of those World War I-era Army panoramas, the large views become an effective complement not only to our many standard-format views of World War I Army operations, but to the unit narrative histories---with their rich possibilities for genealogical as well as military history researchers--available among Army textual holdings elsewhere in this building.
In short, our panorama holdings should be approached not only as technical achievements, but as potential contributors---in conjunction with other visual and textual records at the National Archives---in the quest of that ever-elusive goal: historical understanding.
