In The Seventh Year

IN THE SEVENTH YEAR

editor's report on George Eastman House

As museums go seven years is hardly noticeable, yet Rochester's George Eastman House, now well into its seventh year, is distinguished by the largest collection of photographic equipment, apparatus, photographs and films in the world. It is also the repository, as it should be, of all the material, A to Z, pertaining to George Eastman in whose mansion the museum is housed. A large collection, however, does not automatically assure leadership. How it is put to work determines that. How a museum keeps is collection alive, mines its deposits, determines its value to the public. To the credit of George Eastman House it can be said that it is no attic type storage barn but well on its way towards the dynamism held in esteem by the most advanced of contemporary museums.

Any museum has a serious responsibility to its own community. This Eastman House discharges with vigor, imagination, and insight. On the other hand the museum’s collection, by the very nature of its size and scope, imposes a still larger responsibility on this museum. It is beginning to have a duty towards the world outside of Rochester. And that duty is assuming proportions equal to the local ones and may in a few years outweigh them.

So what is George Eastman House, Museum of Photography ? What does it mean to the photographers of today. What does it mean to the historian, to the student? What does it mean to the public that wants to learn how to get the most out of looking at photographs and films ? What does it mean to the man who wants to know how this process, medium, industry, this art-science came so persistently to permeate our daily lives? The answers to these questions are still largely in the future because the museum so far has been preoccupied with fundamentals—altering a house, adding a theatre and film storage vault, building up a collection, installing permanent exhibits, making the 9/10ths of the iceberg under water available to specialists and the research program of its staff. On the score of its fundamental obligation to the community it serves variously and well and has from the beginning. The museum has moved fast, for the first stage in the life history of museums seems finished or nearly so. One gage is the fact that a furious collection activity has already slowed down to a normal aquisitorial pace. To the larger audience, however, it is untried, unpredictable —in fact, except to a handful of specialists, largely unknown.

Above all it is a museum of photography. This is a large policy, one that deliberately exceeds the "company museum” as the Atlantic exceeds the Great Lakes. To this end it has the cooperation of all manufacturers. All of photography, then, is its concern: movie as well as still, black and white as well as color—equipment, processes, as well as principles and theory both scientific and esthetic—with people in photography, the scientists, the manufacturing innovators, as well as with the photographers. Hence its permanent exhibits are extensive and its temporary ones broad in scope. (It takes 6 to 8 hours to see everything and read all the attached labels.) The permanent exhibits fall into five classes. (1) The historical development. This is displayed in a setting of principle, equipment and the kind of photograph that resulted from each advance. (2) The basic principles of photography. This is explained for the layman, and for children ; though in some instances, such as the classic experiments of Hurter and Driffield on sensitometry, for science-wise members of the public. In this class the "push-button” exhibit is fully exploited. (Children love the flashing lights even if the explanations are over their heads.) (3) The uses of photography in today’s world. Here are examples of its use in TV, magazines, newspapers, medicine, industry, and the recent innovation of micro-filing systems. (4) Masterpieces from the collection. These are the photographs whose place in photography is due to their esthetic value. Here is a roster of the great in photograph making: Hill and Adamson, Southworth and Hawes, Julia Margaret Cameron, Emerson, Stieglitz, Man Ray, Steichen, Atget, Strand, Weston, Adams to name several. In accordance with usual museum practice they are represented by their originals ! Here also people whose names have been lost are rescued and their exquisite pictures brought to modern attention. (5) The Life of George Eastman. Pictures, documents, rooms of his mansion with some of its original furniture and old master paintings are preserved. The house in which he was born was moved to the grounds in 1954.

The changing exhibits fall into three classes ; movies, still photographs and the occasional special exhibit of a process or equipment for a local or national technical organization such as the American Optical Society. The movie division of the museum has made the most spectacular advances, accounting for the lion’s share of the local attendance as well as a healthy portion of the museum’s international prestige. Locally it provides several programs based on themes by which comparative study can be made of films by the public. It does a constant job of public education (both for school children and adults) on what to learn from movies. A year-long seminar is held for the ardent film fan, obviously hardened if he emerges from two versions of "Crime and Punishment” in a single evening still asking for more. Students of film regularly travel long distances to have movies "screened” which are pertinent to their investigations. Study by intensely interested persons, both staff and national or international, is the main purpose of the activities of the film division—collection, preservation, cataloging and looking at. This purpose makes it possible for producers all over the world to make films available to Eastman House they cannot otherwise release.

The Dryden Theatre where the old movies are shown to the public and the study collection screened by students was built by George Dryden and his wife in memory of Mr. Eastman. This theatre is also used by national organizations such as the National Press Photographers Association for special conferences. The membership of these conferences are invariably pleased at the wealth of material in the permanent exhibits to which they are thus introduced.

The changing photographic print exhibits vary widely. They include oneman shows of arrived artists (historical or contemporary) lesser known ones and new. Group shows are infrequent but drawn from Europe as well as America. Movie stills from the Huff Collection have been displayed around special themes. "Idea Shows’’ constitute the major productions. In these photographs selected from the entire collection (and sometimes borrowed elsewhere) are used to explain and expand a concept. For instance, one such show traced man’s pictorial conquest of time—from 15th century painting to its logical conclusion in the movies.

Eastman House also serves in the nature of a "photo-center” in its own community—and to a very small extent to photographers all over the country who come in person or send their photographs for some kind of evaluation. A photocenter is a kind of advisory and educational service aimed at aspiring photographers, and to a limited extent arrived ones. It includes the guidance services of a staff who are in a position to see photography as a whole. Hence they can estimate a photographer’s achievement in a given field, or suggest a field for further work. Perhaps the most important aspect is the staff’s obvious dedication to photography. This in itself often provides confirmation of a photographer’s own ideas, or encouragement to bolster the youngster’s first encounter with the fact that photography is hard work. The photo-center idea was recently augmented with classes, seminars, and public lectures. Classes in the history of photography were given as part of the academic curriculum of the University of Rochester ; seminars in the creative aspects of portraiture, photo-journalism, and the camera used as an art medium were attended by Rochester Institute of Technology students; lectures on the elements of style in photography ("How to Make Photographs Talk”) were given for camera club members.

Closely linked to its role of photo-center is the museum’s role of "little gallery.” It gives the newcomer, the practicing photographer their one-man shows, often their first, which are essential to their growth as artists—this is a bit different than gratifying egos. As the same time the public is given the opportunity to see what the current aspirants are doing. Such display is treated as encouragement—leading to proof of arrival. Eastman House has a separate section set aside for such exhibitions. This "Young Photographer’s Gallery,” as it is called, serves local photographers as well as those who send in pictures for appraisal and criticism.

As a prestige gallery the museum is growing in stature if for no other reason than, as prestige museums normally do, it gives one-man exhibitions of internationally known photographers, retrospective and otherwise, on a large enough scale for the individual to be fully represented. This is something that has not been available in New York City for nearly ten years. But there are other reasons and the taste and judgment of the curatorial department is the fastest growing factor in sight.

This outline, kept brief to give a bird’s eye view, indicates little of the richness of the museum—which has to be seen to be believed. Delved into to be understood. And with a staff anxious over present shortcomings and full of plans for improvement, the future promises even better.

The dilemma of Eastman House, however, is its distance from any metropolitan center. Is this a liability or an asset? Does a local audience necessarily limit the excellence of an educational program ? Does its relatively small attendance limit its prestige as a gallery? Or does it offer, situated as it is away from the large, distracting, demanding city the quiet and seclusion, the very atmosphere in which calculated thinking and growing discernment best thrives ? Obviously something of both.

How Eastman House handles this problem of isolation will have much to do with its usefulness to photography on a national and international scale.

Its treasures are, so far, available only to those that can visit the house in person. "Neighbors” who live close enough are the ones who stand to benefit by the long range educational programs embodied in the changing of exhibits, both movie and print. They are about the only ones who can regularly make use of the study material, photographs, negatives, reference publications. Eight hours distant by car or train, or three by plane (portal to portal) from New York City keeps many away who need it most. Hundreds of young photographers who are sadly lacking in even the slightest historical perspective for their art or craft never get to it. Potential students of photographic history never realize the possibilities of the field. Of the men and women of taste and discernment, the very ones who need to discover photography’s great images and see for themselves the beauty and excitement of original prints, too few make the trip. The exceptions are picture editors, art editors, museum heads, picture agency representatives, various important officials who visit the museum occasionally and the rest of the time run up astronomical telephone bills.

In a city of around 300,000 the audience is small. Should the exhibits and programs be adjusted to the local status of photographic knowledge ? The neighbors include laymen, school children of all ages, general employees in the photographic industry as well as its ranking scientists—the latter give freely of their technical knowledge to the staff. The audience also includes the handful of photography students at Rochester Institute of Technology and the University. It is mainly towards these that the museum conducts its photo-center and little gallery activities. So far, these and the few private students of staff members are the ones that keep the study material busy. Such an audience, variegated as it is, spurs the staff on to its best efforts and keeps the quality of the exhibits and the programs climbing. They are becoming definitive. And as fast as they become contributions to the history of photography, its esthetics, or its creative endeavors, they need to be made available to a wider audience. The creative group around San Francisco, for instance is 3,000 miles and 300 dollars away.

Outgoing devices of various kinds are well established. The traveling rental exhibit is one such extension of the museum. On this score a few staff prepared exhibits have been toured by the American Federation of Art, with considerable success. Starting in the fall of 1956 the museum will introduce a program of its own rental shows. This program is planned to include two major exhibits, one on the history of photography pictorially explained for the layman, the other on what is offered the man who would use photography as an art medium. Publication is another extension of the museum—an even more important one because it extends the results of curatorial research, staff designing for public use, photography at work for an even larger number of people. Furthermore the book or article is permanent where the exhibition is not. The present publication IMAGE started with four pages and grew to eight. It has generally kept to a happy balance of uncovering forgotten pioneers, brief popularized articles on technical subjects, short biographies, reviews of the temporary shows in its galleries, cinema notes, examples of equipment in the collection and book reviews. When January of 1956 rolls around the format of the publication will be changed. It will go on a subscription basis (heretofore free to a mailing list). To the present editorial content it hopes to add definitive articles, filmographies and an index to the collections.

It is rather soon for Eastman Flouse to expect books based on research done in its collection, or using examples from the visual material it contains. There have been many instances where research help has been provided for writers, however, as well as illustrations ; notably in the various articles that appeared last year on the life of George Eastman. Fortunately two staff written books have been recently accepted for publication by commercial publishers, one of which will use many reproductions of photographs from the collection.

In conclusion we can say that George Eastman House seems to be entering another stage in its life history. One that aims to make the most of its collection, the personalities of its staff and its distance from a large city. It is not the first isolated museum that has had leadership thrust upon it by its holdings. And like them, without relaxing its community service in the least, is beginning to offer the scholars, the researchers, the students, both as staff members and as guests, the atmosphere and material by which to produce the exhibits, articles, and books—the extensions if you will—by which Eastman House can fulfill its national and international destiny.