“Camera obscura: Lietuvos fotografijos istorija“ (Eng. Camera obscura: the history of Lithuanian photography) – that is the name of the forthcoming monograph, written by dr. Margarita Matulytė and dr. Agnė Narušytė that explores the history of Lithuanian photography dating from 1839 to 1945. The title of the book refers to the research object: camera obscura (Lat. dark room), to be more precisely – photography, appearing at the moment when the light flux penetrates into the darkness. In addition it talks about the history of photography and its writing, which could say, also appear out of the darkness, silence and waiting. The writing, which poses a challenging task: to find, to come back, to remember when so much has destroyed, lost, forgotten.

M. Matulytė and A. Narušytė will discuss the writing of the history of Lithuanian photography – which assesses and newly interprets the previous stories, revealing the most significant trends in photography. The evolution of photography is examined in the context of important historical events, highlighting the most prominent personalities. Chronological story telling allows discuss the issues and problems of photography of different historical periods, although sometimes you have to go beyond the chronological limits.

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Dr. Margarita Matulytė. Photo by R. Danisevičius

Dr. Margarita Matulytė – doctor of humanities, photography historian and the photography specialist of the Lithuanian Art Museum. She has been studying Lithuanian photography since 1995. Since 1998 M. Matulytė is a member of The International Council of Museums (ICOM), since 2005 – a member of the Union of Lithuanian Art Photographers. In the period of 1995–2001 she was the head of the Iconography Department of the National Museum of Lithuania. In 2005 M. Matulytė was studying the Italian language and culture for foreigners in University of Perugia (Italy), in 2008 – English language, culture and communication in Oxford International Study Centre. In the period of 2006–2008 she was a lecturer at Vilnius University Faculty of History, during 2006–2007 – a lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities at Vilnius Academy of Arts, since 2007 – a lecturer at the Institute of Journalism at Vilnius University. M. Matulytė has published more than 100 publications in the Lithuanian and foreign press, has compiled more than 20 books and curated more than 10 Lithuanian and international exhibitions. Since 2002 she has been working in the Lithuanian Art Museum as a preserver and researcher of the photography collection, curator of exhibitions.

Agnė Narušytė, PhD. Photo by A. Valužis

Agnė Narušytė, PhD, is an art critic and curator, with a particular interest in contemporary photography and art as well as ideas linking photography, philosophy and psychology. She studied art history at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania), Central European University (Prague) and Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania). Narušytė curated the photographic collection of the Lithuanian Art Museum, also lectured at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and Edinburgh Napier University (UK), edited the foreign culture page of the Lithuanian cultural weekly 7 meno dienos and created programmes on culture for the Lithuanian National Television. In 2008, she published the Lithuanian version of this book, Nuobodulio estetika Lietuvos fotografijoje, based on her PhD thesis, in 2011 – a history of contemporary Lithuanian photography (Lietuvos fotografija: 1990–2010). Currently she is Head of the Art History and Theory Department, Vilnius Academy of Arts.

International conference “Digitisation and photographic memory”

Danutė Mukienė

Photography – a part of documentary heritage. It witnesses the most important events and captures the specific personalities associated with them. Often only from photographs we can restore major events and the role of specific individuals. This is particularly true speaking about the importance of photographs held in our museums. Lithuanian museums have significant and valuable collections of historical and artistic photographs. The largest collections of historical photographs are held by the Lithuanian National Museum, the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, the Šiauliai “Aušra” Museum, the Lithuanian Art Museum, the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, the Kaunas 9th Fort Museum, the Biržai Region Museum “Sėla”, the Panevėžys Local Lore Museum, the Samogitian Museum “Alka”, the Kretinga Museum, the Rokiškis Regional Museum.

There are not many photographs dated the first century of the rise of photography, but they are very significant. This period involves such important historical events as The January Uprising of 1863, the ban of the Lithuanian Press in Latin Characters and its cancellation, the First World War, the Lithuanian national movement and the restoration of Lithuanian Statehood.

For many Lithuanian museums participation in international project of digitization and dissemination of old photographs EuropeanaPhotography was a big impulse and an incentive to structure the information about historic photography stored in museums, as well as to digitize it and to present it to the public in modern and attractive ways.

Starting the project it was planned to digitize and make available 20 thousands of old photographs kept at Lithuanian museums. Later it became clear that the amount can be greater, because some museums, which previously hadn’t planned to participate in the project, started working with Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System and understood the importance of digitization of photographs. Now they are beginning to digitize and publicize old photos, stored in their collection. In the future information about these photographs is going to be seen in the biggest Europe’s cultural heritage portal Europeana.

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Danutė Mukienė is a journalist, museum specialist, book and periodicals editor and publisher. She has graduated from the Vilnius University, the faculty of history, obtained journalist profession. Since 1975 she has been working in press publications. In addition a number of years she has worked as a radio editor in Skuodas’ region radio collaborated in national radio creating shows in Samogitian dialect. In 1991 D. Mukienė founded a publication called “A mon sakaa?” – the newspaper of the Samogitian Cultural Society and the first dialectal newspaper in Lithuania. In the period of 1991–1993 she worked as its editor. In 1993 the newspaper was reorganized into the magazine “Žemaičių žemė”. D. Mukienė edits and publishes it to date. In 1993 she was a deputy director for culture of Department of Culture and Education of Palanga Municipality. During the period of 1996–2004 D. Mukienė was the head of the Information Culture Centre of the Samogitian Cultural Society based in Vilnius. In 2009 she was giving lectures at the Institute of Journalism at Vilnius University. Since 1999 she has been working at the Lithuanian Art Museum. D. Mukienė is the head of the Department of the Lithuanian Art Museum (LAM) Lithuanian Museums’ Centre for Information, Digitisation and LIMIS, where she is responsible for national and international cultural heritage digitization projects. During the period 1998–2013 she has implemented several digital publishing projects. The most important of them are portals “Lietuvos muziejai” (Eng. Museums of Lithuanian), “Senoji lietuvių skulptūra, kryžiai ir koplytėlės” (Eng. Old Lithuanian Sculpture, Crosses and Shrines), “Lietuvos dailės muziejus” (Eng. Lithuanian Art Museum), etc.

International conference “Digitisation and photographic memory”

Prof. dr. Frederik Truyen

The EuropeanaPhotography project, with its unique partnership involving both renowned public heritage institutions and private curators and photo agencies, offers a hitherto unaccessible view on how Europe’s history has been captured through the eye of the photographer. Whether it are wedding pictures, portraits, city scapes, sports, nature or politics, colonialism and war, the manifold dimensions that have shaped todays Europe in the pivotal period of 1839-1939 are expressed in the rich collections that we are about to disclose to the general public through Europeana. Together with the history of Europe and its citizens, a story unfolds on the language of Photography through different techniques such as daguerreotype, calotype, glass negative, etc. which had an impact on how the subject was framed and rendered. In this lecture, we will focus on the importance of the digital reproduction and representation of these images for the preservation of our photographic heritage and the lessons learnt within the consortium.

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Prof. dr. Frederik Truyen is associate professor at the Faculty of Arts, Leuven University (KU Leuven). He publishes on E-Learning, ICT Education, Digital Culture and Epistemology. Head of ICT Services at the Faculty of Arts. In charge of CS Digital, the mediaLab of the Institute for Cultural Studies. He teaches Information Science at the BA and Online Publishing at the MA level. Currently chairman of the ICT council for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University. Fred Truyen is programme director of the MA in Cultural Studies. He is involved in many projects on Open Educational Resources, such as OER-HE, Net-CU and OCW EU, and on projects in digitization of Cultural Heritage, such as IDEM, RICH and EuropeanaPhotography, is a coordinator of the latter one.

International conference “Digitisation and photographic memory”

John Balean

Shortly after the invention of photography, in 1839, press photography was born. Only a few iconic names and images have been embraced by academia but ever since the first press imagery appeared, photographic masterpieces have been published, lost, damaged, destroyed, left anonymously and often completely forgotten. Press photography has a strong sense of narrative and enables us to see how the way we remember things can be distorted or manipulated.

John Balean gives a brief introduction about the origins of Press photography and TopFoto’s involvement in EuropeanaPhotography to help preserve digitally a collection of press photographic memory for future generations.

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John Balean is a photographer and international marketing manager at picture library TopFoto. He graduated from the University of Newcastle (Australia) with a bachelor of Arts in the Visual Arts and a major in Photography. J. Balean is TopFoto coordinator for the EuropeanaPhotography project. He has given lectures and written about the picture industry and is the Consultant Researcher to the Press Photo History Project. John has been an editor of the 2008–2009 CEPIC (Coordination of European Picture Agencies Stock, Press and Heritage), from 2013 he is an elected member of the Committee of CEPIC. From 2012 he is an elected member of the Executive Committee of BAPLA (British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies). When time allows he creates daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography, using a vintage Gandolfi 5×7 plate camera.

International conference “Digitisation and photographic memory”

Anna Grusková

Theatre is a social phenomenon that especially from the second half of the 19th century till (at least) the outbreak of the WWI touched all layers of European society. Even newspapers often informed about theatre events on front pages. To make amateur theatre was one of the most popular way how to spend leisure time. Social life and its urban celebrations, manifestations, parades etc. had a strong theatrical character – fixed scenario, set design, costumes, “actors” and auditorium etc. Theatrical features could be easily recognized in rural celebrations, like folklore ceremonies and rites. We could say that theatre was deeply rooted in everyday life. How is it reflected in photography at that time?

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Anna Grusková is the Czech-Slovak theatre scientist, theatre, film and radio author and director. She was graduated from Theatre and Film Studies at Charles University in Prague. She initiated and led many domestic and international projects with both artistic and social dimension (America, Brides / Brides, Sarcophagi and ATMs), on others she participated as an author (Donaudrama, Chance ’89). Her drama Rabbi Woman about the fate of the Bratislava Jewish activist Gisi Fleischmann was staged in Slovak National Theatre and the Theatre Reon in Bologna. Among others, she also directed theatre and film installation Danube Drama or Filthy coffee, cheap cigarettes, documentary film Rabbi Woman etc. She is employed by the Divadelný ústav under the Theatre Institute, lives in Bratislava and enjoys cycling.

International conference “Digitisation and photographic memory”

Antonella Fresa

In recent years Europeana and other digital cultural resources and collections have received large-scale investment from the European Commission and Member States – and some private investment as well – and it is now necessary to move to the exploitation phase.

The return on this investment, which has mostly taken the shape of public funding initiatives, needs to be assessed against the impact delivered to society in terms both of the use of Europeana by the general public, and in terms of its use by economic actors – most particularly the creative industries.

The potential impact of Europeana’s digital cultural assets has not yet been fully realised and needs stronger instruments to support its delivery.

The main issues:

– Increasing the exploitation of the digital cultural content generated through the digitisation campaigns;

– The metadata services are key elements for the content and the Creative Industry; and the new CC0 licences for Europeana content open new opportunities;

– The public domain, which is a tremendously rich resource and offers a great deal of value for society at large, is currently underexploited and there a number of barriers to re-use of this material.

The lecture aims to explore these issues, discuss specific characteristics of Creative Industries sector and propose elements of best practice.

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Antonella Fresa is ICT expert, General Manager and Administrator of Promoter, ICT research and innovation company established in Pisa (Italy). She has graduated in Computer Science at the University of Turin. Antonella has been working as a system engineer, manager, researcher, policy advisor for the High Technology Network and free-lance consultant for major ICT and online services. Between 1999 and 2002 she was a Project Officer at the European Commission, between 2002 and 2012 – an advisor of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. She has more than 15 years of work experience in European cooperation projects and policy development frameworks. She’s currently Technical Coordinator of EC projects of digital content: DCH-RP, EuropeanaPhotography, Linked Heritage, DC-NET ERA-NET, MINERVA series and MICHAEL series. Antonella has been a member of various ICT, cultural heritages organisations and committees. In her free time she enjoys being at countryside and riding a horse.

International conference “Digitisation and photographic memory”