Images and Archives: Digital Collections in the Time of Corona
Special Session 3-1, 2020 Annual Meeting
On Monday, October 12 at 10:00 am
Special Session Description
The global impact of covid-19 has forced all members of the Middle East Studies Association to
reconfigure our lives in profound ways. With travel restrictions in place, and institutions
transitioning to remote learning or operating at reduced capacity, connecting archival resources
with researchers and educators is an acute challenge at this moment.
This panel is here to help. Through four presentations, it offers a window into the dynamic
digital archives and virtual exhibitions coming out of some of the top Middle Eastern
photographic collections across the world. From newly digitized albums in historic collections,
to the expansion and transformation of projects designed for digital platforms, to the creation of
new crowd-sourced databases, this panel offers an archival tour de force for the socially
distanced scholar.
“Images and Archives: Digital Collections in the Time of Corona” features presentations from
Frances Terpak, Curator and Head of Photographs at the Getty Research Institute;
Shamoon Zamir, founder and director of Akkasah at New York University, Abu Dhabi;
Joanne Bloom, Photographic Resources Librarian at the Fine Arts Library, Harvard University;
and
Beeta Baghoolizadeh, founder, and Mira Schwerda, digital curator, of the Ajam Digital Archive.
This panel will be useful for scholars with specialties across the region—from North Africa to
Central Asia—and to educators looking for resources to use in distance-learning classrooms.
Ranging from addressing the connections between colonialism and visual culture to new
initiatives to make collections widely accessible and contextually framed in multiple languages,
this panel will foster conversations about the past, present, and future of photographic visual
culture of the Middle East.
The Ajam Digital Archive was established in 2015 to serve as a unique crowd-sourced archive of
modern social life in the broadly Persianate world. Focusing on 20th century family collections,
this digital archive provides a space for sharing scarce documents and audiovisual artifacts
usually overlooked by state archives. This talk will focus on introducing the archive and our
collections, as well as our future curatorial plans. Currently, the Ajam Archive is a digital home
to over 500 items, ranging from visual, textual, and material artifacts, that shed light on history
from below. With collections including personal family papers from an Armenian immigrant
family to the US at the end of the 19th century, to Theresa Howard Carter’s personal papers from
her trips to Iran in the mid 20thcentury, and audio recordings of Muharram gatherings in the
1970s, the archive has a wide variety of items that challenge popular historical narratives and
provide researchers with otherwise scarce sources for research. The Archive is currently working
towards reconfiguring its website to provide viewers with the best resources and will be
announcing plans for digital exhibits to further make these materials more widely accessible for
research.
The Ajam Digital Archive was established in 2015 to serve as a unique crowd-sourced archive of
modern social life in the broadly Persianate world. Focusing on 20th century family collections,
this digital archive provides a space for sharing scarce documents and audiovisual artifacts
usually overlooked by state archives. This talk will focus on introducing the archive and our
collections, as well as our future curatorial plans. Currently, the Ajam Archive is a digital home
to over 500 items, ranging from visual, textual, and material artifacts, that shed light on history
from below. With collections including personal family papers from an Armenian immigrant
family to the US at the end of the 19th century, to Theresa Howard Carter’s personal papers from
her trips to Iran in the mid 20thcentury, and audio recordings of Muharram gatherings in the
1970s, the archive has a wide variety of items that challenge popular historical narratives and
provide researchers with otherwise scarce sources for research. The Archive is currently working
towards reconfiguring its website to provide viewers with the best resources and will be
announcing
This talk will focus on original photographic material related to the Middle East held by Harvard
University and available digitally. While some of the digital resources such as HOLLIS Images
and Harvard Digital Collections are Harvard produced others, such as Archnet, include Harvard
holdings not yet available on Harvard sites. Two such collections are the K.A.C. Creswell
photographs held by the Fine Arts Library and the Peggy Crawford collection of color slides of
Yemen. Harvard digital resources for non-photographic material, for example the Harvard
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Islamic Heritage Project, will be touched upon as will important international digital resources
for photographic material related to the Middle East like the Aramco World Image Archive.
Colonialism’s Digital Footprints: From Algiers to Palmyra: Among the Special Collections at the
Getty Research Institute (GRI), photographs hold a distinctive position, numbering well over
1,000,000 items onsite; they constitute one of the largest and most diverse holdings of rare
photographs in the world. The GRI’s collections chart the development of photography and the
worldwide diffusion of the medium. Global in scope with extensive representation from North
Africa and the Middle East, these collections offer deep insight into the history and complexity
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of colonialism. On one level, such collections—most of which date from the 19th century—
allow scholars and students to experience firsthand how the camera visually reinforced racist
stereotypes and the aspirations and objectives of colonial conquest, even when those images
were produced by indigenous photographers. On another level, these same collections help
scholars deconstruct the imperial discourse and understand how history has both informed
today’s international politics and influenced societal norms. Illustrating the Getty Research
Institute’s digital resources, this talk will highlight a variety of online resources, including studio
portraits made in 19th-century Algiers, which capture this city’s collective ethnic identity, or the
earliest photographs taken in Palmyra, which are featured and contextualized in the online
exhibition, The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra:
http://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/palmyra/
Established in 2015, Akkasah is an archive of Middle Eastern and North African
photography at New York University. It seeks to preserve the photographic histories of the
region and to support scholarly research into these histories. At present Akkasah's collections
range across the region, with substantial collections from Egypt and Turkey. The visual histories
of the UAE are of particular interest to the center and Akkasah's also commissions new
documentary work focused on the UAE. As the center moves into its next phase of development,
it hopes to build on its program of conferences and workshops, to develop a book series, and to
explore new models of collecting and archiving with both regional and international partners.
The paper will present an introduction to the work of Akkasah.
