I have spent a lot of time this week on (virtual) meetings on International Standards for Photography. It seems like a world away now but this time last year we were meeting in Washington DC where I was pondering the depiction of photography in world events on a war memorial. This use of photography to document past events and places came to mind this week.
I took a number of images in Washington of things that resonated with me. I also visited some art galleries and some of the impressions came back to me this week as our plans had been to be hosted by a gallery in Quebec. In this instance it was about photography of art.
While we talk about photography as an art form in Washington I was struck by its use to record art. I saw Illustrations using albumen, cyanotype and salted paper from the mid 1880s. This is especially important when the artworks are no longer in existence. A neat illustration by the Florentine Alinari family photographers of an area in Pisa subsequently destroyed by war.
So the thought that came to me was that while we cannot travel to see stuff due to pandemic precautions it could be a lot worse.