[WikiEN-l] Wikimedian image restorations exploited on eBay

Sun Sep 20 00:28:40 UTC 2009

I agree from this, and your previous post, that restoring historical images 
can be a difficult process, particularly when the images themselves may have 
originally been pure factual journalism rather than having a polemical 
purpose, although in my experience, that is more allied to the commentary 
attached than the image itself. In the case you cite, processing an image 
may well involve some interpretation of the depiction, and you rightly point 
out some of the pitfalls involved. Absent the intention of the photographer, 
who may not even have considered how his image may have been used (as long 
as he was paid), making assumptions I believe to be unhelpful, and even 
Original Research. All this convinces me that image restoration should be 
limited to correcting obvious physical defects in the source, and not going 
beyond that. I am not in any way criticising those who do this (after all, 
I've done it with my own images, although I do know what I intended when I 
created the image), bur I do believe that restoration should not blur into 
interpretation.</ramble>

Durova wrote:
>> Here's the "after" link for the second example.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lynching2.jpg
>>
>> After all the work was done it was startling to pull back and view at
>> thumbnail.  It's possible to look at the unrestored file and seek
>> visual reminders of "this was long ago"; restoration takes away that
>> comfortable little refuge.
>>
>> I wonder whether it's still possible to identify him.
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the kind words, David.
>>>
>>> With digital restoration, often one encounters elements about the
>>> original that are unknowable.  A couple of examples follow.
>>>
>>> Segregated drinking fountain, North Carolina, 1938:
>>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Segregation_1938.jpg
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Segregation_1938b.jpg
>>>
>>> The child is pushing away from the fountain and rotating on his hip
>>> with one foot raised, turning to get away from the photographer.
>>> Which suggests that the shot was taken very quickly: not much time
>>> to get an ideal composition.
>>>
>>> What was the photographer's intention?  Many Americans of the 1930s
>>> had a view of the subject that would be intolerable today.  Farm
>>> Security Administration photographers were discouraged from
>>> photographing racial issues so the fact that this image exists
>>> raises intriguing possibilities.
>>>
>>> That's a courthouse at upper left.  It stayed in frame while the
>>> crop took out the curb, outbuilding, and power lines.  There are
>>> several ways to explain the reasons for this crop in terms of
>>> overexposure and compositional principles, one of which is the
>>> dynamic effect of diagonal lines.  There's a diagonal from the
>>> courthouse to the segregated fountain sign to the child: cropping
>>> kept that diagonal but moved the center off the child to a midpoint
>>> between the sign and the child, enhancing tension between the two.
>>>
>>> I don't know what John Vachon thought when he took this, but to my
>>> eye this is about the difference between law and justice.  It's
>>> possible that I changed the entire POV of the photograph.
>>>
>>> ----
>>> Early this year when I worked on the Wounded Knee Massacre
>>> restoration (which discovered four human remains and became a minor
>>> news story), it was a pattern of five dark spots which seemed to
>>> follow the contours of the snow that led to the discovery.
>>>
>>> http://durova.blogspot.com/2009/01/discoveries-and-tough-decisions.html
>>>
>>> These finds don't quite happen accidentally.  I browse through
>>> thousands of files looking for ones that might have something
>>> interesting in them.  That original had an unusual composition: why
>>> were there several large bundles in the foreground?  The
>>> bibliographic record is often underdocumented, so subtle cues
>>> within the image itself may be all one ever has to go by.
>>>
>>> Old photographs often have thousands of dust and dirt specks.  So
>>> how does one tell random degradation from meaningful information?
>>> Dust from blood?
>>>
>>> Genuine photographic elements often look slightly different from
>>> print damage, but software plugins aren't trustworthy at telling
>>> the difference. Intelligent decisions often require a knowledge of
>>> historic context.
>>>
>>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lynching.jpg
>>>
>>> Yes, it's a lynching.  His feet are only a few inches above the
>>> forest floor; his shadow nearly meets his foot.  Beneath him
>>> there's also a discoloration.  Is that a stain on the negative or
>>> real part of the scene? Well, it seems to be directly beneath
>>> something dripping from his left shoe.
>>>
>>> There appears to be a pattern of drip stains on the left leg of his
>>> overalls from the ankle to the knee.  Then a similar discoloration
>>> in a circular pattern at his crotch.  Could the elements be related?
>>>
>>> People who were being hanged have been known to lose bladder
>>> control.  Yet I suspect something worse.  Look at the stains on his
>>> shoe again.  That's unusually dark for a urine stain, and it shines
>>> in the sunlight.  Possibly dried blood.  This man may have been
>>> castrated.
>>>
>>> High resolution digitized photos of lynching are hard to find.
>>> This one happened to have the right technical specifications for
>>> restoration; it is--within its gruesome subject--comparatively
>>> understated.  Others show more obvious mutilation, often with a
>>> crowd of smiling vigilantes next to the corpse.  The perpetrators
>>> were hardly ever prosecuted.
>>>
>>> I can't mention this speculation onsite because the circumstances
>>> are unconfirmed.  The man's name and the location are unknown.  The
>>> photograph was taken in 1925.
>>>
>>> ----
>>> It helps to speak from experience when discussing digital
>>> restoration.
>>>
>>>
>>> -Durova
>>> --
>>> http://durova.blogspot.com/
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://durova.blogspot.com/
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