Keywords: photography, data analysis, archives
Abstract:
In 1862 the Fine Arts Copyright Act was passed into law in the United Kingdom. Previous copyright legislation had protected books, engravings and certain works of art, but this Act for the first time conferred copyright protection on three specific categories: paintings, drawings, and photographs. The medium of photography was in in its infancy in the 1860s so its inclusion in the Act was controversial and ground-breaking. Between 1862 and 1912, photographers sent copies of their work to the Stationers’ Company to be registered for copyright protection and these records are now held at The National Archives, offering an incredible insight into the early days of photography.
This paper seeks to examine the state of the British photographic industry and its initial response to the 1862 Act, through digital analysis of the catalogue data for this collection of copyright records (made possible through volunteer-led cataloguing of the collection). While this collection has been catalogued by volunteers, making digital analysis possible, the catalogue data is limited to simple text-based fields presenting obstacles for this analysis. Using Python and libraries including Pandas (for data analysis) and spaCy (for natural language processing) to clean, analyse and visualise the data, I intend to offer statistical insights on the quantities and types of photographs that were registered and the people who registered them. This will make it possible to observe artistic and commercial trends and professional connections between photographers and other actors in the photographic industry at the time. Through this exploration, this paper also seeks to demonstrate the research potential of using methods of digital analysis to extract new insights from existing archival catalogue data, particularly flawed data which has previously been considered less suitable for digital analysis.