Came across PhotoMuse (great name), a terrific site about photography history and research. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be moving forward to completion right now, though the content that is available already is quite fabulous. Photomuse is the combination of collections from George Eastman House (GEH) and one of my favorite galleries and research institutions, the International Center of Photography (ICP) in what appears to be the desire to establish a single (or at least relatively extensive) resource for discovering "photography at work in the world." The site doesn't have too much above that as far as a "mission statement," and though is looks to have been started a few years ago, a lot of the areas still come up as being "under construction."One of the coolest things I found, while clicking around though, was actually on the GEH site, and was under their a collection entitled "Pre-Cinema Project," that features a truly eclectic series of what were sometimes referred to as magic lantern slides, of which, the above image, "CW Briggs The Bottle Imp," is one. Invented after the photograph, lantern slides were the precursor to modern day slides and worked in much the same way. The ability to place photographic images on a transparent film that could then be projected onto a larger screen for an audience to view represented an enormous leap in the technology, and is now considered to be the "grandfather," as it were, of movies, as they were used as tools for both group entertainment and education.
Photomuse has a note that they hope a full launch in early 2006 (we're now, frighteningly, almost halfway through), and that there is still work ongoing in its continued growth, I hope that's true. The end result, should it ever come to fruition would be an historic achievement, with a gold mine of tools, as it were. There is already a good deal of the works of Gordon Parks, Weegee, Gary Winogrand, and many other notables. Both GEH and ICP's archives alone are enough to stir the mind a few times, and the collective braintrust behind the two organizations would surely be a wonder to behold should they pull it off.
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