Middle East Photograph Archive

Middle East Photograph Archive

Selection Decisions
The images in this site are from the collection of the Middle East department of the University of Chicago Library (Joseph Regenstein Library at University of Chicago). The images are all copyrighted by the Library. The images are all antique photographs that are of historical importance both as a record of the art of photography and as a record of the native Islamic architecture and daily life of the Middle East in the second half of the nineteenth century. The collection is mainly architectural photographs.

Metadata
The metadata for the collection is quite specific. A quote from the "About the Web Site" page lists all but one of the metadata listed accompanying each of the images; the omission is the location of the image, which must be present since the collection is organized by country and city/locale.
"With each photograph is a description which provides the following information:

• photographer
• date of production
• identifying inscriptions found on the negative or positive and/or a brief description of the image
• photographic process
• mounted/unmounted
• size (inches)
• acquisition number (the year of acquisition follows the hyphen)"

There is no alt text for the images but there is information on how many images are in a specific category and how many of those images are color images. There is no way to resort the images or categories and category labels can sometimes be vague since just the location is listed and there is no notation at the category level of whether the images are images of architecture or people.

Object Characteristics
The images are offered in two formats: a thumbnail GIF image with a maximum of 150 px for any one dimension, and a larger image that's approximately 500 px for the largest dimension. All are at a relatively low resolution of 72 dpi, suitable only for viewing on the Web. Presumably that is to facilitate viewing on the Web while preventing print publication. That choice detracts somewhat from the usefullness of the photographs for historical research on the Web since it's difficult to see the detail which is probably present in at least some of the original photographs which were probably shot with the large format cameras prevelant at that time.

Intended Audience

The primary intended audience is probably people interested in research on the Islamic architecture of the Middle East, photography, and/or social history of the Middle East during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The collection is probably also for use by people who have a casual interest in those subjects or the Middle East in general.