Zprávy památkové péče, 2016 (vol. 76), issue 1

Editorial

Valburga Vavřinová

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):1  

Photographic collections and what to do with them next

Ladislav Bezděk

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):3-8  

The article analyzes in detail the structure, condition, quantity and eventual market value of historical photographic works administered by the National Heritage Institute in its mobiliary and collections. It points out the insufficient care of these valuable documents and warns of the irreplaceable losses that might occur unless the issue is soon resolved of the professional preservation of photographic collections and expeditious digitization as conversions into their electronic visual equivalents, i.e. exact digital duplicates. Attention is focused on three groups of the most vulnerable or most difficult to digitize originals, and the current complicated...

Photographic estate of the nobility preserved in Slovak institutions, taking into account the fund of Betliar castle. Experiences in seeking out historical photos of nobility

Katarína Takácsová

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):9-17  

Through work on the topic of historical photographs in the Slovak Republic, work by historians and professional student efforts is producing increasing results, largely thanks to the popularity and current state of technology (digitization) of photography. Support is increasing for many projects and workshops seeking to protect this fund, particularly those striving for public access to historical photographs (most commonly through studies and digitized documents). Photography is able to capture such a wide range of areas that it can be found in almost every exhibition project. It no longer fulfills merely a secondary, complementary role, but itself...

Austro-Hungarian warships in photographs by Rudolf Bruner-Dvořák in the archives of the National Technical Museum in Prague. Article for identifying individual pictures.

Jan Hozák

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):18-27  

The set of photographs, whose overall identification and utmost accurate and complete identification of each image this article deals with, was taken by the Czech photographer Rudolf Bruner-Dvořák in the years 1906-1914 in the environment of the Austro-Hungarian navy in the Adriatic Sea. This was a period of multilateral arms activities of the maritime powers, especially Great Britain, Germany, and France, with Italy and Austria-Hungary lagging somewhat behind. One of the prominent figures of the naval armament efforts in the Danube monarchy was the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand d'Este, the chief inspector of the Navy holding the rank of admiral....

Methodological approach to interpreting historical photos of garden detail

Přemysl Krejčiřík

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):28-32  

Photography is perhaps the most authentic evidence of the history of a building, capturing it in an undistorted state. Peoples' memories tend to be distorted by personal experience. Photos can be interpreted from many professional perspectives. Photography provides historians with many documents for describing and understanding the society of the day.For purposes of garden and landscape design, photography is the base material for the renovation of historical structures. A thorough analysis and subsequent quality interpretation of the period photodocumentation, in the case of vegetation modifications, the necessary knowledge of the historical distribution...

Historical film negatives collection at the Náměšť nad Oslavou castle

Lukáš Gregor, Irena Tobiášková

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):33-38  

The article describes a collection of historical negatives from late 19th and early 20th century that were catalogued, digitalized and processed in the late 2000s. Their author was an owner of the Náměšť estate and an amateur photographer, Count Jindřich Karel Haugwitz (1870-1927). The article presents the whole collection. It sorts the negatives according to material and technique into three groups: glass plate negatives 13 by 17,5 cm (the oldest part of the collection, from the 1890s), stereoscopic glass plate negatives 8,8 by 18 cm and celluloid negatives of uniform size 15 by 9 cm. Within each group the article describes their thematic variety,...

Everyday life of the nobility as reflected in the Andrássy photo collection (Nobility of the 19th and early 20th centuries)

Katarína Takácsová

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):39-48  

Based on the preserved collection of photos of the Andrássy family, which we may consider complete, we get a vivid picture of the life of the aristocracy during the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. The necessity remains of connecting this type of media with other collection items that come from the family's collections. The castle in Betliar, after the last owners left in 1944, fell victim to the war, theft, and state collections. The photographs remained a part of the historical mobiliary, in the drawers of precious furniture, hidden in the castle library and elsewhere in the castle. Professionally taken photographs or images achieving some...

Tableaux vivants, carousel carnivals, theater - photographs of nobility in costumes and disguises

Petra Medříková

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):49-56  

The article deals with one aspect of the leisure activities of nobility in the 19th century - costume disguises and how they were documented in photographs from the last third of the 19th century. There are large amounts of photos in costumes in the mobiliary of castles under the management of the NPÚ, but identifying them is difficult without labels and proper context - are they pictures in carnival costumes, from a theater play, or tableaux vivants?The article successively points out different types of costume amusements documented in photographs. First and foremost, these are tableaux vivants, put together either to educate or for entertainment...

Possibilities of Historical Photographs as a Primary Source

Marie Foltýnová

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):57-65  

One section of a National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) research task dealing with cataloguing and evaluation of historical photographs preserved at protected sites under the management of the NPÚ was finding an optimal methodological attitude for using historical photographs for further interdisciplinary research. One 2014 segment of the task was to single out photographs of historical motorless vehicles used by the nobility for travel or leisure, attempt to categorize them and prepare a comprehensive system for adding descriptions. The goal of this partial task was to expand our knowledge of everyday life of the aristocratic families living in the houses...

Reading photographs on the example of photographic material from the mobiliary fund of the Březnice State Castle

Markéta Slabová

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):66-70  

The article deals with the method of reading photographs on the example of the photographic material from the mobiliary fund of the Březnice State Castle. Although the mobiliary collections of state castles contain a number of photographic material (individual photos, albums, negatives, etc.), historic photographs have so far been generally used only as an attractive decoration for interior installations. Since the 1970's, photographic material has been undergoing continuous systematic processing and, in recent years, its digitization. The content potential of photos stored in the mobiliary funds of the castles administered by the National Heritage...

Oh fashion, what language do you speak? Notes on dating photos

Radek Polách, Lenka Vaňková

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):71-75  

Historical photographs originating from aristocratic collections contain a wealth of matters related by dress and fashion. In the vast majority and in a unique way, they captured different types of clothing, fashion elements, and issues that were reflected in the life of the aristocracy. The knowledge of any slightest detail and the perfection of its description is an important clue for identifying the captured environment and its relation to a historical event, possibly the recreational activity associated with it. The article uses an illustrated procedure to show the possibilities of further descriptions of historical photographs, where the slightest...

Digital Restoration of Cinematic Heritage. The DRA Method

Marek Jícha, Jaromír Šofr

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):76-90  

Just as there exists "belles lettres," there is also "belle cinématographie": a precious set of artistic cinematographic works that cannot escape worldwide attention for their unquestionable quality and contribution to culture. Cinematography of this quality is art that, due to its superior parameters, should be considered part of a nation's cultural heritage and recognized as cultural heritage.With the advent of new digital technologies, how to preserve this cultural heritage in an unchanged form and quality for future generations becomes more and more urgent as new methodological problems appear. Digital restoration can significantly expand work...

A race against time

Blažena Urgošíková

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):91-97  

The author addresses one of the important problems of restoring silent color films from the period 1895-1930. In a short detour, she emphasizes the importance of this issue, since the majority of silent films, according to various historical studies, were colored by one of four or five processes: manual coloring, coloring using templates, monochrome photographic print toning and shading, or a combination thereof. To a greater extent, the study focuses on the efforts of the National Film Archive in Prague and the Research Institute of audio, video and reproductive techniques (VÚZORT) on the rehabilitation and modernization of old photochemical methods...

Witness of the time of industrial development - The twice-saved Poldi Kladno plant photograph archive.

Petr Kliment, Michaela Zeinerová-Brachtlová

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):98-106  

In 2005 the National Technical Museum Archive managed to obtain the oldest part of the Poldi Kladno photograph archive. It was saved for the first time during the so-called "normalization" period of Czechoslovakian history by employees who in defiance of an order to destroy the glass negatives hid them instead.The photo archive of the Poldi Kladno plant is not only a unique document of industrial development in the Czech lands but it also shows the history of the medium up to the beginnings of digital technologies. The industrial era and the classic black and white photography era share the same period - the photographic materials available from...

On the question of effective resolution and color verification in the process of digitization

Ladislav Bezděk

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):107-111  

The article explains the issues of conflict between the "optical resolution" of scanners that manufacturers often cite in the technical specifications, and the effective resolution, i.e. the actual values achieved by specific devices in practice and which can be substantially lower than the optical resolution declared by the manufacturer in some devices. The second part points out the abysmal differences in quality between different brands of scanners, even for instruments whose prices range from the hundreds of thousands or millions of Czech crowns. Specifically, it addresses the distortion of color rendering, image distortions, streaking, blurring,...

Estimating the quality of photographic materials and methods for their digitization

Jan Hubička

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):112-122  

The digitization of historical negatives is a laborious process which takes its toll on the original. Nowadays, virtually all of the information from the original image can be captured in such a way that this operation need not be repeated.The first part deals with the question of effective resolution and dynamic range of the photo. The resolution can be determined on the basis of available data on the number of crisp lines per millimeter for photographic materials and lenses. The resolution of the particular photo can then be estimated on the basis of (partial) knowledge about the year of its creation and the technique used. The presented methodology...

Popisování reversů a aversů na fotografiích

Pavel Scheufler

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):123-126  

Fotosbírka NPÚ GnŘ

Ladislav Bezděk, Monika Hocková

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):127-130  

Historická fotografie a její evidence v mobiliárních fondech hradů a zámků

Libuše Ruizová, Jitka Bukovjanová, Alena Černá

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):130-133  

Identifikace obsahu fotografické sbírky

Tomáš Štanzel

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):134-139  

Velkolepá přehlídka baroka ze zápaních Čech

Vít Vlnas

Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(1):139-143