subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 24 August 2019 33
Thelibraryat
HollandHouse
in Kensington,
London,is
extensively
damagedby
a Molotov
‘breadbasket’
firebombfirmly and await response. I fluff the
firmly bit and await response. This
state-of-the-art facility was around
two years in the making. I push
open the state-of-the-art door
and breathe in.
Curating a gigantic archive
The gigantic archive is overseen by
one of the world’s smallest curators.
Melanie Hough is ‘five foot nothing.’
Her jaw is strong, face freckled,
grip firm and blue eyes imposing.
Melanie is in her thirties, and it
is her third year as curator of
Hulton Archive. She has been
in the photography and gallery
business for over a decade, working
her way up after graduating from
Goldsmiths University, London,
with a BA (Hons) History of Art and
an MA Contemporary Art Theory.
Stepping onto the temperature- and
humidity-controlled level one (of
two) of the Hulton Archive, the
scale of her task is staggering. This
is what The Cloud must look like:
13 kilometres of racks and rows of
boxes, packages and files. That’s
8,530 head-to-toe Melanie’s.
The heart of the Hulton collection
is the seminal British weeklyPicture Post magazine, and it’s one
of the first things you see. Melanie
snaps on a pair of latex gloves. ‘I
find cotton gloves clumsy; these are
more dextrous,’ she says, and flips
to a spread by photographer Bert
Hardy of ‘Firefighters during the
London Blitz, 1941’. From the
accompanying contact sheets
you can track the picture editor’s
forensic eye and process. Another
latex flip and there’s a layout of
Hardy’s iconic images from the
Korean War Battle of Incheon, for
which James Cameron wrote
the article. Between 1938 and