34 24 August 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
‘There are probably 200 negatives to one print in the archive.
Less than 1% is online. 30,000 images are digitised a year’
GETTY’S HULTON ARCHIVE
1957, over 9,000 articles were
commissioned for Picture Post.
Only 2,000 of these actually ran in
the magazine and the other 7,000
were filed away. Around half a
dozen photos accompanied each
published article, from the
hundreds, sometimes thousands
of negatives the photographers
delivered, creating a colossal archive
of unpublished and often unprinted
images. Readership in Britain
during the Second World War
reportedly peaked at over 80%
of the population.
‘There are probably 200 negatives
to one print in the Hulton Archive,’
says Melanie. ‘Less than 1% is
online. Around 30,000 images are
digitised a year, with more coming
in all the time,’ she adds, pushing
her tawny hair behind a pierced ear
without an earring. It’s a job for life
and the challenges are daily:
researching; identifying and
documenting; devising strategies
for library care, accessibility
and conservation; acting as
spokesperson; leading tours of
the archive; assisting external
researchers, scholars and curators
to find what they didn’t know they
were looking for. She handles the
Instagram account @Gettyarchive
as well. Melanie is always busy
during the day and often kept
awake at night. Terrors include:
reticulated negatives (the distortion
of the emulsion layer of a film);
indecipherable index codes;
problems with original and now
inappropriate captions; and the
most horrifying of all, off-gassing:
film that is actively decaying, often
known as vinegar syndrome as the
film begins to release acetic acid,
as you’d find in the vinegar doused
over chips. The process cannot be
recovered, only stabilised. We both
rapidly sniff the room. My stomach
starts to rumble.A treasure trove that’s over
a century old
During my tour of the archive,
one of Melanie’s two curatorial
assistants ghosts past, triggering
on the strip lights. A Herculean
librarian who has been working
at the archive for 20 years and
spends the entire time meticulously
patrolling the racks, rewriting faded
labels and refiling requested
material – requests that often
mirror what is happening in the
modern world. Demands this
month are for women playing
football (the FIFA Women’s WorldRight: The curator
of the Hulton
Archive, Melanie
Hough, as
photographed by
Peter Dench in 2019Below left: A line
of South Korean
prisoners crouching
on the floor.
This image was
published in 1950
in Picture PostBelow right: An
image from 1953
shows a controlled
test to demonstrate
how quickly clothes
can catch fire
© BERT HARDY / GETT Y IMAGES© JOHN CHILLINGWORTH / PICTURE POST / GETT Y IMAGES
© PETER DENCH