Smithsonian Seherr-Thoss Photographic Finding Aid

Smithsonian collection: Hans C. and Sonia P. Seherr-Thoss:  An Inventory of Their Photographs at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

back up link here: https://www.asia.si.edu/archives/finding_aids/seherrthoss.html

About the collection:  

This collection is entirely image based and includes mounted slides, transparencies, and mounted photographs.  However, at the time of this finding aid, only the mounted slides had been processed and the guide only contains information on these items.  The mounted slides themselves have been stored in cold storage (and can be requested for viewing) while digital surrogates are available for research only (not freely on the web).  These images were taken by Hans C. Seherr-Thoss and most were used in a publication by Hans and Sonia Seherr-Thoss.  The images are of Islamic monuments, taken between 1960-1968.  

The finding aid breaks the collection into three sections by format: mounted slides, transparencies, and mounted photos.  Within these formats, the guide preserves the original order of the slides.  It further divides into subsets, the parameters of which I do not fully understand but assume is based on roughly geographic location.  Sometimes this divide occurs mid-box so I did not think it was simply a subset by box number.  

Names for the items were created based on labeling done by the creator, with additional information added in square brackets to include as many modern transliterations of location names as possible.  Creation dates for structures featured in the photographs were included when part of the caption from the creator.  Some sub series have approximate capture dates for images.  

Benefits

This collection has detailed titles pertaining to the geographic location for the majority of the monuments in the photographs.  Dividing the collection into subsets by (I assume) geographic location is a decent idea as location is one entry point for researchers on this subject.  

Index terms in the finding aid include proper names of locations and monuments, but also terms for architectural structures such as “minarets” and “domes”.  Ideally a search in a catalog would retrieve this record for those seeking architecture including minarets.  

This collection has the benefit of clear, extensive information on the images direct from the photographer himself.  Additionally, the photographer was knowledgeable and was taking photos as part of his thorough work to produce a book; these are not tourist photos.  Therefore the names and titles given by the photographer are generally accurate and detailed.  If the photographer was an amateur, using their text could have been enormously problematic.  

The credibility of the photographer also lends some legitimacy of the original order.  This may have related to the timing of his travels, or was at least some kind of conceptual order given by an educated source.  This is theoretically more helpful than an order that might have been assigned by an intern without an appropriate educational background. A researcher looking for information on the creator himself might also find the order significant.  

Problems

Organizing the collection in original order and sub-dividing by location has its downsides.  First of all, it is unclear if the sub-divisions are truly by geographic location, or if they are simply an unknown system by the creator, or by box number or by some other arbitrary break point decided by the institution.  Regardless, in the sub-sections, items are preserved in their original order, which means they are not listed alphabetically.  Searching for a specific location or monument will mean the user will have to scan the whole document (hopefully they view it digitally and can do a search for a term).  Some related images are grouped together, such as most south and west views, or a full image and a detail, but this can only be helpful if the user has stumbled upon the correct section in the first place.  Many items have the exact same title, and it is unclear if they are the same photograph or variations on the same scene.  

Likewise, this type of guide does not allow for tagging or sorting by architectural similarities.  Some items have a detail listed in the name (“dome”) but many do not, and there is no manner to bring all domed items together.  Listing the terms in the subject index would bring the researcher to this guide but they would have to work hard to find relevant images within the collection itself, perhaps by viewing each one and keeping track themselves.  

Dates are also confusing, many of the dates listed pre-date the invention of photography, so they must pertain to the date of the structure being photographed.  Also, not all images have dates for the structures, and there is no way to bring all images with related dates together.  Photographic capture dates are only recorded for some sections, and are often broad ranges of several years.  

In conclusion, while this guide may have enough index terms to get a researcher to find it in the catalog, due to the preservation of its original order, picking and choosing relevant images within the collection would be a long and tedious process.  Hopefully performing a digital search for a particular date or location within the finding aid would bring potential success, but the researcher would need to be diligent in recording these items from their places scattered all over the collection sequence.  If the archive had thought to obtain more insight from the original creator or his wife prior to his death, it might have given more depth to the naming and organization scheme.  Perhaps they did discuss the system of the collection, but it is not articulated in a clear manner in the guide alone, so a user will be confused.