Framing History through Photography
Trudi Sandmeier 0:00
Today on Save As:
Sam Malnati 0:01
You can take your iPhone outside and take a photo, and that looks good enough for Library of Congress, but it really isn’t.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:16
Welcome to Save As: NextGen Heritage Conservation, an award-winning podcast that glimpses the future of the field with graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick 0:27
And I’m Cindy Olnick. So Trudi.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:31
Yes, Cindy.
Cindy Olnick 0:32
So we’re back with a new episode with newly minted MHC and planning graduate Sam Malnati, who you might remember from a couple of previous episodes of the podcast. She was on the Wilfandel episode and the Buck House materials conservation episode, both of which have to do with documenting historic places, and that’s been sort of her focus in the program.
Trudi Sandmeier 1:03
Yeah, Sam has really been all about documentation. It’s been fun to work with her in a variety of ways over the course of her journey here at USC. And so this is another interesting wrinkle in her exploration of photo documentation for our field; what does it mean to what we do?
Cindy Olnick 1:25
That’s right, and she’s been she’s really out there on the cutting edge, as we say, using LiDAR, 3d models, really the latest tech, and it was fascinating for her to go back to the very beginnings of photography back in the 19th century. So her thesis is a good read, and let’s get the highlights of it. Our stellar producer, Willa Seidenberg spoke with Sam recently, and let’s hear what they had to say.
Willa Seidenberg 1:57
Welcome Sam. Please introduce yourself to our save as listeners.
Sam Malnati 2:02
Hi, I’m Sam Malnati. I’m a recent graduate of the Heritage Conservation program, and I also did an Urban Planning degree.
Willa Seidenberg 2:09
So tell us a little bit about where you came from and how did you get involved in this crazy field?
Sam Malnati 2:16
I grew up near Boston, and I studied architectural history at Mount Holyoke College for undergrad, and that really inspired a love of historic structures and keeping these memories alive through the built environment. I did a lot of work with archival documents and things like that, so looking at all of those old photographs and thinking about how they relate to the space that we’re currently in really inspired the next chapter of my life.
Willa Seidenberg 2:47
So the name of your thesis is Contemporary Vision: Photography’s Influ on Perception of Places and the Past. So basically, it’s talking about the role of photography in heritage conservation documentation. First, I’m curious why you chose this subject.
Sam Malnati 3:08
A lot of people think that I am a photographer, or really love photography, and obviously I do now, because I wrote almost 200 pages about it. But it was really born out of just a noticing that we look at photographs so much, just on a day-to-day basis, like everyone is a photographer, and the way that you look at these photographs and take the photographs and think about how they interact with your life, it really shapes like how you’re thinking about these spaces. And also, how these spaces are being documented to educate future generations about their cultural importance.
Willa Seidenberg 3:45
You started by talking about the background of photography and the historical roots of photography. I had never seen what the word photography means,
Sam Malnati 3:55
So the root is photo, which means light in Greek, and the ending graph means to write. So it’s writing with light, which really kind of is what film photography is.
Willa Seidenberg 4:09
How did the invention of photography change our relationship as humans to our visual world?
Sam Malnati 4:17
Yeah, I feel like we don’t think, or at least I wasn’t thinking about this as much. But before photography, you couldn’t really capture things instantaneously. And, you know, a painting or a drawing tried its best to capture the world, but it took a while, and it was a lot of like human hand intervention. So once this kind of mechanical process of the camera came about, people, you know, kind of blew their minds about what you could capture and preserve and disseminate.
Willa Seidenberg 4:46
I think initially, there was a feeling that this is the truth, this is real. This is the way it is. You address this at a certain point when you talk about digital because it really has brought to light that photography and those images can be manipulated and are about the photographer’s choice of how they photograph, whether it’s film or digital, you’re making certain decisions that affect the way it looks. And you mentioned that people looked at them as artifacts really, the photographs themselves.
Sam Malnati 5:23
Yeah, yeah. It had a long history of being included in like, scientific journals, because they were like, this is exactly what that is. But people think digital kind of introduced this layer of manipulation with Photoshop and now with AI imagery, but that was kind of always present, just not to the same extent, you know, where the photographer places the camera or what they choose to omit. There’s those, like famous Shulman photos of him holding a branch that wasn’t there. So that’s all kind of manipulation. And then even, just like, you know, burning areas
Willa Seidenberg 5:59
Dodging and burning, yes, and even the kind of lighting that you decide to use for a photograph. Can you give us a little background on the Historic American Building Survey known as HABS program?
Sam Malnati 6:12
So HABS started in 1933. I t was part of the National Park Service and effort to document a complete survey of the builders art. So everything that’s recorded for the Historic American Building Survey is preserved in the Library of Congress within the Prints and Photographs Division. They really tried to focus on vernacular structures as well as monumental structures, which was kind of cool because a lot of the other surveys at the time just focused on, you know, the gorgeous mansions. This one wanted to get a whole swath of American architecture in through, like, written descriptions and measured hand drawings and then also photographs. HABS was the first federal preservation effort. So even though they weren’t like advocating for these buildings, it did really set the bar for considering all types of buildings. It was intended as like a short-run program just to employ out-of-work architects during the Great Depression. But then they extended it, and then extended again, and it went back and forth through all these different departments, and kind of got new things added on, like the Historic American Engineering Record and Historic American Landscape Survey, but it survived the longest out of most of the
Willa Seidenberg 7:34
Works Project Administration.
Sam Malnati 7:36
Yeah, and they’re still doing the exact same work today, which is impressive and good, but also it’s all in film.
Willa Seidenberg 7:45
Yeah, so let’s talk about that. HABS requires the documentation to be on black and white film.
Sam Malnati 7:53
It’s all on 3×5, 5×7 or 8×10.
Willa Seidenberg 7:56
Tell us about what the actual requirements are for a HABS photograph because the purpose of the photograph is not about artistically shooting the building, but it’s about the information that you’re trying to get.
Sam Malnati 8:10
So the Secretary of the Interior has some standards for architectural and engineering documentation that are in the Federal Register, and those are kind of like the gold standards for documenting these buildings. And they’re content, quality, presentation, and materials. So that means you need to kind of capture all angles. You know, you can’t have, like a branch in front of the tree, and you can’t only show a door to represent a whole building. They have to be of high quality so that you can be able to read these images and the material being film and archival process so that the film doesn’t degrade over time. A big part of the survey is that it has to be consistent with itself. They end up being beautiful works of art, but the point is mostly to capture an objective representation of the building. And you know, objective is kind of like, what is objective, really, but being able to kind of capture the building at that time with nothing that would influence how people perceive it.
Willa Seidenberg 9:29
But they do document what it looks like in the space that it is in.
Sam Malnati 9:33
Usually what they require would be like a context shot that’s at like a three-quarter angle, so you kind of see the neighborhood, and then a front facade, maybe some interiors, and then, like a detailed shot. It depends on where the documentation need is coming from. So, in California, we have a lot through CEQA, because it’s a requirement before they alter or demolish a historic building. If they need to document them.
Willa Seidenberg 10:15
You know, given the fact that I’m married to a photographer, I know about these cameras. I know how bulky they are, I know how expensive they are, and I know how much skill they take to use. So how has the field of photographers who are able to do that developed over time?
Sam Malnati 10:33
There is, like a surprising number of people still doing it, but they are mostly older or have those skills already, or have the money to afford the film and the equipment, or now there’s kind of like a wave of hipsters getting into it. So you know, it’s not dead, but it’s definitely not the mainstream way of documenting.
Willa Seidenberg 10:58
So how do you think that photography benefited the historic documentation process and our understanding of historic buildings, because one thing that stuck out to me that you wrote that “photography appeared to offer the promise of material permanence in a rapidly changing world.”
Sam Malnati 11:17
Yeah, at first, because of its like kind of scientific understanding. They thought they could use photographs as like measurement tools, in addition to measured drawings. If you have a photograph and there’s a scale bar in it, you can use that as, like a scientific record, but that’s not really how people ended up using them anyway, because then they ended up in magazines or on websites now, and people kind of just look at them as you know, a picture, and not study the measurement on it.
Willa Seidenberg 11:49
Do you think it increased the appreciation of historic buildings?
Sam Malnati 11:55
Yeah, in the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, they were working towards preserving George Washington’s home, and they ended up using photography as one of, like, the early uses of it in fundraising efforts, and getting people who weren’t at Mount Vernon to be able to see it and be like, Oh, beautiful home, we should donate to this. So, like, in that way, it kind of helps spread information about that. But also, just in general, being able to see historic buildings from across the world that you don’t see every day, you both appreciate the history of it and the building for itself.
Willa Seidenberg 12:36
What do you think is the state of digital photography in regards to being able to use it for historic preservation purposes.
Sam Malnati 12:48
I feel like when I came into this, I only had experience with digital photography. So hearing about HABS only accepting film, it was like, come on. You know, we should be updating this a little bit, but then learning about film. And I ended up taking a film class at USC with Michael Arden and seeing how the processes differ. It’s definitely a different experience to be able to sit with the building for so long and adjust all of the little things that you need to and then to process the film and see it’s physical chemical transformation, which isn’t to say that digital is like worse. It’s just definitely a different mindset as you’re going into it. The problem is that when we look at a photo now, like on our phones, you know, on Instagram or something, they all kind of look similar. Like you can take your iPhone outside and take a photo, and that looks good enough for the Library Congress, but it really isn’t. The file stability, but also, when you enhance it, you don’t get the same amount of detail, and it doesn’t have the same perspective edits that you can make, and you don’t have as much control over because it the iPhone like processes it for you to make it this beautiful, Instagramable post. But those qualities kind of sway the objectivity of the photograph, even though none of them are objective. It’s not as authentic as it could be if you were controlling everything. So it’s hard, because people figure, I’ve got a photo of the Coliseum. Why can’t that be in the Library of Congress? But there is, like a level of needing a more professional hand in it.
Willa Seidenberg 14:32
There is a quality to a film photograph that is really different. There is a depth, and there’s a warmness
Sam Malnati 14:44
It has its own life kind of.
Willa Seidenberg 14:46
Yes, yeah, I think your point about the fact that it was a more arduous process, and not to say it was difficult, but it wasn’t as easy as just you pick up your phone, click, so you did have to spend time with it. You did have to get it developed. There was a lot. Think about not that you can’t do that in digital, but it’s a lot quicker, and you do it on your phone, more people can do it. You don’t have to buy expensive equipment. You don’t necessarily have to be as trained as you would be, and so that’s an advantage.
Sam Malnati 15:15
Yeah, and that’s a big thing, especially for HABS, which is so focused on the public accessibility and being like a complete survey of all of America. Not being accessible to most photographers makes it kind of ineffective in maintaining itself in the future, because we want these programs to still be around when film becomes way too expensive
Willa Seidenberg 15:40
Or isn’t around anymore.
Sam Malnati 15:42
Yeah, exactly. And so they’re definitely not thinking of just stopping film and switching to digital, but to have both of them concurrently, would be able to add things to the collection that we’re not currently able to add. They are working towards adding digital. It’s just such a bureaucratic process that that’s the problem. It’s like in the pipeline. And I’ve talked to them about it many times, and they always say that they’re working on it because it’s like within the Federal Register, and you kind of have to work within that. They’re trying to maintain this kind of standard of quality.
Willa Seidenberg 16:19
You talk about a case study of the Fotomat kiosks that used to be all over the country.
Sam Malnati 16:37
Explain what they were so they were like, drive-up photo film processing little kiosks. It’s basically just like a tiny hut that one person can sit in, and you would drive up and
Willa Seidenberg 16:51
Drop off your roll a film.
Sam Malnati 16:52
Yeah, and then they would develop it, and you drive back, pick it up. And it was just like a fast, easy way for the public to be able to develop their own film once it became more accessible to the public. But then the company struggled with digital because no one needed film developing anymore, and so now a lot of them have been converted into other things or demolished, but there’s one still remaining in Glendale that’s now a drive up cigarette kiosk. So I was thinking a lot about, like, the preservation of a technique, and how that’s kind of an important, cultural thing that’s, you know, yeah.
Willa Seidenberg 17:33
So that’s another intangible heritage that you know, just as much as, like, dances and cultural expressions. That’s really true. There’s another thesis. Somebody out there who needs a thesis idea, there you go.
Sam Malnati 17:47
I felt like the Fotomat was like cute little sample building to show off how different cameras photograph a building differently. Steven Schafer, who lives in Ventura and is currently teaching an architectural photography class at USC, and has been a big resource in teaching me photography and teaching me about HABS honestly. Shafe did measure drawing documentation to submit to the Holland Prize. So HABS does a few different like competitions to crowdsource new submissions from the public. One of them is the Holland Prize, where you document a building on only a single sheet and have all the plans and sections fitting them within that sheet. And part of it is, you know how you can compositionally put them on that. So a few years ago, they submitted that as part of the Holland Prize. He already had the image that he had taken on a 5×7 large format camera that will eventually be available for everyone to see on the Library of Congress’s website. When you take a photo on large format film, the sheet of film is so big that it captures more detail than like a 35 millimeter film would. So comparing that to a digital camera with a certain sensor size, the sensor in your iPhone is not like capturing the same amount as a sensor in like a Canon DSLR, which is definitely not capturing the same amount as a Phase One, which is a medium format digital camera, and it’s like $80,000 or something. It’s super fancy. It’s really nice. He rented it for the day, and we took it out to the kiosk and tried to recreate the film photo that he had taken, like a year prior, but on equivalent digital formats.
Willa Seidenberg 19:39
Yeah. And what did the difference seem to you?
Sam Malnati 19:43
I mean, at first the difference seemed to me like, Oh, this is a picture of the kiosk, and that’s a picture of the kiosk, and they look the same, although the digital was, of course, in color, which captured, it’s like a very vibrant blue and yellow. And that was pretty important, that the black and white film obviously couldn’t capture then I took a photo with my cell phone. When you zoom in on them, the digital Phase One image, you can read all the texts, and you can, you know, see the whites of the eyes of the people in the distance. And in my cell phone photo, it’s just like pixels. So there’s definitely a big difference. And then even with the 5×7 film, when you enhance that, it’s the same amount of quality. So I can see why it’s so expensive.
Willa Seidenberg 20:32
And that’s the reason why people really like the large format, yeah, because it does keep that detail. Yeah. I think with digital, a lot of us think, oh, it’s easier, and you don’t have these negatives that you have to store and everything. But I watch my husband have to continually update where he’s saving his digital files, because technology changes and some technology becomes obsolete. And given the incredible number of photographs out there because of smartphones, not just digital cameras, but because of smartphones, is kind of mind boggling. How do we incorporate that into our process?
Sam Malnati 21:16
Yeah, that’s why a big part of HABS is the conciseness which you’d think, more photos the better, but then you’re like, swamped with photos, and you can’t really tell what’s important about the space. While I was researching for the thesis, my phone, just like, would not turn on. It just completely stopped working, and I had to go buy a new phone and just kind of say goodbye to all those photos, because most of them backed up in like Google Cloud, But I have a lot of them that didn’t.
Willa Seidenberg 22:04
We saw the importance of this with the fires, because so many people lost things that weren’t digitized and backed up to the cloud, and we are losing that sense of artifacts.
Sam Malnati 22:17
Yeah. And it’s scary, because both the physical is able to get lost and the digital is able to get lost. And then you kind of just have to accept that some things will be lost and try your hardest to preserve the things that won’t be lost by backing it up. And, you know, like three different places and two different file types and all of that.
Willa Seidenberg 22:41
But it takes a lot of time to,
Sam Malnati 22:43
Yeah, they don’t need to be on the National Register or a local register to be in HABS. It just kind of has to be historically significant. They had, like, a list of everything that they wanted to photograph, and it was like everything. So they prioritized photographing and drawing and documenting buildings that were about to become demolished, because they saw that, you know, the country was changing and architecture was going away, and they felt like it was important, if you couldn’t preserve the building, to at least preserve some memory of the building. So they tried to get through those. And then buildings keep getting slated for demolition. And you know that list kept growing, so it’s really hard to
Willa Seidenberg 23:29
keep up with it. Yeah. And then you don’t know when a natural disaster, like a fire is going to come along and destroy the whole neighborhood.
Sam Malnati 23:36
Yeah, yes.
Willa Seidenberg 23:37
What would you hope that people would get out of your thesis, what would be the practical implications for those of us who work in the field and have to deal with photography at some point, what would you want your thesis to say to them?
Sam Malnati 23:55
I mean, at least for me, in researching and writing it, being able to really think about what I’m looking at. I didn’t even really realize how much, not only photography, but then videos, a whole other piece, and how that influences how I think about things and how I look at, you know, the world around me. So really like being conscious of that and then thinking about that as you also produce things. Obviously, you know, I’m still no photographer, and I’m just taking crappy iPhone photos, but I’m thinking a little bit deeper about the subject and my relationship with it, and trying to, you know, like, straighten it up a little bit, and thinking about what I include in the image and how that will influence how people view it, and trying to present the most non-manipulative view, especially when you’re doing survey of a bunch of historic homes, and I mean, in like a just personal sense, it has helped me kind of slow down and look at the world around me. And when I’m in historically significant spaces thinking about like, why is this space significant to me? Just really, really looking at it, and not just whipping out my phone taking a photo, and moving on to the next right?
Willa Seidenberg 25:13
Because we do all tend to use our phones as documentation, note taking. And so often it is that kind of just quick…
Sam Malnati 25:22
Yeah, exactly. And then that doesn’t really like create that deep personal connection with these really important spaces.
Willa Seidenberg 25:29
You talked a lot about HABS photography in your thesis, but there’s a lot of photography that’s being done on buildings that is not necessarily included in HABS. I mean, the advantage of HABS is that people can access them from the Library of Congress. You know, public access is one of the big things, but people are documenting buildings in so many ways. So how would you like to see photography used in formal and informal ways.
Sam Malnati 26:01
Yeah, I feel like specifically for HABS, thinking about who is using those photos, because they are like in the public domain, and being able to broaden access to that so seeing more varied buildings. You know, I know they are focused on a lot of vernacular structures, but there’s so many out there that they could be including. Crowd sourced photos of neighborhoods and just like these spaces that we see every day that people are taking photos of, or it’s like in the background of a picture of your child playing basketball, you know, but in the future, that will be useful for recording, because no one is taking a picture of the fire hydrant. But then in 50 years, when we don’t use fire hydrants anymore, they’re gonna be looking for that
Willa Seidenberg 26:46
Exactly. And we don’t think about those things as being significant. And I think, and I’m sure you do, I think a lot about my childhood and the things that I didn’t photograph, but that are impressed in my memory, but no one else will have those memories. And I don’t have the photographs because, you know, it wasn’t so ubiquitous when I was a kid. It does feel like there’s a certain amount of history that’s lost.
Sam Malnati 27:11
And, especially because it’s just like personal photos. I know I mentioned Facebook before, but I feel like every time I did like a historic research project in class, I would look at the everything page for whatever small town that was and find a bunch of like older people’s photographs of remember when my town looked like this? And those are super helpful, but having them on Facebook is not the best place for them, so being able to put those in a place that people could search publicly and preserve them when the internet dies, any photograph is better than
Willa Seidenberg 27:48
nothing. Good point. You mentioned video a little bit ago. Do you think that there’s going to be a role for video in historic preservation?
Sam Malnati 27:56
I think like in the fields generally, yes, but I don’t know about within HABS. I know a lot of times people ask me, you know, they’re thinking, like, super far in the future, and they’re like, What about VR? And shouldn’t that be included? But baby steps And that introduces a lot more subjectivity and different questions than a photograph is trying to answer. And there is something really valuable about a still photograph in documentation.
Willa Seidenberg 28:30
Yeah, interesting. I mean, that’s a whole and AI and everything. That’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax that we’ll be talking about for years to come. I’m sure. Well, I want to end by asking you what you’ve been doing since you graduated from the Heritage Conservation Program.
Sam Malnati 28:47
My first semester of this program, I took Katie Horak’s architectural documentation class.
Willa Seidenberg 28:55
Great, class.
Sam Malnati 28:56
Yeah, and that’s when I met Shafe and learned about HABS, and I also learned about LiDAR scanning and photogrammetry and all these different types of documentation that may not all be included in HABS, but you know, are all equally important. And since then, I’ve been interning at AQYER in San Marino, and have gone on to be working full time there. So we’re doing LiDAR scans of buildings for all different types of projects. Some of them might be demolished, and some of them are just for, like, alterations, or if people don’t have existing floor plans and they need documentation of what’s there right now. And using that 3d model that the LiDAR scan generates to, you know, make measured drawings and floor plans. And some of them do get submitted to HABS, and some of them are like, just for, you know,
Willa Seidenberg 29:51
Personal use, yeah. Well, thank you. Sam. Was really interesting to delve into the images we don’t talk that much about photo and its role in the field. So thanks so much for sort of least making me think a lot more about it.
Sam Malnati 30:07
Thanks, Willa.
Cindy Olnick 30:13
Well, thank you, Willa and Sam for your time and insight. And there’s so much more that to talk about about this fascinating topic, but I’m glad we got to share a bit of it with our dear listeners.
Trudi Sandmeier 30:25
There’s so many interesting links on our web page for this episode that take you to the Historic American Building Survey records at the Library of Congress, so you can see some of the things that we’re talking about out in the wild and some really amazing photography that has been captured over the years by some incredible photographers.
Cindy Olnick 30:47
And you can use it for free, nothing, as my mom would say,
Trudi Sandmeier 30:51
Absolutely.
Cindy Olnick 30:59
Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Save As. For photos and show notes, visit our website at Saveas.place. If you haven’t already, please subscribe, review and tell a friend.
Trudi Sandmeier 31:12
This episode was produced by Willa Seidenberg, with help from Cindy Olnick and Trudi Sandmeier. Our original theme music is by Stephen Conley. Additional music on this episode is by Teddy Seidenberg. Save As is a production of the Heritage Conservation program in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
