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Philippe Kaenel, François Vallotton
Adding value via digitization - the photographic archives of Hans Steiner (1907-1962) and the implications of an institutional, scientific and media partnership
Le Temps des médias n°19, Automne 2012, p. 267-278.
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Recently the photo reporter Hans Steiner (1907-1962) was the subject of an exhibition that went on tour and a major publication : both were due to a partnership between the University of Lausanne and the Elysée Museum of Lausanne which owns over 100.000 works by Steiner (vintages, negatives, slides or as well as 7.500 thematic cardboards each containing up to fifteen 6x6 contact prints). The entire corpus was put on-line together with over one thousand articles from Swiss illustrated print media. This digitized corpus has led to a rereading and a “reimagining” of the social, political and cultural history of Switzerland between 1930 and 1960. It charts the transformation of photographs from negative to print. The word “rediscovery” has been repeatedly associated with this reassessment of Steiner’s photographic opus. But how can we judge the lasting value of a photographer who was very prolific in his own time but was later “forgotten” ? How can we conduct a revision without falling into revisionism ? Any academic research inevitably leads to a ‘surplus’ value, especially when associated with a museum and an electronic media...