by Karlyn Aurora Lienhard
As a burgeoning medievalist in the midst of completing my Master’s degree at the University of Texas at Dallas, I was overjoyed when given the opportunity to digitize the extensive photographic archive of southern Italian medieval monuments collected by architectural historian Caroline Bruzelius. After spending the last year and a half working as a student collaborator on the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database, and at the same time working on my own thesis on early fourteenth-century Naples, the project could not have been better aligned with my interests. The more time I spent working on the archive, the more true this became.
What is the Caroline Bruzelius Photographic Archive?
The Caroline Bruzelius Photographic Archive, as is now formally known, emerged from an extensive photographic campaign during the early 1990s in which Bruzelius sought to obtain high-quality photos of major monuments throughout medieval southern Italy. This was an endeavor that, at the time, had not yet been undertaken in a systematic way. Bruzelius secured funding for the project through the Getty Foundation, and with help from the American Academy in Rome she gained access to hundreds of monuments across the southern half of the peninsula. Through this campaign, and the photographic repository that she ultimately compiled, Bruzelius’s pivotal book The Stones of Naples (2004), came to fruition. It is fitting that twenty years after its publication, the fruits of this project found a home at the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, where they will be preserved both physically and digitally. For purposes of convenience and preservation of the physical archive, the primary point of access for the archive going forward will be through the digital platform. The physical archive will be made accessible to researchers upon special request. Together, the digital and physical materials will serve as a resource for research and teaching at the O’Donnell Institute.
Constructing a Digital Archive
Upon beginning my work with the Caroline Bruzelius Photographic Archive in late fall of 2023, the first task at hand—before I even considered the digitization aspect of the project—was to get a sense of its scale, as well as the general logistics of digitizing. The archive was delivered to the O’Donnell Institute in four large storage boxes. Hundreds of file folders containing printed photographs, building plans, notes, correspondence, and invaluable secondary sources were all stored within these four boxes. First, I needed to get a sense of how the physical archive was organized. As I will reiterate below, an important aspect of my work on the project was to retain as much as possible of Bruzelius’s original organizational system. It is her collection, and not only represents a pivotal part of her academic work but also provides a unique look into her thought process and even how she interacted with the archive over the years.
The best way for me to get a sense of the archive’s scale was to create a comprehensive spreadsheet noting all the monuments and what types of materials were contained within each individual folder. During mid-spring 2024, around the time I submitted my thesis, I recorded how many photos and other visual materials there were, and what types of visual materials (black and white photos, color photos, post cards, ground plans etc.) as well as secondary materials were included in the files. In early discussions of how I would construct the archive, we decided to prioritize the images. So, while I was not going to digitally archive secondary sources, I felt it was still important to make note of these materials for ease of use in the future. Therefore, all non-digitized materials within the physical archive are noted within the spreadsheet I created, allowing for fluid navigation between the physical and digital. Over the summer, this spreadsheet essentially became the “Key” to the archive. It is extensive and will provide any researcher with all information they might need to navigate the archive. This early step also helped my digitizing and cataloguing process (which I return to below). As I archived, I recorded the catalogue numbers for each monument as well as how many documented images belonged to each monument and all additional corresponding materials.
University Collaboration while Constructing a Digital Archive
Even with some basic digitizing experience acquired during a museum internship as an undergraduate, I was fairly inexperienced when it came to assembling a digital archive. I, along with the O’Donnell Institute’s Program Coordinator Katrina Saunders, who has worked closely with the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database, felt it was a good idea to meet with archivists across UT Dallas to learn from their work and experience. During the beginning of the spring 2024 semester, we met with Senior Archivist Patrizia Nava and Special Collections Digital Archivist Molly Tepera. These meetings allowed me to evaluate how the Caroline Bruzelius Photographic Archive is both similar to and different from others housed at UT Dallas. For example, the Bruzelius Archive is fixed in size, and I did not need to worry about accommodating an expanding collection of materials. This gave us a fair amount of freedom when it came to deciding where to house the digital archive.
Selecting a Digital Platform for Archiving
I initially considered using DevonThink as the archive’s digital platform, because this was the platform used for another archive at the O’Donnell Institute. After further consideration, I suggested Box as the permanent home for the digital archive. It is user friendly and its ease of viewing images and accessing additional image details seemed both effective and useful for researchers’ needs. Furthermore, all the digital images are stored directly within Box, meaning that the image quality and resolution are as high as possible. Because Box is a platform hosted through the University, the archive can be easily made available to UT Dallas users. The Box folders can be linked directly to a user’s desktop, while the O’Donnell Institute can both control access and track use. Box can also be accessed through the O’Donnell Institute’s dedicated laptop for archives and collections.
Digitizing an Archive of Physical Photos
When this project was initially brought to me toward the end of the fall 2023 semester, I first began the digitization process by using a large scanner housed at the O’Donnell Institute. However, the resulting image quality was more suitable for text than for images, and the scanner itself was temperamental. Instead, I decided to seek advice from the Living Architecture Lab in the Bass School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology. I got in touch with Murilo Pavia Homsi, who works with Distinguished Professor and Director of the lab, Anne Balsamo. Over the course of the winter break between the fall 2023 and spring 2024 semesters, Murilo ingeniously created a dedicated photo station for the O’Donnell Institute on the third floor of the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building.
Murilo developed a three-sided structure built from plastic PVC pipes and semi-transparent sheets of paper to create a lightbox, backlit with high-quality lights and enclosing a flat surface for archival material, with a digital camera suspended from above. The physical images could then then be placed within the lightbox and photographed. This brilliant set-up proved very effective for photographing the images contained within the archive. The room itself was dark and free of any external light sources, meaning that regardless of the time of day, the lighting in the room remained consistent. The special lighting required for photographing the images was diffused by the semi-transparent paper, resulting in a high quality digital image of the physical photograph. Since many of the photos within the archive are very glossy, the photo station that Murilo created prevented any potential issues with glare. With the plan for how I was going to digitally document the archive fully realized, I turned my attention back to its physical aspect.
The Importance of Preserving the Physical for the Digital
My meetings with digital archivists on campus reinforced the importance of maintaining the long-term integrity of the physical archive. Despite the fact that I am recording the archive in digital form, preservation of its physical materials was important and needed to be considered. My first task was to reorganize the physical archive into a more suitable permanent setting. The storage boxes in which the archive arrived were not sufficient for long-term storage. At the beginning of the summer, I spent about a week researching and ordering new archival quality storage boxes and folders to reconstitute the archive, and then physically transferred it over the course of an additional week. Whereas the archive was shipped within four larger storage boxes, I thought the physical materials would be more easily accessible and structurally sound, over the long term, if the contents of the archive were further split between smaller storage boxes. Fewer folders within a single volume would prevent further strain on the archive’s materials. Ultimately, I ended up with twelve archival quality storage boxes in which the archive, in its entirety, fit perfectly!
Additionally, further subdividing the archive not only made the physical folders easier to handle, but also eased the digitizing process. I could safely take a whole box at once to the photo studio, or to my office to edit photos. It is important to reiterate that despite the intended primary point of access to the archive being the digital files, it was tantamount to preserve and maintain the physical collection in the best way possible.
My initial time spent with the archive, during which I created the spreadsheet Key, also allowed me to take some initiative in further refining Bruzelius’s organizational system. Some folders contained multiple monuments within a single city, while others had separate monuments divided across separate folders. As I reconstituted the archive, I made sure all monuments were organized in their own individual folders, for ease of access and identification.
In instances in which multiple monuments were kept in a single folder, they were often unlabeled. Therefore, as I created my Key and reconstituted the archive, I spent a considerable amount of time sorting and identifying which images belonged to which monuments and placing them in their permanent monument-specific folders. This process allowed me to further familiarize myself with medieval architecture across Southern Italy, aided by my experience working with the Kingdom of Sicily Image Database. My use of the image database itself, as well as the time I’ve spent geolocating medieval monuments across the region, proved tremendously helpful.
Creating a Cataloguing System
My work to develop a cataloguing system for the archive unfolded over the span of a few months during the spring 2024 semester. My time spent creating the Key ultimately informed the development of the archive’s cataloguing system, which directly reflects Bruzelius’s own organizational system. She sent us her materials categorized by region, city, and then monument. The archive consisted of six general regions: Abruzzo, Basilicata and Calabria, Apulia, Campania and some of Molise, Naples (organized separately due to the large quantity of materials), and a Miscellaneous category consisting of additional monuments in Italy outside the aforementioned regions but still relevant to Bruzelius’s research. The biggest change I made to her organizational system was incorporating Naples into the Campania and Molise region. Since Naples is a part of Campania, it made the most sense to me to reincorporate it into its respective region. I suspect the original organization came from the fact that the archive included a large number of monuments from Naples. Furthermore, after reorganizing the physical archive into more storage boxes, reincorporating Naples into the Campania and Molise region made sense both conceptually and organizationally.
During a meeting with Sarah Kozlowski and Katrina Saunders in early spring 2024, we discussed how to approach assigning catalogue numbers and determined that the best course of action was to essentially follow the organizational model Bruzelius gave us. In addition to the physical archive, she also sent us a document containing all the Regions, Cities, Monuments, and estimated number of images within each respective category. This served as the framework for the cataloguing system. After removing Naples as its own region, I was left with five regions to work with: Abruzzo (Region 1), Basilicata and Calabria (Region 2), Apulia (Region 3), Campania (including Naples) and some of Molise (Region 4), and Miscellaneous (Region 5). From there, cities and monuments, and the number of images within a particular monument, were further-subdivided on a numerical basis. What resulted was a series of catalogue numbers following the acronym of the archive. Therefore, the sixteenth photo of the fourth monument of the thirteenth city of the fourth region is catalogued as follows: CBPA_004_013_004_016 (CBPA_Campania and some of Molise_Naples_Duomo_Image16).
Digitizing, Editing, and Archiving
The single most time-consuming aspect of the entire project was the process of digitizing the archive. I divided my time between photographing and editing/uploading the visual materials. Over the course of the summer, as the digitization process unfolded, I developed a system that became more refined and efficient.
Rather than photographing and then immediately editing and uploading the images to the digital archive, I learned that it was more efficient to photograph and then edit/upload the images in larger batches. I usually scanned a few hundred images during a single session, and then at a different time I edited and uploaded the digital images to the archive.
At first I assumed that I would be able to photograph the images and simply upload them to Box. However, the contrast between the darkness of the photo studio and the brightness of the lightbox often left the images I photographed appearing much darker than they were. In fact, more often than not, the physical photos in the archive tend to be very bright, sharply contrasting with the darker image I ended up with on my camera. Therefore, the physical archive played an important role in all aspects of the digitization process. I needed to photograph the photos themselves, and then I needed to refer back to the originals as I edited the digital images in Lightroom. I found myself frequently altering the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. After I edited a digital image, I named the digital file according to the catalogue number I had assigned it in the Key. I also noted the catalogue number in pencil on the back of the original physical photo. Therefore, anyone consulting either the physical or digital archive will know exactly what image they’re looking at.
After about a month of using the photo studio, the photographing process became both methodical and intuitive. I took at least two photos of each physical image, and determined at that moment which of the images would be the best for further editing and uploading to the digital archive. In instances when it was difficult to tell from the camera which image would be best for the digital archive, I would save both images and determine later on, in Lightroom, which one to edit and archive. As I continued with the photographing process and became more attuned to how the image output quality on the camera related to the physical image itself, I was able to tell at first glance if the image I had taken was close enough to the physical photo. This ultimately streamlined the editing process.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
My experience with this archive certainly did not come without its challenges. There is far more that goes into constructing a digital archive than I initially assumed. It is my hope that this project overview reflects the care and time I dedicated to the project. The most important lesson I learned was simply how much time each part of the project would take, and how much planning I needed to do before I began digitizing. Additionally, a project with as many physical parts as this one, with over 2,000 images and many related materials in the form of notes and secondary sources, required close attention to detail so that nothing was lost or misplaced during the physical reconsolidation of the archive and its digitization. My early work creating the Key to the archive proved invaluable to this process and will serve as an important tool for future access to the archive.
Moving Forward and Final Thoughts
On a personal note, working with this archive has been an honor and privilege. Bruzelius’s scholarship initially made such an impact on me as an undergraduate student, that I credit her work with my academic trajectory. Not only did I have the opportunity to work with her as a student collaborator on the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database, but my master’s thesis was also informed by her work. The Stones of Naples served as a key source for my research on religious architecture of Angevin Naples. Having the opportunity to work so closely with so many of the photos that were included in the very book I spent hours studying brought me full circle. I am grateful for the opportunity to assist the O’Donnell Institute in developing the archive. Not only is the archive now easily accessible in its digital form, but the physical archive housed at the O’Donnell Institute will be preserved over the long term. During the many hours I spent working on the archive, I often found myself pausing on beautiful images of church façades and interiors, quirky decorative details that often made me chuckle, and the timelessness of medieval monuments recorded for posterity in the 1990s—multiple levels of history contained within a single image.
As I move on from UT Dallas, I leave the Caroline Bruzelius Photographic Archive in capable hands. The large scale of the archive, along with all I learned working with it, ultimately reflect the importance of the project as well as the care and time taken to ensure the archive’s long-term preservation. With my departure, I leave a list of detailed instructions for completing final tasks, as well as ways to further integrate the archive with the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database:
- Finish photographing, editing, and uploading all photos to the archive. All that remains is the last region (Miscellaneous), consisting of about 200 images.
- Add details to images within the digital archive (including descriptions of images and transcriptions if applicable).
- Professionally scan the large-scale maps that Bruzelius included with the photographs and add them to the archive according to their respective regions and cities.
- Upload images of monuments within the archive to the Visual Docs section of the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.
The Caroline Bruzelius Photographic Archive is, to put it simply, a marvel. The images she collected are engaging and dynamic and, in my opinion, hold great potential for scholarly use by Medieval Southern Italian art historians, myself included. During my time with the archive, I noticed many instances of minor architectural and sculptural details that could serve as potential points of departure for further research. I look forward to seeing how scholars use such an incredible archive to advance the study of Southern Italian Medieval Architecture.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my deepest thanks first to Caroline Bruzelius for creating the archive to begin with and for entrusting its long-term future to the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas. I would like to thank Associate Director of the O’Donnell Institute and my academic advisor Sarah Kozlowski, as well as Program Coordinator Katrina Saunders, for providing me with the opportunity to embark on such a rewarding experience. I extend my deepest appreciation and gratitude to Distinguished University Chair and Director of the Living Architecture Lab, Anne Balsamo, as well as Murilo Pavia Homsi, for graciously welcoming me into their space and building a fantastic photo studio that will be available for continued use by O’Donnell Institute researchers. I would also like to thank Patrizia Nava, Senior Archivist at the University’s Digital Aviation Archives, and Molly Tepera, Special Collections Digital Archivist at McDermott Library, for taking the time to meet with me and Katrina and answer all our archive-related questions. Without such university-wide collaborations, this project would not have come to fruition as successfully as it did.
Learn more about The Caroline Bruzelius Photographic Archive.