This issue is a kind of "light" issue, I think.

A couple of years ago, I was in a New England museum that has a rug collection. I was told that I could take flash photos as long as the flash was internal to my camera rather than a external attachment. The TM has a more restrictive policy that no flash photos of Museum material are permitted.

Would you speak to what actual damage is likely to be caused to textiles by flash photos and what do you think is the basis for the differences in policy between museums concerning the permissability of flash photos.

Thanks,

R. John Howe

Regards, Yon

Yes, commercial issues sometimes intrude but often I think such policies have other grounds.

The TM does not publish its collection actively as a source of revenue. Your explanation may, though, partly explain why the Springfield museum was open to internal flash photos. They have a brief catalog on their rug collection that is seriously out of date and that sold for $7. Hardly a money maker.

Still I'm interested in Sara's thoughts.

Regards,

R. John Howe

With all due respect, i would take issue with much of the content of your last post.

1. It is absolutely true that photoflash is light of intensity comparable to that of direct sunlight. That's very intense, and nobody with any brains would leave his textiles in direct sunlight for very long. But the duration of a photoflash is less than 1/1000 of a second, so 10,000 flash photos (that's a LOT of flash photos) is equivalent to 5 or 10 seconds of exposure to sunlight. That is, museums could allow flash photography freely with no more risk than that taken when bringing the pieces from the nearest automobile into the museum.

2. The copyright issue may be one on which you are not able to comment, but it is related to the subject at hand and not a forbidden topic on Turkotek.

Regards,

Steve Price

Your point about flash photography being annoying to others is well taken, although in an uncrowded museum (like the TM) it is unlikely to be much of a problem for anyone. If this were the usual museum explanation for forbidding flash photography, though, it would at least make some sense. The one about the damage the light does is simply irrational.

As for copyright issues, if we are talking about antique pieces or of items on which no copyright is declared (and those two categories cover just about everything shown at the TM), I don't think there are any copyright issues. You can copyright the text you place by an antique rug, you can even copyright the photo you took of it, but you can't copyright the antique rug itself.

Steve Price

As for the issue of flash, if you're interested in the research, look up the web site for the Image Permanence Institute. They have done significant research of the impact of light (from a variety of sources) on photographs and paper (protein and cellulose, comparable to rugs and textiles, but certainly more readily deteriorated). I am assuming there will be a list of their publications there. Perhaps their work will provide better explanations than I am able to.

I did visit the Image Permanence Institute web pages. Everything I found there had to do with images printed on paper, mostly photographic images. This, of course, means that it all has to do with synthetic dyes. Since one of the differences between natural and synthetic dyes in rugs is the much greater light sensitivity of the synthetics, I'm not sure just how relevant their stuff is to conservation of antique textiles beyond the generality that all dyes are light-labile to some extent.

Steve Price