Thursday 16 June Plenary Session
Has The Past Got a Future ?

Day two saw the event really get into its stride. Registered delegates crossed the bridge to Žofin Palace all morning, eager to meet new people and do some business. After some lunch, they had the option to attend the plenary session. This comprised of a series of speeches all addressing the theme of this year’s congress, ‘Has  the Past Got  a Future?’.

After a short welcoming speech from Alan Smith (President of CEPIC), Bamber Gascoigne took the stage to share his thoughts on whether the past has a future. Mr. Gascoigne is a distinguished UK author, museum trustee, broadcaster and website creator of historyworld.net. He emphasised the enormous impact the internet has already had on the picture industry and pointed out that it will only become more significant as time passes. He shared his vision of a future in which the picture industry makes more creative and liberating use of the internet as a research tool. Mr. Gascoigne would like to see the internet as ‘a great public bazaar in which everyone, everywhere is welcome’. Rather than be afraid of the possibility of image theft, the picture industry should see open access to the internet and all the images it contains as an opportunity to be explored adventurously. Mr. Gascoigne suggested the use of networked ‘timelines’ which connect related images held on different sites so that the researcher can access a broader range of information more easily and through reliable and legitimate sources.

Next up was Leslie Hughes from ImageState UK who examined the impact of history and past trends on current photography. She made the point that the past is really a prologue to the future. The future is not only linked to the past, it grows and flourishes from it. The audience were shown a number of images which illustrates this. Modern advertising campaigns were shown to draw inspiration from famous photographs or historic events which have been well documented on film. Modern fashion trends were shown to be reinterpretations of past trends. History moves in cycles, so that the past will one day be the future too. Ms. Hughes pointed out that it is essential we understand this if were are to interpret the present.

Didier Lénart of Bridgeman Giraudon, France addressed the audience on the subject of bridging the gap between commercial and non commercial art libraries. It is important that these two seemingly separate manifestations of art archives are brought together otherwise they will grow further apart and the industry will be dangerously fragmented.

Frank Perrier of Roger-Viollet, France talked about the Archive of the City of Paris, a massive collection of over 2 million images, all collated from various museums. This followed on from Didier Lenart’s speech in that this archive is going to be made available by virtue of a public/private initiative. There are plans to digitise all the existing images and take digital photos of all the artwork in the archive. This exciting project will make the collection accessible world-wide. It is hoped it will be operational by 2006.

Eileen Flanagan of CORBIS gave an intriguing talk on CORBIS’ work with the famous Bettmann Archive. She talked about the importance of preserving the past for the future. Photographs are our collective memory and it would be a tragedy to allow it to fade. This presented CORBIS with a heavy responsibility when it acquired the Bettmann archive’s 11 million images. Ms. Flanagan talked through the various techniques employed to preserve the collection, much of which had already been damaged, including moving it to a special refrigerated storage facility in some disused mines in Pensylvania. She painted an intriguing picture of the difficulties faced in preserving photographic images so they can be enjoyed by future generations.

Stefan Ohlson of Projektor Utbildning AB, Sweden delivered a talk emphasising the importance of getting the technical side of digital imagery correct in the first instance. According to Mr. Ohlson, most modern digital images will not meet the standards for the future. People in the business of handling digital images need to educate themselves in the finer details in order to avoid costly processes in the years to come. Mr. Ohlson suggested that one way of avoiding this is to always inbed a colour profile in the image to avoid unnecessary variation. He looks forward to a time when there are set industry standards for the technical quality of images.

James West of Alamy UK concluded the plenary session with a vision of image trading in 2010. Like Mr. Gascoigne, Mr.West emphasised the importance of digital technology to how business will be done in the future. Costs of digital storage of images is falling and will continue to plummet. As searches produce such large numbers of returns, it will become increasingly important to evolve new techniques which place emphasis on a low number of high quality images from a single search. In order to achieve this, the industry will need to adapt to lengthy and costly keywording activities.

Finally, Jeffrey Burke of PACA publicised the P.L.U.S programme. Standing for Picture Licensing Universal System, P.L.U.S is an international non-profit trade association which aims to simplify and facilitate the licensing of images. It hopes to do this by working with people from every part of the picture industry to achieve a standardised universal licensing language, a pricing template for the industry. If it works, it is set to revolutionise picture licensing. P.L.U.S is currently looking for volunteers to sit on the international committee. It hopes to release P.L.U.S v.1.0 for free by Summer 2006.

All that then remained before delegates could enjoy welcome cocktails at a bar by the river was for PACA to publicise its tenth annual international congress at the Crowne Plaza in Redondo Beach, Southern California from the 14-16 October 2005 and for CEPIC to present a short film outlining the wonders of Biarritz, France, the location of next year’s CEPIC congress taking place from the 7 – 11 June. Hostesses distributed 600 basque cookies, direct from Biarritz, to the delegates.

Friday 17 June Legal Seminar Personality Rights

One of the most important issues to affect the industry today: personality rights.

This general term is used to describe the rights an individual has over the use of their image, whether that be a literal depiction of their body, in part or in whole, or a depiction of an element of their image, for example a specific identifiable stance used by a famous pitcher in baseball. These laws vary wildly from territory to territory and can be used to protect celebrities and mundane individuals alike. This has obvious repercussions on the picture industry.

The organisers assembled an impressive international panel of experts to talk on the subject. They were RA Michael Philippi of Rechtsanwalte PRINZ law firm, Germany; Maitre Thierry Lacoste of French law firm Meyrier Fayout Lacoste; Prof. Thomas Dreier, professor of private law at the University of Karlsruhe; Prof. Marianne Levin, professor of private law at the University of Stockholm in Sweden; Nicola Solomon of Finers Stephens Innocent in London and Nancy Wolff, legal advisor to PACA in the United States. Delegates found the complexities of different laws hard to follow but were left in no doubt as to the importance of being vigilant in order to protect themselves.

The delegates also had the opportunity to attend the European premier of a Award winning new documentary film by French Canadian photographer and filmmaker Gilbert Duclos. ‘La Rue Zone Interdite/Off Limits’ tells the story of Duclos’ battle to defend street photography from litigation from the people in the photographs. It also sensitively examines the beauty of the act of taking a photograph and the role photography plays in modern society. Although the film centers on a specific court case in Quebec, the issues the film raises affects the whole photographic industry.

In 1998, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled against Duclos in a law suit filed against him ten years earlier by a young women whose photograph he had taken in the street many years before. When the image appeared in an arts journal, she had sued Duclos for damages. The ensuing legal battle raised issues which went far beyond the confines of the case itself and soon Duclos was fighting to safeguard the future of the art form he so loves.

The film points out that the threat of more law suits is not limited to Quebec. Already there have been similar cases in Europe and unless the photographic industry puts up a fight there will be many more, effectively stifling a vital form of artistic documentation. French photographer Guy le Querrec sees the Duclos case as the beginning of the end, as he puts it, ‘photography has hit the quicksand’.

‘Off Limits’ is a heartfelt and eloquent piece of film making. It makes its case in the defence of street photography by sensitively examining the beauty of taking a photograph, of capturing a magical moment to share with the rest of humanity. It asks if we are willing to lose the right to publish these moments, to lose the right to memory. Is it right that we should be deprived of this art form for the sake of a few individual’s thirst for money? The issue is not the right to one’s own image, but the right to access our own history and the colorful people who make it.

To obtain a copy of this film please go to www.virage.ca and ask for a copy to be sent to you by post.

Saturday 18 June Technology Seminar
Picture File Standards

The first part of the seminar handled the issue of standards :
Why standards ? Speakers, Richard Clark, Elysium Ltd, JPEG Webmaster, editor and standardisation expert and Andrea de Polo of Fratelli Alinari Archives – Technical Supervisor tackled the questions :  Why standards ? How different standards take different approaches to storing metadata ? What happens with real world applications (eg Photoshop) ? Problems faced and solutions suggested. Where the industry is going ? Safety precautions for practical archiving

Saturday 18 June  Seminar Cutural Heritage

What It Takes