Dust and Noise Seminar, 4 March 2006

On the second day, Anna Magdalena L. Midtgaard, a conservator from Copenhagen Library, presented “The Dust of History and Politics of Presentation”. Her talk was very interesting, because she talked about the real dust, instead of the philosophical or abstract meanings of dust. She explained about the dust she found in the library, on the archives and old manuscript and her conservatory works and policies on saving the library's valuable collection from the harmful dust as well as saving of library's valuable and aesthetic dust on the old manuscript collections.

She gave descriptive and vivid explanation about dust in general and how it is closely related with library and librarians. Dust can be so evil in causing illness for the librarians as well deterioration of library collections. A lot of works need to be done to clean the library as well as to preserve the collection.

Cleaning the dust in the library is not a simple matter. Researchers study different ways on how to clean the dust fast but the activity should not destroy the valuable materials. The dust in the old manuscripts, in particular, should be carefully cleaned as the dust would be able to show the historical values of the manuscript as well.

In her interesting presentation, she presented a lot of pictures and images that give vivid illustration about dust in the library. Her presentation reminds me that the presence of dust is often insignificant but it has the great positive as well as negative impacts which implies serious responsibility in treating the dust. It can be either friend or enemy for people in the library as well as people in general.

Cecilie Mejer from Copenhagen, Denmark, continued with her presentation ”From Dust to Dawn”. Her presentation was about clinical photography of the students (patients) at the blind institute in Copenhagen in the past. She aimed to analyze the pictures of the students from different periods, which include the setting, position, style, lighting, background, etc.

Clinical photography was made by doctors as a medical record to visualize the development of students. Pictures usually made on their arrival and departures showed more talking proof of the blind development than many words.

Her topic was intriguing because she tried to argue that there are relationships among context, period, space and style of the pictures.

In her picture collections, she showed that in the beginning of 20th centuries, only faces were exposed. Later, more things, such as other body parts (hands and legs) background and various settings, were exposed. However, when she was asked about the current practice, she mentioned that the medical photography is still being done, but only organ (such as eyes) were exposed. Her answer is somehow on the contrary of her previous arguments that as the time goes more parts were exposed.