The Lens Media Lab is responsible for the world’s largest collection of over 7,500 photographic papers from 1890 to 2010. Originally assembled by the lab’s founder and director Paul Messier, the collection was brought to Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage for digitization, study, and activation.
Now housed at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the unique collection supports research on the history, authenticity, and preservation of photographic materials.
A selection of photographic papers from the Lens Media Lab’s collection.
The Lens Media Lab combined traditional photography methods with advanced data science and AI techniques, offering a comprehensive study of photographic materials.
It was also deeply engaged with Yale students, faculty, and the New Haven community through a variety of projects.
In an age where darkroom practices are fading, the Lens Media Lab created crucial resources for preserving and understanding photography.
The Lens Media Lab’s collection is digitized and accessible in LUX, Yale’s centralized collection discovery tool.
It can also be explored through Paperbase, an interactive visual platform that maps the key physical and visual attribute of gelatin silver photographic papers. Paperbase can also be used to analyze material characteristics of photographic papers and can add a new level of context to traditional museum metadata.
For conservators or researchers interested in visiting the collection, please email Christine McCarthy at christine.mccarthy@yale.edu for more information.
LUX is Yale’s innovative cross collections discovery platform that features the LML’s reference collection of photographic papers.
A collection of essays on the history of photographic paper manufacturers from the Lens Media Lab at Yale University by Joitree Alam.
TIPPs allows users to explore the hundreds of photographic samples tipped into international photography journals and manuals published between 1855 and 1900.
A catalogue of manufacturer printing applied to the reverse of photographic papers. This information can sometimes be useful in dating prints and identifying papers.
Paperbase allows users to explore the key physical and visual attribute of gelatin silver photographic papers. It can be used to analyze material characteristics of photographic papers and can add a new level of context to traditional museum metadata.
The tool was launched at the Darkroom to Data Symposium, an event that featured the lab’s research into the material history of black and white photography and provided an introduction on how to use Paperbase.
The View from Here is a photography course that provides access to the material history of photography through the cellphone camera for New Haven area high school students.
The program engages young artists through photography and culminates in an annual exhibition at the Yale Schwarzman Center & on Yale West Campus.
Read more about the Lens Media Lab’s new interactive tool Paperbase in Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society (DVS).
We tested the captioning ability of 10 different vision-language models—models that can be prompted with both images and text and can output text.
Revisit presentations and explore conversations hosted by the Lens Media Lab on August 12th in New Haven, Connecticut.
At a recent symposium, Yale’s Lens Media Lab unveiled a visual platform for studying its unrivaled collection of photographic papers.
