It has to be photographed before it perishes – but how it is done matters

A conversation with photographer Péter Peti

The word digitisation is heard a lot these days, but what exactly does it mean?

It is a common misconception that photographing an art object is the same as digitisation. When a museum or collection takes a photograph of an art object, this is usually done for some specific purpose, e.g. to promote an exhibition or for the web. But unfortunately, people often think that this takes care of digitisation too. However, the only kind of image capture we can call digitisation is one that is made with the best technology available at the time and with the greatest possible care, for archiving and research purposes.

We can speak of digitisation when, as a result, the art object becomes visually researchable. By art object I mean paintings, sculptures, textiles, buildings... or even a flea in an insect collection. Anything that our present culture regards as valuable. Digitisation also ensures the preservation of these cultural assets, since the digitally recorded state survives even if, say, the original painting burns in a fire.

How much does a really good-quality photograph show of the art object?

We once digitised an embroidered tapestry. In the image you can see both the weave of the fabric and the embroidery technique. Moreover, when we later examined the image closely, we also found a spider egg sac on the fabric – it is so clearly visible that the species of spider could be identified. Today the most modern technology allows such resolution and detail that we obtain precise information about the specific condition of the material, e.g. whether it is growing mould or has been attacked by pests. Who knows what research this information will be valuable for after a long time has passed? But it can already be used now, for conservation purposes.

This is the great additional benefit of image-based digitisation: for example, when a book is photographed, we preserve not only the content of the book, that is, the text, but we also retain information about what material and with what technique it was printed. This way, later on not only historians and linguists will find the book interesting, but – because of the fibre structure of the paper – also specialists in printing technology and the paper industry, or even biologists.

Still, the art object itself must also be preserved, if only for the sake of chemical and physical research.

Yes, and digitisation plays a major role in this preservation as well. If we create digital holdings of research quality, the original object will need to be handled far less often afterwards. Daily use endangers the art object, as well as old documents and books. In university libraries it is a common situation that they have only one or two copies of old course notes and drawings. But because these are part of the curriculum, they are handled a lot and fall apart rapidly. Digitisation would solve this at once, and students would also have easier access to the book in question.

What is more, during digitisation the parts that have already faded can be enhanced and visibility problems corrected, so that the information becomes easier to take in. Indeed, for research purposes it is often possible to make visible even parts that have been overwritten, scraped away or smudged – sometimes even in normal-spectrum images.

What other technologies are available besides photography of outstanding quality?

By digitisation we generally mean image capture in the visible range and its processing – and processing is crucial. That is because the finished images can be used, and enriched with information, in a great many ways. There are now electronic libraries in which it is possible to run text-based searches in the full text of documents and also in the metadata that goes with them. The available information can be linked to the image files. For example, if studies have already been made on a drawing, or references to it exist, these can all be linked together in the digital space.

Or, for example, it is possible to create virtual material with a spatial effect so that we can view art objects from angles from which we have never seen them before. Making 3D recordings is time-consuming and requires suitable technology, but they offer an experience never seen before. And to mention a particularly tangible use as well: digitised three-dimensional objects, such as carvings, can be reproduced with a 3D printer or by CNC milling.

How are the spatial recordings made?

Today’s technology is able to map space on the basis of photographs. Only reference points are needed, and the object has to be photographed from several angles. Then, using complex algorithms, the dimensions and the surface structure of the object can also be determined. In the past this was only possible with lasers; today it can be done with cameras as well, and what is more, this way the details and colours on the surface of the object are visible too. Recently we made a 3D recording of a glass sculpture. It showed the object from such a fascinatingly new perspective that in the end the 3D recording was exhibited next to the sculpture at Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest.

So let me sum up: presenting digital material in an interesting and clear way is just as much a part of digitisation as photography or scanning. Is that right?

Yes, because everything depends on the accessibility of information. A good digitisation system ends in a professional electronic library. Of course, electronic libraries have existed for quite a few years now, but most of them do not contain the documents themselves, only the titles. Or the texts cannot be searched comprehensively. The most up-to-date digitisation technology, however, makes character recognition possible – that is, it treats the photographed book pages not only as images but also as text. This applies to letters and numbers found in graphic content too. Think, for example, of captions or the labels on technical drawings.

Text-based search of the full content also makes it possible to recognise connections between individual documents that we had never even thought of before. Especially now that the most modern search engines also search for synonyms and inflected forms. This makes researching, grouping and analysing digitised content very efficient. Relevant content can be filtered in a matter of moments and surveyed easily. And of course, the metadata that was collected for individual books during classical library processing is not lost either.

How urgently is digitisation needed? Wouldn’t it be worth waiting until the technology becomes even more advanced?

There are art objects that are doomed to perish in the short term. For example, statues and sculptures standing outdoors and exposed to the weather, and above all films and photographs. Early photographic negatives can still be enjoyed today; for the most part the information is still on them, even if the base material is worn or cracked. These defects can be corrected very well during digitisation. But the deterioration cannot be stopped – think, for example, of glass plate negatives, in which chemical processes are still going on to this day, destroying the image. Photographs from the 19th century should be digitised right now, and also those from the first third of the 20th century, because they will certainly be ruined. Moreover, the cost of digitisation is lower than that of the careful keeping and preventive conservation of the original images – although of course outstanding, valuable images must be preserved at all costs in their original form as well, say, a Kossuth daguerreotype.

But since we are talking about photography: the generation of photographers who came of age in the great era of photography is still alive today. Those who still “saw Lenin”, that is, Robert Capa or André Kertész. Hungary was at the forefront of photography internationally – just think of Éva Keleti, Demeter Balla, Tamás Féner, János Eifert... and how many of the greats are still alive! We should take advantage of the fact that they can still tell the story of each picture, for example who can be seen in them. If someone digitised even just a tenth of Éva Keleti’s huge archive, and Éva herself provided the pictures with commentary, and we then linked the information to the photographs, it could be an exceptionally valuable resource for theatre history. And we could sit back, knowing that we have left something to posterity from that period.

What does mass digitisation give the average person?

They can benefit from the sharing of knowledge both directly and indirectly. Many people complain about how much unreliable information is floating around on the internet. When digitised materials are published, the amount of meaningful information grows, and while browsing from home (or even from the tram), one can encounter the greatest, and authentic, treasures of culture. Moreover, in a strongly visual form, which most people find easier to take in than textual content. The world becomes more knowable. For today’s teenagers, the internet is already self-evidently the number-one source of information. Their thirst for knowledge has to be served, for the sake of the future as well.

Through digitisation, humanity’s level of knowledge rises. After all, whatever is digitised can be easily searched, analysed and shared. Huge insights will follow when digital content that is “unaware of one another” becomes linked. This can even be helped by artificial intelligence. To mention just one example: the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has an idea that the Hungarians did not reach the Carpathian Basin through a lengthy migration, but within a single generation. This theory arose because scholars noticed photographs of certain art objects held in Ukrainian and Russian museums.

I like to quote a sentence by Iván Horváth, a literary scholar who also works on information theory: humanity’s culture will be safe when every child has the canonised knowledge of the world, digitised, in their pocket. According to our current knowledge, this is not far off. Storage is getting cheaper at an ever faster pace, and with modern storage techniques the data is verifiably safe. The 2–20 petabytes that can describe the world will be pocketable by the end of the 2020s.

How is the digitisation of cultural assets progressing in Hungary and in the wider world?

Abroad, it is going on at a great pace. The world is being digitised in huge professional labs, from fleas all the way to photographing huge paintings in different spectra. Without jealousy or overprotectiveness about content, they publish the materials on the web in the best quality. And far from decreasing, the number of visitors to physical collections is increasing as a result. Anyone who has looked digitally at a Van Gogh sunflower, seeing even the streaks of paint and the dynamics of the brushstrokes, will want to see it in person too.

In Hungary, the situation is for the time being rather poor. Collections have little money, and what they do have they spend on poor-quality equipment. Equipment, storage space and trained specialists are all lacking. It would be better to set up digitisation labs at regional level. As a result, little material of research quality is produced, and even that is not shared. Some collections declare that their task is not digitisation but collecting objects. That is, if the storeroom ever springs a leak, the information is lost. Shall I list examples from just the past year? Not digitising is not an option.

Boglárka Cziglényi