PhotoSeed is an online archive documenting the early history of fine‐art photography, primarily from 1880 to the First World War. Launched in 2011 with over 1,400 works from over 600 artists, the site will eventually top 5,000 images, all from the private collection of photojournalist David Spencer. Eighty‐six Ateliers, or workshops, are currently represented. Some images derive directly from journals, calendars, exhibition catalogues, postcards, and advertising matter. Metadata categories include: photographer; country; medium; year; journal issue; subject, event, or publication; and Atelier.
Some records include extensive contextual notes, occasionally providing contemporary commentary related to the artifact in question, as in the 1897 defence of an innovative composition by English photographer Eustace Calland. The site also provides blog entries and a series of Highlights, pages with information and a slide show of relevant images. Blog entries are informal narratives, and Highlights are selected via a gallery of cover images and provide a more formal discourse. It appears that Spencer himself authors these texts. Although not a scholar by profession, he is a highly knowledgeable, careful researcher and all sources are fully referenced. The site is intended for scholarly researchers as well as “the curious”, although there is an implicit assumption of familiarity with key terminology and figures. For instance, in the Calland note, Spencer names the Linked Ring, without providing information about the photographic society that bears that name. Nonetheless, the collection, and Spencer's informed commentary, will largely satisfy both constituencies.
PhotoSeed is freely available on the web, without a registration/account function. The site is visually stunning and the images load very quickly. The homepage presents a mosaic of random images from the collection, loaded incrementally, followed by appearance of a brief navigation menu, anchored on the right margin throughout the site, and an overlay across the centre of the mosaic with brief text describing the content/purpose of the site. The main navigation options consist of Search the Collection, Highlights, and PhotoSeed Blog, but users can also dive into the collection by clicking on any of the random images populating the mosaic. The mosaic can be refreshed to reveal a new selection of images. De‐emphasised below the primary navigation links are links to the most recent blog entry, an About page, and RSS subscription.
The search interface includes a single keyword search box and 11 menus for selecting/narrowing by category. The latter will be particularly useful for the non‐expert audience. There is no advanced search functionality (e.g. no Boolean searching, no field‐specific keyword search, truncation, or phrase search), but the controlled vocabulary search via drop‐down menus seems adequate given the focused nature of the collection. There is a lightbox layout for the Highlights listing and search results pages. Users are also able to save individual images to a lightbox for sharing via URL, e‐mail, or social media. There is no feature for exporting images or records, although savvy users will know to right‐click on an image to download. In some cases, related images have been collected into Galleries and provided with a gallery record that is findable via search, although there is no means to search specifically for galleries.
The site as a whole is pleasingly uncluttered. The simple logo perched above the right‐margin navigation and a small seal commemorating the site's 2012 Webby Award on the homepage do not unduly distract from the beautiful photographic images. The stylesheet makes use of a small number of attractive fonts, with a generalized impression of old‐fashionedness that brings to mind typesetting contemporary with the collected images. In general the site is easy to read, with the exception of the greyed‐out image captions in the blog entries.
The navigation is refreshingly simple. As mentioned, there are only three options in the main navigation. Within a full‐record screen, links are presented for notes, blog entries, or Highlights pages associated with the image in question. Lightbox navigation is quite clear. However, in places, users may find the somewhat unconventional design and a lack of verbal direction confusing. For example, when the user navigates from a search results screen back to the search interface, the latter appears on top of the results screen, which is greyed out and nearly indiscernible. You believe yourself to be on a search interface page, but it is really an overlay covering only the centre of the screen. You cannot get back to the results using the browser's back button; you must use the rather inconspicuous “X” in the corner of the overlay to uncover the hidden page. There are no help files, merely an administrative e‐mail address at the bottom of the About page.
Although impressive in breadth, the PhotoSeed collection is necessarily limited through acquisition by a single private collector. The absence of works by some of the pioneers who predate the scope of the project, such as John Edwin Mayall, is felt. The online collections of the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona (see www.creativephotography.org/) may be PhotoSeed's nearest equivalent. The chronological scope of the CCP collections is broader, but the geographical coverage is limited to North America. Although not its primary mission, the CCP currently provides open online access to nearly 7,000 images, and there is much potential for expansion with a physical archive of over 90,000 prints by more than 2,000 artists. However, the 74 artists currently represented online pale in comparison to PhotoSeed's 600+, and the latter's search functionality is significantly stronger. The collections of the two sites are more complements than competitors, particularly since access is free for both.
In summary, PhotoSeed presents a valuable collection of fine‐art images from an important era in the history of photography. Despite a few specific navigational problems, finding ability is high and the site's award‐winning design and inclusion of contextual information related to a portion of the collection enrich the user's experience. The price can't be beat. This would be a great resource for arts‐ and design‐focused research guides, particularly on academic and public research libraries' websites.
