A Preliminary Inventory of the Karl Herbert Mayer Photographic Collection, Graz

Project Report 1

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20376/IDIOM-23665556.14.pr001.en

Christian Prager (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn)

This is the first in a series of technical reports that will be presented by members of the research project Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya (TWKM), which was recently initiated in the Department of Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn. The goal of this report series is to provide information about recent research activities, to document work‐in‐progress and to provide technical background information concerning the computational infrastructure of the project.

The present report is concerned with the project’s efforts to digitize the photographic archive of Karl Herbert Mayer, Graz (Austria), and to integrate it into the project’s digital archive of Maya inscriptions. For this purpose, the author conducted an initial survey to obtain an overview of the photographic archive of Karl Herbert Mayer in Graz.

The Archive

Over the course of a three‐day visit to Graz (June 26 to June 28, 2014), the author conducted documentary work at the office of Prof. Karl Herbert Mayer. Prof. Mayer is known for the field work that he has conducted in the Maya area over the past forty years and for his numerous publications on provenanced and unprovenanced Maya objects that feature hieroglyphic inscriptions and imagery. Throughout the past several decades, Mayer has compiled a substantial archive comprising thousands of slides and images of Maya art, architecture and writing. While the TWKM project was being prepared in 2011, Mayer and TWKM agreed that his photographic collection of Maya monuments would be partially integrated into the digital text database of the project. In a written statement signed by Prof. Mayer and dated September 15, 2011, Mayer grants the project the right to use and publish his photographs in print and online as a collection in the database whose designation will reflect the name of the rightholder reflected in the pending title “KHM Photos Maya”.
The archive material includes several thousand b/w and color negatives and slides, which are archived in chronological order in file folders and boxes, and prints featuring images of Maya monuments in their respective contexts, which are sorted in alphabetical order according to site names. The material is stored in file folders (b/w negatives, prints) and card boxes (color negatives). In order to facilitate the digitization process, Prof. Mayer has agreed that the material will be dispatched to Bonn and digitized into both high resolution and TIFF format at the TWKM office with the support of student assistants. The digital images, together with their relevant descriptive data (metadata), will be integrated into the TextGrid working environment using a data entry system (front‐end) that is currently being developed and programmed by the project’s metadata specialist, Franziska Diehr, and programmer, Maximilian Brodhun, both of the Niedersächsische Staats‐und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (SUB). This semi‐automatic data entry system generates XML documents, providing the necessary image information (so‐called metadata) and linking it to the corresponding digital image in order to integrate the XML documents and image data set into the virtual working environment of TextGrid.

Archival Material

During the three‐day visit, seven sections of the photographic archive were inspected and documented.

• A set of 15 document file folders entitled “Sculptures with Provenance” that contain color and b/w prints of Maya monuments, sorted in alphabetic order according the name of the archaeological site. On the back side of each print, Mayer gives the name of the site, the designation of the monument, the year of exposure, an archival number that serves to locate the original negative, and in some cases additional information, such as size of the monument. Most photographs were taken by Mayer himself between the mid‐1970s and the present. However, Mayer also includes in this collection of prints a few photographs by other authors, whose names and further information are usually indicated on the back side of the print. Mayer emphasizes that copyright must be respected/taken into consideration and requests to use these materials must be directed to the original copyright holder.

• Three files folders bearing the title “Ancient Maya Murals,” which feature several hundred of prints of painted imagery and hieroglyphic texts. The prints are ordered alphabetically according to the name of the archaeological site. Most photographs were taken by Mayer, although a few come from other sources, in which cases the rightsholders’ names are usually noted on the back of the photograph.

• One file folders with the designation “Maya Graffiti,” which contains around 100 printed images, most of which are the work of Mayer. These prints are ordered alphabetically according to the name of the site of discovery/localization. In most cases, Mayer provides the name of the site, the year of the photo shoot, as well as the number of the negative slide as a finding aid. These files will be sent to Bonn in order to be digitized.

• One file folder entitled “El Chorro,” which consists of some 300 prints and photocopies of images and drawings of monumental sculpture and inscriptions from the Maya site of El Chorro, Peten. It represents the current stage of Mayer’s as yet unfinished project to publish a corpus of inscriptions from that site. Drawings from the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions archives are also included in this section of the archive, but they may not be reproduced or published by the TWKM due to copyright restrictions. This file folder will also be sent to Bonn for digitization. Summary: according to our calculations, archive sections 1-4 consist of about 4,820 single‐photo prints, most of which were taken and compiled by Mayer as reference and working material.

• A large corpus of b/w negatives exhibiting Maya art, architecture and writing. It is held in 9 yellow file folders in the basement of Prof. Mayer’s office. According to the survey, this archival section consists of 597 film rolls, which are cut in strips of 6 comprising of 36 shots each, and thus contains a total of around 21,500 images stored? in chronological order. Each film strip of 36 shots is filed in an archival sheet and numbered systematically by Mayer. The b/w photographs date to between 1975 and 2006. Mayer reports that he preferred to use color films in his later work. The results of our survey in Graz indicate that this portion of the photographic archive is mostly complete; only a few negative slides are missing. Missing files are indicated in the inventory below. For all negative films, Mayer provides a contact print as a finding aid. According to Mayer, most of these b/w negatives were never printed and thus remain unpublished.

• Roughly 87 unsorted films currently stored in small boxes. They include photographs of Maya objects, touristic and private subjects. Each file contains a contact print, which enables the user to locate specific photographs. The negative strips are numbered and the images from archive sections 1‐3 were printed from the negatives stored in this collection. The color negative images are estimated to number around 3,100 items.

• Karl Herbert Mayer’s archive of slides was initiated in the late 1960s and consists of 570 doubleboxes that provide space for around 41,000 color slides. According to Mayer, his collection of slides not only includes Maya objects photographed during this field trips, but also touristic and private subjects, such as plants, animals or food. A complete survey was not possible over the course of the short, three‐day stay in Graz.

Summary

The survey indicates that the photographic archive of Karl Herbert Mayer includes nearly 70,000 images, currently stored in the form of b/w and color negatives, slides and prints. However, this figure also includes private or touristic subjects and other images not related to the Maya area. An estimated 40,000 images will be relevant for our project and will therefore be digitized over the next two years.

Working Schedule and Future Plans

Prof. Mayer has agreed that archive sections 1‐5 will be transported to Bonn within the next few weeks in order to facilitate the digitization process at the TWKM office. TWKM will organize and cover the costs of the transport. Karl Herbert Mayer, in turn, has granted permission to use and publish his own photographs in print and online. In exchange, he will receive DVDs with the digital images of the (his?) archive and access to the project database as soon as it is available. Future visits to Graz by members of our research team are anticipated, but have not yet been planned.

Inventory

The following inventory contains detailed descriptions of the above‐mentioned archival collections. In the first column, the name of the collection is given as denoted above. The second column provides the description or classification of the individual items in the collection; the third column contains the designations found on the slides or files as well as, the names of the relevant archaeological sites or museum; and the fourth column provides the approximate number of images contained in that particular collection.

1 – Sculptures with Provenance

2 – Ancient Maya Murals

3 - El Chorro

4 - Maya Graffiti

5 - B/W negatives

Downloads

Project Report 01