Creating Visibility

Indexing, Digitizing and Making Accessible the Photo Collection of the Alice Salomon Archive

Project duration: 15/01/2024 - 31/12/2024

Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Sabine Toppe

Project staff: Filiz Gisa Çakır, Friederike Mehl, Katja Teichmann

Abstract:
According to the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”, the focus of this year's digitization project funded by the Digital German Women's Archive is on preserving and making accessible the historically valuable photo collection of the ASA (Alice Salomon Archive).

Images play an important role in historical educational work, as they offer a different approach to topics than texts. The ASA's photo collection is ideally suited for this purpose due to its diversity. The pictures show historical people, institutions and events from the social movements, in particular the so-called old women's movement, as well as social work as a women's profession. The photographs in the ASA include important representatives of the women's movement such as Alice Salomon, Adele Beerensson and Siddy Wronsky, taken by prominent photographers such as Suse Byk, Frieda Riess and Lotte Jacobi.

The diversity is also reflected in the materiality of the photo collection. It consists of individual shots, series and photo albums, which are available in analog and digital form, in prints and negatives, slides and glass plates, and includes images from the mid-19th century to the 1970s and beyond. An extensive donation from relatives of Alice Salomon recently added exciting insights into the family history to the archive's collection, which has grown over decades.

The photos in the ASA have so far been difficult to access. Previously only partially recorded in the database and barely digitized, the photo collection will be fully archived and digitized by the end of 2024. It will be searchable via the DDF's META catalog and - if legally possible - can also be viewed directly online. This year's DDF project will make it easier for researchers, teachers and media professionals to use the images. In addition to the indexing and digitization of the photo collection, accompanying essays and a concept paper on the handling of photo collections in small archives will be produced.

Funding: Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv (DDF, Digital German Women's Archive)

Keywords: Digitization, Historical Photo Collection, Women's Movement, Alice Salomon Archive