UMBC Archive summer Internship part 2

  

In the middle of the summer, I was finally able to sit down and have a long meeting with Tom Beck, the director of the archive. Being able to speak with him was of the utmost importance for my project. He retired this past July, so I was very grateful to get his input regarding the collection. He was in charge of the archive when the U&U collection was donated to the school, and his memory regarding it was a great source of information for my research. Later into the summer, as he was cleaning out files, he found the paperwork that went along with the donation. From this paperwork, I thus learned that the collection we have is roughly 1/8^th (if not even less) of the total collection of the Underwood and Underwood stock photo prints that were sold in the 1980‘s. Tom explained that the school was offered the complete Underwood and Underwood collection but was uninterested in spending the asking price and housing such a massive collection.

After a few weeks of digging through the collection, I went on to try to match the photos with historical newspaper articles. Using the library database, as well as other historical digitized papers, I searched for key words linked to the photos. For example, I would see a photo of a massive factory fire and search the newspapers for the name of the factory. Other times, I would have the date when the photo was taken and try my best to scan the newspapers published that week in that region. I would look up specific political figures and try to see if the Underwood image was selected to be published in newspapers. This was something that I was very eager to see, as I wanted to be able to compare, contrast, and build a case surrounding the various images published in differing news outlets. I knew that many of these images were newsworthy, and that many Underwood images could be found in historical paper. However, as I spent hours trying to connect the prints to the papers I failed to find direct links. Even the most well-known socialites, political figures, major accidents, and military events were close to impossible to match up. My goals for my entire thesis were dependent on this step providing support and evidence, but it was becoming increasingly clear that it was not going to be possible. Finding bias, subjectivity, and noticing choices that publications made in their image choices between Underwood and Underwood images was unmanageable without first matching the images with the papers. Undeterred by this major obstacle, I decided to dive back into the photo folders and look for other interesting material to better understand this collection.