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Four years ago, Afterimage carried an interview with F. Van Deren Coke, who had recently resigned as director of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. At that time, there was a great deal of speculation about the future of the Eastman House, which seemed always to carry with it a vaguely-defined fear that Coke’s resignation might be signaling the “beginning of the end”for what had been an enormously important photographic institution.

Charles Hagen gave voice to this apprehension in his introduction to the Coke interview, when he asked: “Can [Eastman House] build on the momentum it gained in the sixties, and remain a source of the most exciting and progressive thought and work in photography, or is it doomed to becoming merely a local landmark, a mausoleum for George Eastman’s ghost, of only peripheral interest to working photographers?”

The answer, as one might have expected it would, seems to be forming in an area between the two extremes. While the House is certainly a more conservative place than it was in earlier years, few people would characterize it as a “mausoleum” or “only peripheral.”

In fact, in terms of sheer quantity of activities, the Eastman House seems to outdo itself each year.

They have participated for several years in a program—administered by the American Film Institute and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts—to copy classic films from deterioration-prone nitrate to the archivally superior film stocks of today.

Also with NEA funding, they created, in 1975, a “Regional Center for the Conservation of Photographic Materials.” Since the opening of the center—which was marred by the angry resignation of the Eastman House’s only full-time conservator, Jose Orraca (see Afterimage, September 1975)—criticism has been that little work has emerged to justify the large amounts of government and corporation money contributed to the program.

Recent announcements have included news of an Oral History Project and of the impending turnover of “Hutchison House” by the University of Rochester to IMP/GEH. (Hutchison House is a smallish mansion, designed to match the Eastman House in style and situated on an adjoining piece of property. It was the home of two of George Eastman’s old and trusted employees.)

A series of free, afternoon movies for senior citizens has been very well-attended, as have such recent exhibitions as “Spirit of Fact: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes”; “Coming Attractions,” which included movie publicity stills; “Image of Industry,” an eclectic selection of American industrial photographs; and “Disc-ography,” which featured photographic and photo-derived record album covers.

I talked with Robert Doherty, Director of IMP/GEH, and Andrew Eskind, Assistant to the Director, about where the museum has been since Afterimage‘s last interview with an Eastman House director, and to find out where it might be going. The immediate impetus for the interview was the 1975 Annual Report, which included an auditors’ balance sheet and a written report from the director, released by the museum late this summer. (A copy of the booklet is available, without charge, by writing the museum c/o Christine Hawrylak, 900 East Ave., Rochester, N.Y. 14607.)

Our discussion took place on Sept. 28, 1976; an edited transcript follows.

Question: The Eastman House published its 1975 Annual Report over the summer. Is this your first public report?

Robert Doherty: It’s the first one that we’ve distributed broadly. Of course, being a 501-3c organization [not for profit, non-taxable organization under Internal Revenue Service regulations-ed.], we have to file annual reports every year. But it’s the first time we’ve ever printed and distributed an annual report.

Q: Is there a reason to do it now?

RD: Just that it’s long overdue. We’re a public, charitable institution that goes seeking funds from various places. The people that we seek funds from have a right to know what the economic status of the institution is. We’ve always furnished them with this information, but in the past we’ve simply xeroxed the certified public accountant’s annual audit. We decided that it would be easier to print them up and make them widely available to anyone who was interested.

Q: The narrative report you made in the beginning of the booklet was very interesting. Many of the points you make in that report emphasize the involvement of the general public in activities at the House. What do you see as the role of the House in the local community—or with the general public—and how does that differ from its role in the photographic community? Or does it differ?

RD: The museum is somewhat of an enigma in the sense that every community needs an art museum and every community needs a science museum or whatever, but I don’t think every community needs a major photographic museum. So we have a role to a very broad community on a national or an international level, but we also have a role relative to the immediate community. We provide services and functions for the immediate community that are not available to people in Chicago or San Francisco.

Q: Many of the new programs and recent exhibitions seem to have more of a popular appeal, as opposed to a scholarly approach. I think of the matinee movies for senior citizens, the “Coming Attractions” show, and the “Image of Industry” show that’s on display right now.

Andrew Eskind: The record jackets show as well.

Q: Yes, definitely.

RD: I think this comes from a couple of different things. It comes from, certainly, my belief that the Museum serves the whole broad field of photography and the role of photography in contemporary society in its broadest sense.

It also comes from the interests of the different people who pass through here in the form of interns and things of this nature. The record jacket exhibit is a classic example. A young lady who was an intern here had an interest in this, so we encouraged her to do this show. We quite purposely schedule things of that nature for the summer months when there’s a wide group of tourists that come here.

The more esoteric things we schedule for the other parts of the year, when people who are really interested in that will come anyway—whether it’s summer, winter, or fall.

Q: Do you see expanding those popular shows further?

RD: Well, we seem to be on a run right now—sort of a series of things. Nancy Hall-Duncan is putting together what I think will be a very important and a very significant appraisal of the whole role of fashion photography in America. This is one that I think will have wide popular appeal, but it’s also a very significant thing.

We’ve also been talking about, and probably will do, a major exhibition on advertising photography. What role has photography played in terms of advertising since 1920, and what impact has this had on the way you and I and everybody else thinks about the world around us? All automobile tires are not that wide and that low and that fat, but this is the way they’ve always been represented. You go down to Sears Roebuck and you pick up the tire and say, “that skinny little thing? That’s not like the picture in the newspaper!” These kinds of things will have this kind of popular appeal.

AE: You can look at it politically, too,—or pragmatically—that in wishing to be supported you have to carve out—just like Jimmy Carter does—the broadest possible base of support among the public. And if you’re going to go out asking the public to support you, you have to appeal to the broader community. It’s very difficult to find support for an operation that’s really restricted to one small corner that’s very purely academic and scholarly. Not to pooh-pooh that at all: there will always be room for it, I’m sure.

RD: For instance, we’re in the process right now of preparing an exhibition on the whole subject of photo fabrication. How it’s used in the intimate, obscure, non-existent world of science and industry that nobody even knows about. We feel this is an important technological aspect of photography.

Q: You mean fabrication of films and photosensitive materials?

RD: No, no. the actual fabrication of machine parts and radio parts and things like this, done by photographic methods. It’s going to be an intriguing exhibition. It’ll be a very small one, but this is a significant part of the whole broad spectrum of photography.

Q: The report, at least as I read it, seems to indicate a drop in membership. In 1974. $92,700 came in from memberships and admissions, and then in ’75 that dropped to $77,000. This was during the same period that admissions, according to the report, increased by 30%.

AE: The membership’s very nearly the same. It’s not growing very fast, but it certainly hasn’t dropped.

RD: The largest part of that was because of the Dryden Theater. In ’74 we had a bumper year on the Dryden Theater in terms of the series ticket sales. The series began in the fall of ’74 and ended in spring ’75. The money was credited to ’74 because that’s when it was collected. That was also the year we ran a whole bunch of very popular films—musicals and things like that. As a matter of fact, we even had problems with the traffic control in the parking lot out here. We had to get the city police out two or three times the summer of ’74 to handle the mobs that were coming.

The other thing is that during the summer series in ’74 we ran two shows. We ran one at seven and one at nine, and it never dawned on us that the people wouldn’t be out of here from the seven o’clock show before the nine o’clock people started coming. So while it did show to the tune of $15,000 in the actual income, it was probably a major blunder on our part.

The Dryden will fluctuate in direct proportion to what we offer for a program. If we—as we did in ’76 during the first of this Bicentennial series—run a silent film period (which you have to do if you’re going to do a history of the American cinema) we’ll get 100 to 150 people each show. If we do the musicals—Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of the ’30s or ’40s—we’ll get the place packed twice over.

Q: Could we talk a little more about the museum’s plans for the next year or two? You started talking about exhibitions-what more is going to be happening there?

AE: There’s a French daguerreotype show coming up. And Heinecken’s coming up next month, along with “Vedutti della Camera”-nineteenth century views of Italy.

Q: Is that like Alinari and Sommer and the topographers?

AE: Right. And then the fashion show comes up in the spring.

RD: Yes, June I think it is. On that French daguerreotype show: we suddenly discovered that of all the extant French daguerreotypes, we probably own about a third of them. So Jan Buerger is putting together a major exhibition of the French daguerreotypes.

Q: What about publications? I noticed that the Southworth and Hawes book is called number one in a series—an “International Museum of Photography Series” or something.

RD: Well, it’s number one in terms of a relationship we have with David Godine. The “Image of Industry” is going to have a publication, also with Godine.

Q: A major book, the size of the Southworth and Hawes?

RD: Yes. Fashion and Coburn will have major ones too.

Then we have a whole bunch of them that are being done in conjunction with other publishers. Dover is doing a reprint of Hine’s Men at Work.

AE: A Camerawork Picture Index.

Q: Who will publish that?

RD: Dover. Then, the University of Chicago Press is doing a microfiche series-you mentioned it in the last issue of Afterimage [September 1976-ed.]. There are two or three that are in the planning stages on that, also.

Oh yes, and Dover’s doing a reprint of all the articles on film that have appeared in Image since the beginning, called Image on Film. They’re also doing the Fardon Album, an 1846, I think it is, album of views of San Francisco.

Q: Traveling exhibitions: do you see expansion there?

RD: I don’t think there’ll be any marked expansion. I think we have about 24 or 5, something like that, on the list. There are a couple of new ones that are in the preparation stage right now.

AE: The record jacket show will travel, but usually something retires to replace whatever goes on new.

RD: Yes. An Arthur Rothstein show will travel, and there are one or two other new ones.

Q: In the narrative part of the annual report, you mentioned that acquisitions will have to be cut back, because the budget is proportionally smaller and also because photographs are more expensive…

RD: You know, prior to 1970, this museum never paid more than $2,000 for anything in the whole place. Today you can buy damn little for $2,000. Walker Evanses used to be $25 to $50 apiece much less than 10 years ago. Retread Walker Evans photographs, now—you know, modern prints from his old negatives—are $900 to $1,200. So where you could get six or eight or ten, 10 years ago-you can buy two or less now.

Q: Do you have plans that might alleviate the situation?

RD: Let’s put it this way: we did a survey of a number of things we had that we’d acquired in the last five years, and we found that the average appreciation of these items, is on the order of 1,600%. Now, there’s no way anybody’s budget, anywhere, is ever going to grow at that kind of rate. I can’t imagine the budget for operating a museum, or just the budget for acquisitions for the museum, jumping 1,600% in five years. That would make the Resurrection look like a magic hat trick.

Q: But if appreciation is such a factor, then if one doesn’t buy now, it will be even more…

RD: I realize that. But the Resurrection, you know, is somewhat unique.

Q: How about film? How do you collect in that area?

RD: That’s virtually impossible to define. There isn’t any place you can go out and buy films, except Black Hawk or some of these outfits that are selling Super 8 or 16 mm prints. But to buy archival material of the kind that we have a great quantity of—there’s simply no place you can go out and buy it.

AE: There’s the black market.

RD: Or the grey market at least.

Q: There are distributors, though, that sell 35mm films, aren’t there?

RD: Where? Name three.

Q: I’d assumed so; I don’t really know.

RD: I don’t know of any…

Q: There is, or there has been, some criticism of the museum’s collecting policy in film: that it’s mainly American commercial film, that there are…

RD: This is true of every museum, everywhere. Every museum takes on the local color of its curatorial staff. And this happens to be Jim Card’s interest, who represents the film department here. One hundred or two hundred years from now, we’ll have gone through three or four more curators of film departments that have other interests. So what’s wrong with that? Obviously you can’t be all things to all people.

AE: You also have to take what you can get. You can’t determine that this is what you want to have, and lay out titles—and it goes for photography as well: if there just don’t happen to be any more Man Rays or Atgets or…

RD: We don’t have any South American, we don’t have any Oriental, we don’t have any African photographs in the collection. We don’t have any Eastern European ones, either.

AE: Regardless of what we might want to collect, if conditions are such that other things are available—are given or offered for sale—then it’s a de facto kind of policy. Things “end up” here.

Q: Does the museum spend very much money on films, or is it mostly donations?

AE: Actually, at the moment the bulk of the additions are probably coming by way of preservation of nitrate material—which is placed here on the condition that we’ll do something with it. So by virtue of the National Endowment for the Arts film preservation grant, in the process of preserving you end up with a title on safety film that you didn’t have before. I think probably more titles are being added to the film list by virtue of the preservation program than by outright purchase of safety film prints.

RD: One of the critical things about the whole film bit is that these things are rotting away. And if we don’t do something about them right now, within a very short time they’re going to be gone forever. So this is a critical, urgent problem.

AE: And there are only three places in the country doing anything about it: the Museum of Modern Art, and us, and the Library of Congress.

We could embrace experimental film and avant-garde and everything else, but the resources only go so far and we’ve made the commitment to sink them into preservation.

RD: The films that are being made, or that have been made since 1950-55 or so, are not in dire peril.

AE: Aside from the fact that the colors are all fading.

RD: Whereas the ones made prior to that time are, and we feel that’s the most urgent and most critical problem.

But, again, you have to take into consideration that if the director of the Metropolitan likes nineteenth century French sculpture, there’s probably going to be an overwhelming amount of effort put into that—to the exclusion, perhaps, of other things. And if Jim Card likes the commercial films of America then that’s probably where the direction and the emphasis is going to go. And I would defend that to anybody, any time, anywhere.

Q: The conservation center: Did the resignation of Jose Orraca have much effect on the plans you had for the conservation center?

RD: None whatever.

Q: So then you’d say that it’s as active as you had wanted all along?

RD: It’s as active as the art and craft of photographic conservation is developed at this point. Like with film, there are many priorities that have to be established. Unfortunately, there is a great scarcity of trained people in the field of photographic conservation. We’re not doing as much as we’d like to do because we simply have not found a well-qualified, trained person in the field of photographic conservation.

Q: Do you see any possibility of the House getting involved in trying to train people?

RD: I think that’s the only way we’re ever going to solve the problem.

AE: Yes. There aren’t people wandering around with those kinds of credentials, so the only answer is to train people. And there’s probably not a better place to do it than right here, because RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology-ed.] happens to be one of the ideal places in the country to pick up the photo chemistry back ground that one ought to have. The museum collection certainly gives an easy opportunity to see more examples of more different processes and get a broader appreciation of the problems represented than any place else. Kodak, even though you can’t just easily tap into it, does represent additional resources—certainly in the area of technical literature.

That’s all available, plus the physical facility here and the opportunity to concentrate, if awarded a traineeship. And we’ll probably be awarding more in the future than we have right now. Alice Swan is the only trainee at the moment.

Q: The University of Rochester recently announced an expanded film study program. How extensive will IMP/GEH’s participation be in that?

RD: It probably will be less than it has been in the past. For several years now we have been offering four or five courses a year at the University of Rochester, taught by the museum staff. With this new grant, the university will continue to rely on the resources of the House for the film study program, in terms of our library and archives and whatever else. But it means that the university is going to build its own staff and faculty for the teaching of a graduate program in film history. So we will continue to be a resource, but probably not have as active a part in the actual teaching. They are going to build a teaching collection of films out there also.

Q: Are there any plans to expand the program in the history of still photography that you run with the University of Rochester?

RD: Bob Sobieszek [curator of nineteenth century photography at IMP/GEH-ed.] is on half-time loan to the university this year with the object of exploring the possibility of a graduate photographic history program within the art department of the University of Rochester. At this point it’s simply an exploratory thing. At the end of this year he will make some kind of a recommendation I assume it will be in the direction of saying that the university ought to set up its own graduate program in the history of photography, since it has this resource at its fingertips. We’ll see what comes of it after that.

Q: Would you say that there would be continued participation with the Eastman House in teaching?

RD: For at least the immediate future, yes. I would think, even if they decided to go whole hog into a graduate program in the history of photography, it would be several years before it was on its own out there. I think there will always be some cooperative effort between the two institutions. But right now we’re just trying to find out what the possibilities are. Hopefully, if Bob comes up with a recommendation to do something, the university will be in a position to implement it.

Q: Would that just be a masters program?

RD: No, at least what Bob is aiming at is a Ph.D. program. But I think it would be premature to say it’s going to be masters’ or Ph.D. or whatever at this stage. We like to think it might possibly develop into a graduate program like Princeton or New Mexico.

Q: There have been a lot of cooperative programs between the University of Rochester and Eastman House. Could you talk about the history of that a bit?

RD: Well, before I came it was a case of where the staff here were moonlighting at the U of R, teaching courses. When I came, we established an institutional relationship: our staff would have a primary responsibility to the museum and be paid by the museum for their time, and if they wanted to teach at the university then the museum would release time for them to teach. It’s in its fourth year now.

Q: As I understand it, even the Eastman House at one point belonged to the University of Rochester.

RD: If you mean the physical property—the building—when Eastman died he left it to the University of Rochester and it became the home of the president of the university. In 1945 when the museum was established, the university gave the house to the trustees of the museum, in the same manner in which they have recently given us the Hutchison House.

Q: Why do they give buildings away?

RD: Well, basically this house was a white elephant. The upkeep cost them rather substantially. At the same time, it fills a need that we have. Now that’s in terms of this house. The Hutchison House, of course, was used for many years. The director of the Eastman School of Music lived there, and when they got a smaller house he moved into that.

In terms of this house, God, just think of the problems of maintaining and supporting and staffing a thing like this for a home for a university president.

Q: Van Deren Coke, in an interview with Afterimage back in October 1972, talked about the problems of directing what he referred to as something comparable to a national park, meaning the house and grounds here, and then at the same time doing the museum. How do you resolve that problem of trying to balance those two?

RD: I don’t find it as much of a problem as he did, but there are many reasons why it isn’t. At that time, Van didn’t really have full control of the resources for the operation of the museum. He didn’t really know and understand what the various elements of the financial background were, and so it loomed as a much more difficult problem for him than it actually turned out to be.

It’s an old building—it’s a house; it’s a residence; it’s not a museum—and old buildings have problems in terms of maintenance. We’ve got too many windows with too much light coming in. We have too many pipes running through the walls that spring leaks and things of this nature which ideally you wouldn’t have in a museum. And while this was a wonderful, fireproof structure when it was built in 1905, by today’s standards it isn’t a fireproof structure.

Q: At one point the rumors were that an archive building, separate from this one, might be constructed.

RD: This is still a possibility. There’s no definite plan, at this point, to build a new building. But we would like to think that in the not too distant future we would be able to announce building plans for an archive, at least. I’m trying to find out. first of all, can we do it and can we get the money to do it.

Q: There’s also talk about using the Hutchison House next door as the archive building.

RD: Well, that was a fond hope we had when we first heard about the possibility of getting the Hutchison House. but again, that’s not a fireproof structure, so that’s out. But it can be used as a conference center. We don’t have a conference room anywhere in the building at the moment, and that would make an ideal conference center. And it can be used for administrative and office space, things of that kind.

Q: If the House was able to build a new research center, would staffing be another priority? In order to expand the amount of hours and the amount of access to people referring to the archives?

RD: A good part of the problem with our existing facilities, again, is that it’s a makeshift arrangement. The whole element of control, the fact that you have to go through the whole bloody house to get there—it’s just a very complex problem. If we can get a new building that is made for this purpose, it will be a hell of a lot easier to control, and a hell of a lot easier to make accessible on a broader time schedule.

There is a real serious problem, this business of space and staff. We have two professional librarians working in the archives now, which is the first time the archives has had a real, professional librarian since the place opened.

Q: Could you clarify the policy on film? I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding as to what kind of access film students have to the collection here.

RD: Generally, it’s the same as the access to the archives, except for one slight complication. Many of the films we have are 35mm nitrate, and the only facilities we have for screening those is the Dryden Theater. Since the Dryden Theater is scheduled for 11 out of the 15 periods a week that it could logically be used, this obviously puts a strain on the ability to screen those. The 16mm material can be shown in the small screening room and that’s a hell of a lot easier. So, somebody who wants to have access to any of this material need only call and make an appointment to see it.

Q: In an interview with the local papers in January 1975, you had strong words for the New York State Council on the Arts regarding their participation in IMP/GEH’s programs. Do you feel the situation has changed?

RD: Well, it’s still too early to tell. We’ve only applied for one grant since that time, and the Council has yet to announce a decision on that. We have, however, been added to their list of primary organizations in New York State, which we weren’t on at the time I made those comments. I would say, though, that if, as was indicated in the state council’s annual report. the Everson Museum of Art down in Syracuse is awarded something like $100,000 tor a year, while we get $25,000, it would take a lot to convince me that that’s equitable.

Q: Returning to the Van Deren Coke article: When asked about the relationship of the Eastman House to the Eastman Kodak Company, Coke told us, “I had very distinct limitations as to the things I could do or could not do,” because of the close relationship. Do you feel those same limitations?

RD: I know of no limitations. There are none. There’s no contact.

Q: But you’ve got four Eastman Kodak executives on the board and, I gather, one person who has retired from the Eastman Kodak…

RD: Three and one who is retired.

Q: And then, one of the points Coke made was that other people who are on the board have family ties to Kodak as well.

RD: But, you know, this is true no matter where you are. I worked for the Rhode Island School of Design 15 or whatever years ago. They have had a long history of being solely dominated by one family during its some 80 years of existence, at that time. The board of trustees was made up of people who were hand-picked by members of that family.

With money from any source, no matter what kind of an institution or organization it is, you’re going to find that there’s this element of control. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s Eastman House or the Metropolitan or the Museum of Modern Art. Do you think the Rockefellers haven’t had some control over MOMA?

AE: In the exercise of that control, though, Bob, what is it that they aren’t letting you do?

RD: Nothing! No one has said no to anything I’ve asked for in almost 4 years that I’ve been here. The staff of the museum and I have made proposals to the Trustees. The Trustees have debated the issues and our score so far, is a good one.