Andrew E. Hershberger, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA

The Medium Was the Method: Photography and Iconography at the Index of Christian Art

Keywords: Index of Christian Art, iconography, photography, photographic objectivity

The discipline of art history depends upon the use of photographs. This should be obvious to anyone who ventures into its academic setting. Slide projectors, slide libraries, collections of study photographs and, of course, lavish reproductions in textbooks and journals all typify the study of art.¹ In fact, the attraction that photography still holds for historians of art could be cited as one of the prime motivations for the invention of the new medium.² That photography heralded a new dawn for art historians as well as artists was perhaps best expressed by the ‘father’ of American photography, Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872). The famous painter and inventor of the telegraph (who almost invented photography too) penned the following remarks on the impact of photography on the practice and study of art:

Artists will learn how to paint, and amateurs, or rather connoisseurs, how to criticize, how to look at Nature, and therefore, how to estimate the value of true art. Our studies will now be enriched with sketches from nature which we can store up during the summer, as the bee gathers her sweets for the winter, and we shall thus have rich materials for composition and an exhaustless store for the imagination to feed upon. ³

The Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University was the first academic programme in the United States devoted to the study of art.⁴ It is not surprising that this department still shares a building with perhaps the greatest monument to the theoretical and practical relationships between art history, photography, and now digital media that has ever existed: the well-known Index of Christian Art (http://ica.princeton.edu). The Index, founded by Professor of Medieval Art Charles Rufus Morey in 1917, now physically contains nearly a quarter of a million photographs of medieval art, and has likewise become one of the largest online image databases on the Internet. With four duplicate sets of its photographs at Dumbarton Oaks, the Getty, Utrecht University, and the Vatican, the Index is one of the largest collections of photographs and digital images assembled at any time, past or future (http://ica.princeton.edu/location.html). All of these images depict about seventeen different media, including manuscripts, metalwork, sculpture, painting, and glass among others. They have also been organised by location, with various other primary cataloguing fields including figures, scenes, nature, objects and miscellany.⁵

A second archive of thoroughly cross-referenced 3 x 5 inch cards accompanies this massive body of photographs. According to the Index’s website, these text cards ‘can presently provide access to complex information on approximately 200,000 photographic reproductions of Christian art in the east and west from early apostolic times up to A.D. 1400.’ ⁶ The thrust of this ‘complex information’ is iconography. Literally meaning ‘image writing’, iconography attempts to answer questions about the theme or subject matter of works of art.⁷ Interestingly, these ‘subject’ cards have always outnumbered the photographs, at times by as much as five to one. Today there are probably over a million cards. The creation of new paper photographs continues in 2004 but all new text cards have been abandoned for electronic files on each image. As a group, the paper and digital cards offer iconographical data on all the diverse subjects that appear in the art works, about 26,000 subjects in all ‘starting with Alpha and Omega and ending with [Saint] Zwentibold of Lorraine.’ ⁸

The Index sponsored a commemorative conference at Princeton in 1997 to celebrate eight decades of operation.⁹ Distinguished international speakers participated in an intense, two-day event organised by the Director of the Index, Colum Hourihane. The first day focused on the practice of iconography, the second on the theory behind this methodology.¹⁰ As these concepts indicate, the connection between the Index and iconography runs deep and has been well documented. ¹¹

As a young and probably overeager historian of photography experiencing this 1997 conference, I could not help but notice that none of the eleven total presentations that I attended on both days explicitly acknowledged nor discussed the fact that the method of iconography, in practice and in theory, depends upon the use of photographs (especially on the scale of the Index). Right then I started to consider the idea that perhaps some iconographers felt that photographs of art provide the researcher with an unproblematic source of evidence. Continuing to explore this supposition seemed to me then, as well as now, to be an important prerequisite to the theory and practice of iconography, perhaps even to the study of all art historical methods that utilise comparisons and analyses that would be impossible without photographs.

Such an exploration could illuminate aspects of photo theory and digital theory too. For instance, in the most recent history of the Index, published in 1998, author Isa Ragusa claimed that ‘there was no model for the method of study of iconography that Morey had in mind’ when he started the project in 1917.¹² This claim is not entirely correct. Instead, I would argue that the medium of photography itself was the model for iconography during the first period of the Index’s existence. Which brings up the question: Is the new digital medium and the Internet likewise a model for iconography at the Index today and/or in the future? Thus, this paper examines the theory and production of the photographs and text cards in the Index during two periods, focusing on the time when the Index began in the early twentieth century, and then briefly speculating on how or whether it has been transformed within the digital present.

Charles Rufus Morey (1877-1955) began the project that would become the Index with two shoeboxes as his initial archive.¹³ Morey taught his first course at Princeton in 1906 and proceeded to become ‘one of the most renowned scholars of the history of medieval art’.¹⁴ He ‘led the department toward the study of art as a product of the historical context in which it was produced.’ ¹⁵ Curiously, Morey’s own teaching philosophy might be seen to problematise his initial drive to found the Index. For instance, the topics he recommended to students working on honours theses make plain ‘his view of the importance of contact with actual medieval objects’, especially at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Princeton University Art Museum. Other faculty in the Department held this view as well, ‘demonstrating Princeton’s commitment to the ideal method of studying art—firsthand exposure to the objects’. ¹⁶

On the opening page of his foreword to Helen Woodruff’s book, The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, published in 1942, Morey stated that the Index ‘at first was planned only as a listing of subjects and objects of early Christian art’. ¹⁷ Morey undoubtedly meant by ‘objects’ all the paintings, sculptures, and various other media that to his mind constituted ecclesiastical medieval art. Yet, in his three-page foreword Morey did not mention any of these media. The word ‘photograph’, however, does appear on the third and last page, when he described the first two photographic ‘copies’ of the Index made in 1939.¹⁸ He stated: ‘The Washington copy includes both subject cards and photographs; in New York only the subject-catalogue was reproduced’. ¹⁹ Morey thus left his reader to deduce that the photographs in question were equivalent to ‘object cards’ or made up the ‘object-catalogue’.²⁰ Apparently something as ‘objective’ as a collection of photographs of other art works required little if any explanation or discussion.²¹

It seems plausible that Morey chose to include photographs in the Index, photographs specifically created for iconographers, because he—like Morse—perceived them to be ‘sketches from nature’, images that could teach us something about ’ ‘how to look’ at art. In other words, Morey used photographs in the Index as ‘objective’ representations of medieval art. From a photographic historian’s point of view, however, one might argue that Index photographs, like all photographs, were and are subjective interpretations of the objects they represent. While that critique may apply, I will instead first accept Morey’s claim and attempt to determine how this was possible. After all, it is certainly the case even today that many photographs used for art historical purposes, including digital image databases, are still assumed to be at least partly objective. In that sense, this paper should shed some light on the question of whether or not it matters that iconography, digital image archives, and perhaps even art history itself, requires the use of such ‘objective’ photographs.

An approach to these problems can be stated in two questions regarding theory and practice respectively. First, what were the Index’s standards for its photographs? Second, how did the Index produce its photographs? Isa Ragusa, the aforementioned Index Reader and researcher, has written one of the most comprehensive essays that touches on all of these issues. In her two-part Observations on the History of the Index, she argued that ‘the Index material is presented in as impersonal and unprejudicial manner as possible. This requirement of objectivity’, as she called it, ‘has dictated the basic form of the Index’, a form that intentionally ‘avoids’ ’chronological, stylistic, qualitative, or other judgments’.²² In fact, Ragusa later called this supposition ‘the rule of objectivity’.²³ She likewise stated: ‘the Index is set up so that the evidence is presented in as objective a way as possible in the description, and—better yet—by making the visual evidence available alongside the verbal’.²⁴ Clearly, Ragusa claimed that the photographs were, and/or are, the most objective of all Index material.

During his tenure as its previous Director, Brendan Cassidy published several articles on the Index. In the most recent of these from 1993, he identified ‘three main sources’ of problems for the Index: ‘1. The nature of medieval art objects. 2. The nature of iconography. 3. Our dependence on photographic images’.²⁵ However, perhaps inspired by Morey and in turn inspiring Ragusa, Cassidy argued repeatedly that the Index’s photographs provide an objective source of evidence:

If photographs are only a substitute for the real work of art then verbal descriptions are even less satisfactory. Our textual descriptions however accurate or detailed are no substitute for images of works of art. In our descriptions we attempt to convey what the discipline of art history has traditionally deemed are the most iconographically significant features of a work of art. However, what one generation considers significant is not necessarily the same as that which will be significant for subsequent generations. ²⁶

Thus, Cassidy spelled out one of the benefits of photographic objectivity. Index photographs provide the means for art historians of each generation to check the iconographical descriptions on the Index's subject cards against their own perceptions of an ‘objective’ representation of each work. In other words, the photographs provide a solution to the problem of the iconographer's own ‘period eye’.²⁷ Rather than simply relying on the accuracy of the description on the subject cards, the ‘objective’ photographs allow each person to rewrite the iconography using his or her own set of historical biases.

Cassidy’s second argument regarding the objectivity of Index photographs revolved around their efficiency in presentation. While describing the ongoing project to computerise the Index and digitise its photographs, Cassidy predicted that this advantage of objectivity would only be enhanced in cyberspace. ‘If I query the database for examples of a particular theme it would make more sense for me to see the answer as images rather than text’, he argued. ‘Images convey more information. I can choose more quickly and accurately what interests me from a succession of pictures rather than from trying to visualize what works look like from descriptions.’²⁸ (Most, if not all, image databases are designed this way today, showing a succession of thumbnail images as the ‘result’ of any particular search.) Here, Cassidy downplayed the usefulness of the subject cards almost to the point where they no longer become helpful sources of information in comparison with the object cards or photographs.

Cassidy’s third argument contains the first obvious clue to a standard for Index photographs. ‘As iconographers’, he argued, ‘we are interested in the details of images. The expression ‘God resides in the details’, which has been attributed to just about everyone with the power of speech, from Flaubert to Panofsky to Aby Warburg, would accurately sum up the focus of our interests’.²⁹ The photographic standard for which Cassidy seems to be arguing might be summarised as the clarity standard. For photographs of works of art to provide access to the detailed scrutiny Cassidy desired, the photographs would have to be of a certain sharpness and of a certain size. In any case, Cassidy in general offered strong support to Morey and Ragusa’s claim of photographic objectivity.

In 1990, current Index staff member Lois Drewer published an essay entitled ‘What Can be Learned from the Procedures of the Index of Christian Art’.³⁰ Drewer’s analysis of the intricate process that has yielded the subject cards hints at another photographic standard at the Index. According to her, the iconographical ‘description is written in a rather stylized form of natural language, and considerable effort has been exerted toward consistency in the vocabulary’.³¹ Separating herself here somewhat from her colleagues, however, Drewer added a statement regarding ‘objectivity’ that most of the other writers have conspicuously avoided or left to the reader to intuit:

As we are all acutely aware by now, describing a work of art is not a value-neutral activity, no matter how ‘objective’ one tries to be. On the simplest level, choices have to be made—about the order in which figures and objects are named; the level of detail to include; for example, costume elements? decorative motifs? colors?; and the degree of interpretation of activities and gestures represented in narrative scenes—are figures conversing? arguing? or merely standing beside one another? ³²

The ‘choices’ that Drewer identified must have been made during the production of the photographs too, perhaps even some of the same types of questions appeared in both arenas. If encountered often enough, similar decisions for these questions would then have standardised answers or, simply, standards. For example, the efforts to maintain ’consistency’ on the subject cards arguably would have crossed over into the photographs as well. Perhaps ‘consistency’ is another of the standards we seek.

Drewer noted that most of this standardisation occurred at one time in the Index’s history. That moment is a crucial one. As she pointed out, ‘In the 1930s under the direction of Helen Woodruff a further systematization of working methods was carried out, and Gothic art up to 1400 was added. The system which had been evolved by the end of the 1930s is basically the one in use today, with of course some modifications of details, and the addition of many new subject headings.’ ³³ Drewer cited specifically Woodruff’s 1942 book, The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University. As we recall, Morey contributed the foreword and presumably his stamp of approval. Not surprisingly, their ideas are intertwined in this text.

The aspects of the Index that required explanation in Woodruff’s book can be found on the table of contents. There one encounters the following headings: Introduction; Subjects of the Index; Technical Details; Sample Descriptions; Chart. ³⁴ It is telling that Woodruff did not devote a single chapter to the Index’s collection of photographs. This absence on the contents page accurately reflects the fact that the book as a whole barely mentions the photographs.

The subject cards, on the other hand, concerned Woodruff and Morey a great deal. Adding to their emphasis on the table of contents, this can be seen in the fact that Woodruff reproduced only one ‘object card’ or photograph, her frontispiece, whereas she reproduced ten of the subject/text cards, four of which directly refer to her frontispiece (Figs. 3 and 4). It would appear that the subject cards required ten times as much discussion as did the photographs. This ratio finds further support from the fact that in Woodruff’s ten-page introduction, only five sentences are devoted to the photographs. The first of these appears separately from the others and describes the procedures that the Index readers or iconographers employed to create the subject cards: ‘After reading all important published accounts and noting the identifications, the reader proceeds to describe the monument in purely factual terms based on the visual aspect of the figures in the available photographic reproductions, without interpretation.’ ³⁵

Fig. 1. Frontispiece to Helen Woodruff, The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942.

While this relative silence and absence of photographs in some ways speaks louder than words, the first mention of the photographs by Woodruff sets the theoretical tone of objectivity that we have heard echoed in later publications. With regard to practice, we can also see an indication of how the process of iconographical description mirrored or perhaps imitated the Index's contemporaneous understanding of photography, where the impartial and objective lens simply copied what was clearly there. Ideally, the iconographical ‘reproduction’ should be as good, or as objective, as the photographic reproduction, ‘without interpretation’.

 

Fig. 2. Text cards in Helen Woodruff, The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942, p. 56. These two text cards, and two more on the next page in Woodruff’s book, all refer to the frontispiece photograph. ³⁶

The other few sentences devoted to the photographs in Woodruff’s Introduction form the following paragraph:

The Index is also supplemented by a Monument File or collection of photographs of the objects and monuments described in the Subject File. The photographs are arranged by material and filed geographically by name of place rather than subject. It is a simple matter to turn from one file to the other and locate the corresponding pictures and descriptions. At the present time [1942] there are about 50,000 photographs in the collection, and about 261,000 cards comprising the subject entries.³⁷

Obviously, this section offers little or nothing in the way of hints of the existence of standards at the Index for ‘good’ or ‘objective’ photographs, nor very much in terms of how the photographs were made. However, one might find some reinforcement of the objectivity claim in the fact that it is supposed to be quite easy to shift from text to photographs and back to text. The disparity between the number of photographs versus subject cards also underlines the appeal of the efficiency of photography in recording and reproducing the same objects visually that subject cards do with language. Here the photographs are more efficient.

Woodruff’s chapter on ‘Technical Details’ contains the only other section outside of the Introduction where she mentioned the photographs. Here, under the key sub-title Monument File, we find four pages devoted to photography. One section defines the pictures as a group while referring to the book’s frontispiece:

The Monument File is a collection of photographs of the objects and monuments described in the Subject File. At the time that the description is written and recorded the best reproductions available are selected and [re-] photographed. The prints, made on 5 by 8 inch cards, are labelled and accessioned to correspond with the equivalent cards in the Subject File, including the subject-title of the master-card and the source of the reproduction. ³⁸

The first standard that she mentioned therein was that the reproductions were photographs. Apparently, this fact alone carried a heavy portion of the burden of objectivity. Photographs and photographic reproductions were considered more ‘objective’ than other kinds of representations. Moreover, Woodruff made no distinction between ‘photographs of the objects and monuments’ and photographs of ‘the best [photographic] reproductions available’. Here we have something very close to the contemporary digital conception of photography where each copy or generation is not necessarily degraded in terms of quality or usefulness as compared with its original, not even a copy of a copy. That traditional photographs were assigned the same status at any time is quite remarkable.³⁹

Evidence of at least one other standard appears in Woodruff’s phrase ‘best reproductions’. Perhaps we can deduce this standard, or these other standards, by examining the Index's process for making the photographs, since clearly the results of this process would be considered good or at least acceptable, otherwise the Monument File would not exist. Woodruff explained this technique in general terms first:

The process used by the Index for photographing reproductions from books or other prints does not produce uniformly good pictures, but an average high quality is maintained which is satisfactory for detection of details of iconography, and frequently adequate for a study of style. On the ground that any picture is better than none at all, many very inferior reproductions have to be used for photographing, but these are replaced as better reproductions are published. ⁴⁰

The appearance of the words ‘good’ and ‘better’ reinforces the assumption of the existence of standards. Index photographs, she claimed, must be ‘satisfactory for detection of details of iconography, and frequently adequate for a study of style’. Thus, in addition to the photographic standard already noted, perhaps the next most important standard is that the photographs must be consistent. While they may not be ‘uniformly good’ they must be of an ‘average high quality’, she claimed. The two key terms here are ‘uniform’ and ‘average’. Indeed, the remaining standards seem to extend out of consistency.

In no particular order, two of these additional standards might be consistent sharpness and consistent contrast. Woodruff also mentioned that they were 5 by 8 inch prints; thus, we might add the standard of consistent size. The idea here, it seems, was that the prints should be large enough to allow for detection of details, but small enough to file easily and efficiently in one place. This balance, of course, is what makes the Index (and its burgeoning online resources) such valuable tools for scholars; it allows them to study a large amount of geographically dispersed material in a relatively short period of time with relative ease. Lastly, referring to those pictures that barely meet the above standards at a minimum level, Woodruff mentioned that any ‘inferior reproductions are replaced as better reproductions are published’. This adds a final standard that we might call, to use a current vocabulary, CQI, or continuous quality improvement.

In terms of specifics about how such photographs were made to meet these standards, Woodruff unfortunately did not go into a lot of detail. However, what she did say is enough to get a sense of how the above theory of objectivity (photographic consistency, etc.) was put into practice. Within her section on the Monument File, Woodruff described the processes and procedures used by the Index from around 1930 to 1985:

The apparatus for making the pictures was designed to do the work as rapidly and as inexpensively as possible. All exposures are made under identical conditions regardless of subject or state of the reproduction. Development of both film and prints is carried out on a time and temperature basis. Better results might be obtained in some cases were filters used, exposure times varied,⁴¹ and different papers selected for the printing of different subjects, but the cost would become prohibitive. Since each picture is marked to show its source, easy reference can be made to the reproduction which was used for the Index picture.⁴²

Curiously, Woodruff’s passage here might be construed as admitting the existence of a law of diminishing returns in terms of objectivity and the standard of consistency. Woodruff recognised that ‘better’, perhaps even ‘more objective’, photographs might result from certain reproductions if the photographer were allowed to make different decisions about filtration, exposure time, and paper grade to suit each specific image. It appears that cost was the limiting factor that prevented such a customised operation. However, allowing the photographer to make such decisions might also undercut the use-value of those images as ‘objective’ sources of information. As Cassidy explained: ‘art historians operate with comparisons and contrasts. How does this representation of the Assumption differ from that one? Can we detect patterns in the representational formulae, and so on? This requires that we get more than one image on the screen at the same time’.⁴³ Thus, a scholar might feel more comfortable comparing images made under identical conditions versus those made under conditions which the photographer felt would optimise whatever quality seemed to be the most important at that time, on a certain day, etc. In fact, I would suggest that the economic gains and benefits were only happy by-products of the search for objectivity or objective images.

Woodruff’s final paragraph on the Monument File comes closest to describing how this was done. It turns out that a Princeton physics professor, H. L. Cooke, was called in to solve the Index’s ‘problems of photography’. Cooke designed a unique camera ‘apparatus’ and workflow for exposing and for printing the Index’s photographs. His ideas allowed for great ‘speed of operation and reduction of cost’. Woodruff praised especially his ‘ingenious platform for holding and manipulating the books so that no bindings need be injured or broken’.⁴⁴

Unfortunately, around 1990 this one-of-a-kind contraption was dismantled and replaced with a contemporary copy stand. The current Senior Staff Photographer at the Index, John Blazejewski, used ‘the beast’, as he calls it, for only a short time when he was first hired. However, several persons who used it on a daily basis still can be interviewed today.

Several conclusions may be drawn from this analysis of photography and iconography at the Index of Christian Art. First, objectivity in large part was determined by harnessing available photographic technology, and by the theoretical assumptions of the day about photography. Second, objectivity was achieved by reduction of differences: reduction of media, colour, dimension etc., to a 5 x 8 inch standard image. Third, fourth, and fifth, objectivity was clear, consistent, and economical. From these points one might further conclude that what was assumed for photography was expected from iconography, i.e. objectivity in these five senses. Therefore, contrary to Ragusa’s argument that ‘there was no model’ for Morey’s method of iconography, it seems possible that photography was the model for iconography at the Index. ⁴⁵

What about today’s Index and the future? Has the early twentieth-century model based on Morey’s view of photographic objectivity been replaced in the twenty-first century by the subjectivity and variability of digital images and the Internet? Are today’s Index readers less ideologically sure of themselves when it comes to identifying the iconographical aspects of any particular image or work? It seems clear that the answer is yes. While the shift from objectivity to subjectivity in art photography and theory happened earlier, art historical methodologies probably change more slowly, and indeed correspond to changes in reproductive technologies, as from traditional to digital photography. Combining Morse and Morey’s theories with Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase on the medium, perhaps the medium continues to be not only the message, but a model for the method of interpreting that message as well.

November 2004

Notes

I would like to thank Colum Hourihane, Director of the Index of Christian Art, and Professor Hal Foster of Princeton University for numerous insights and suggestions throughout the development of this paper. In addition, my sincere thanks go to Hazel Gardiner, Anna Bentkowska, and to the entire CHArt 2004 conference committee.

1. See, for example, Roberts, H. E. (ed.) (1995), Art History through the Camera's Lens, Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach. Robert’s preface alone is subtitled ‘Photographs! Photographs! In Our Work One Can Never Have Enough’, p. ix.

2. See the newest ‘oldest photograph’ (one made by Nicephore Niepce) in the essay ‘World’s oldest photo sold to library’, BBC News (Thursday, 21 March 2002). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1885093.stm (2 November 2005).

3. An undated letter from Morse to fellow painter Washington Alston as quoted in Staiti, P. (1989), Samuel F. B. Morse, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 226-28. Beaumont Newhall (1961) also cited this letter in his The Daguerreotype in America, New York: New York Graphic Society, p. 78.

4. Andrews, S. (1996), ‘Academic Collecting at Princeton’, Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800-1940, University Park, PA: Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, p. 182. Allan Marquand, the first art historian at Princeton, taught his first course in the fall of 1882. The School of Art was founded on June 18, 1883.

5. http://ica.princeton.edu/range.html (31 October 2005).

6. http://ica.princeton.edu/range.html (31 October 2005). See also a similar description of the Index in an essay by former Director Brendan Cassidy (1993), ‘Computers and Medieval Art: The Case of the Princeton Index', Computers and the History of Art, 4.1:3.

7. See Roelof van Straten (1993), ‘What Is Iconography', in his An Introduction to Iconography, trans. Patricia de Man, Chemin de la Sallaz, Switzerland: Gordon and Breach, p. 3. Brendan Cassidy (1996), in his essay ‘Iconography in Theory and Practice’, Visual Resources 11: 3-4, p. 323, cites Jan Bialostocki’s definition of iconography: ‘the descriptive and classificatory study of images with the aim of understanding the direct or indirect meaning of the subject matter represented.’

8. http://ica.princeton.edu/range.html (2 November 2005).

9. Iconography at the Index: Celebrating Eighty Years of the Index of Christian Art, 28-29 October 1997.

10. By comparing the titles of the papers given on the first and second days, the first day dealt with the practical application of this Index-related method to specific art historical problems, whereas the second day focused on the theory behind the method itself. For example, Jaroslav Folda of the University of North Carolina gave the first presentation on day one entitled ‘Problems in the Iconography of the Art of the Crusaders’. The next day, aside from the introduction and opening address, Lutz Heusinger of the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg gave the first presentation entitled ‘How to Improve Art Historical Standards’.

11. Cassidy, B. (1993), ‘Computers and Medieval Art: The Case of the Princeton Index’, Computers and the History of Art, 4. 1, p. 3: ‘our main concern is with iconography’.

12. Ragusa , I. (1998), ‘Observations on the History of the Index: In Two Parts’, Visual Resources 13:3-4, pp. 215-251, esp. 245. I would like to thank Colum Hourihane for this reference.

13. Morey, C. R. (1942), Foreword to The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, by Helen Woodruff, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. vii.

14. Andrews, S. (1996), ‘Academic Collecting at Princeton’, Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800-1940, University Park, PA: Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, p. 183.

15. Andrews, S. (1996), ‘Academic Collecting at Princeton’, Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800-1940, University Park, PA: Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, p. 183.

16. Andrews, S. (1996), ‘Academic Collecting at Princeton’, Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800-1940, University Park, PA: Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, p. 183.

17. Morey, C. R. (1942), Foreword to The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University , by Helen Woodruff, Princeton : Princeton University Press, p. vii. What Morey meant by ‘early' at this point was that the Index's scope had a limit of c . 700 A.D. This end date was soon extended to 1400, doubling the Index's scope.

18. Morey, C. R. (1942), Foreword to The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, by Helen Woodruff, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. viii. There are now four copies: Vatican Library; University of Utrecht, Holland; the Getty Center, Los Angeles; Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC. See also Cassidy, p. 4.

19. Morey, C. R. (1942), Foreword to The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, by Helen Woodruff, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. ix.

20. Undoubtedly, cross-listing subjects and subjects would not work as well.

21. As far as I can tell, this bias corresponds to most of the literature on the Index. None of the publications that I have found to date focuses specifically on the use of photography in the Index in any sustained sense.

22. Ragusa, I. (1998), ‘Observations on the History of the Index: In Two Parts’, Visual Resources 13:3-4, p. 240. Ragusa reasserts this point on the same page: ‘Again, unlike an encyclopedia article, [the Index] does not give a ready answer; it provides the material from which the researcher derives his own judgments.’ She noted too that the Index is ‘alphabetical throughout.’

23. Ragusa, I. (1998), ‘Observations on the History of the Index: In Two Parts’, Visual Resources 13:3-4, p. 240.

24. Ragusa, I. (1998), ‘Observations on the History of the Index: In Two Parts’, Visual Resources 13:3-4, p. 242.

25. Cassidy, B. (1993), ‘Computers and Medieval Art: The Case of the Princeton Index’, Computers and the History of Art, 4. 1, p. 9.

26. Cassidy, B. (1993), ‘Computers and Medieval Art: The Case of the Princeton Index’, Computers and the History of Art, 4. 1, p. 15.

27. See Baxandall, M. [1972], Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, Oxford and  New York: Oxford University Press (2nd. ed. 1988).

28. Cassidy, B. (1993), ‘Computers and Medieval Art: The Case of the Princeton Index’, Computers and the History of Art, 4. 1, p. 15.

29. Cassidy, B. (1993), ‘Computers and Medieval Art: The Case of the Princeton Index’, Computers and the History of Art, 4. 1, p. 15.

30. Drewer, L. (1990), ‘ What Can be Learned from the Procedures of the Index of Christian Art’, The Index of Emblem Art Symposium, Daly, P. M. (ed.), New York: AMS Press, pp. 121-38.

31. Drewer, L. (1990), ‘What Can be Learned from the Procedures of the Index of Christian Art', The Index of Emblem Art Symposium , Daly, P. M. (ed.), New York : AMS Press, p. 122, my emphasis.

32. Drewer, L. (1990), ‘What Can be Learned from the Procedures of the Index of Christian Art’, The Index of Emblem Art Symposium, Daly, P. M. (ed.), New York: AMS Press, p. 125.

33. Drewer, L. (1990), ‘What Can be Learned from the Procedures of the Index of Christian Art’, The Index of Emblem Art Symposium, Daly, P. M. (ed.), New York : AMS Press, p. 121.

34. Woodruff, H. (1942), The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton : Princeton University Press, p. v. The number of pages behind each heading confirms this point: Foreword, pp. vii-ix (3 pages); Introduction, pp. 1-10 (10 pages); Subjects of the Index, pp. 11-53 (43 pages); Technical Details, pp. 54-74 (21 pages); Sample Description, pp. 75-79 (5 pages); and Chart, pp. 80-83 (4 pages). Thus, the subject cards receive the greatest amount of coverage in the book while the objects cards or photographs do not even appear on the table of contents.

35. Woodruff, H. (1942), The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 3, my emphasis.

36. Four total subject cards appear in Woodruff, pp. 56-57. The two not reproduced here show the Index’s bibliography for the object in the frontispiece image. An additional six text cards on various other objects appear in Woodruff, pp. 76-79.

37. Woodruff, H. (1942), The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 9.

38. Woodruff, H. (1942), The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 71-72.

39. For a related discussion of photographic reproductions in the so-called Museum Without Walls, see my essay on ‘Malraux’s Photography’, History of Photography, 26: 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 269-275. In a certain way, digital photography is thus both more and less objective than traditional photography. It is more objective in the sense that it is possible to maintain near complete consistency among all copies, and less objective in the way that it is ‘so easy’ to manipulate the original and/or the copies and increasingly difficult to detect that manipulation.

40. Woodruff, H. (1942), The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 73.

41. They did in fact vary somewhat according to John Blazejewski, current Index Senior Staff Photographer. Interview with John Blazejewski, November 1997.

42. Woodruff, H. (1942), The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 73. Rosalie B. Green, Director of the Index from 1951 to 1981, who also used this apparatus, explained that this practice started long before the invention of the Xerox machine or any other similar technology. Thus, the emphasis on economy over quality was in large part a factor of the immense amount of material that needed to be copied and the lack of any contemporary means to duplicate it. It would be interesting to see what system the Index would chose today if it were to start all over from scratch, both on the paper Index and the electronic one. Phone interview, 19 January 1998.

43. Cassidy, B. (1993), ‘Computers and Medieval Art: The Case of the Princeton Index’, Computers and the History of Art, 4. 1, p. 15.

44. Woodruff, H. (1942), The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 74. Woodruff concluded: ‘We wish to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to Professor Cooke for the time and effort he has contributed to the solution of the Index problems of photography’.

45. In that sense, the iconographic equalled the textual and the photographic. My future research into the issues discussed in this paper will investigate the degree to which Morey may have also modelled his ideas on the Bibliotheque Ducet, an archive of photographs he visited prior to founding the Index. For this, see Hourihane, C. (ed.) (2002), Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, Princeton: Princeton University Press. I would like to thank Colum Hourihane for this information and reference.

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