Calling all Photographers - The Gallaher Project Needs YOU!

amcinroy

For those who are not aware of the Gallaher Project, here's a quick summary.

There are 600 Gallaher Cigarette Cards from 1908 featuring views from all over Ireland. I have started a long term project to get hi res scans of these cards up on the web. We now need photographers all over Ireland to recreate the photographs and post them back onto the web for discussion and comments.

I have now started the hi-res scanning process which is going to take me 300 days at a rate of 2 per day. these image links will be broadcast daily via twitter at my account http://www.twitter.com/andymcinroy

The growing database (which is filterable by county), will be maintained at
http://www.andymcinroy.com/gallaher2/galindex.htm

The history behind this project along with info on how you can contribute are located at.
http://www.andymcinroy.com/gallaher.htm

Now it is time for everyone to get to work. There is nothing commercial about this project. It's purely for the fun of it and the chance to be involved in what might become the biggest photography project ever undertaken in Ireland. There may even be a possible exhibition many years down the line

Let's get started.

Card number 3 and 4 posted today

Quackles

Wasn't this largely done before on the photography Ireland forum?

amcinroy

Yes, this project started a while ago.

Joseph Burns, Alan Rossiter, Mark Tracey and myself got this idea off the ground in 2007.

About 40 of the cards have already been recreated on PI. That is still the venue for this project. There are still 560 cards to do !!

One problem was that my scans were low resolution and I now have the time to scan these properly and hopefully generate fresh interest in the project.

I see the potential in twitter as a system to enjoy the scans as they are completed and for broadcasting the update links.

Andy

AnimalRights

m_s_nixon

do you have all 600 of the cards? i was looking through the lo res scans and there's a few missing.

I'll try my hand at some of the leinster area ones when i have the time

amcinroy

Hi Nixon,

The low res scans were scanned some time ago and there are a lot of gaps.

I now have 550 cards. Some of the high number cards are very rare. I have everything from 1-500 with gaps in the 500s. I hope to obtain the remaining cards before this scanning project gets there in the summer of next year.

Keep your eye out in the antique shops for me !

m_s_nixon

amcinroy wrote: »

Keep your eye out in the antique shops for me !

Where abouts are you from? there's a street in Dublin(Francis st?) with a gajillion antique shops, I'll check them out if I'm down that way

You may have already thought of this, but what about tracking down some former employees of Gallagher's? they may have kept a collection of these

Is there a list somewhere of the ones that have already been recreated?

Mark

amcinroy

Indeed there is,

I don't want to take anything away from this forum, but the work to date can be seen on the PI forums. I have no vested interest in PI but it was through that forum that this project started.

I don't want to directly link to another forum, but if you are interested, the links can be found through the links posted above.

Thanks for your offer to check out the antique shops in Dublin. I'm in the north but I have found most of my cards through dealers in England.

I have approached Gallahers but no respone was forthcoming. They are a globalised consortium now, far removed from the days of Mr J.P Gallaher, a Derry man I am led to believe.

Borderfox

Great project

Janer, the little girl really needs a cigarette!!

amcinroy

Here's a little flavor of what this is about.

AnimalRights

Borderfox wrote: »

Great project

Janer, the little girl really needs a cigarette!!

Shirley
Smoking
Kills

AnimalRights

amcinroy wrote: »

Here's a little flavor of what this is about.

So once you have the card you photograph the scene?

floydmoon1

This seems very interesting.Would be interested in giving a hand.
We could even publish a book amybe in the future for charity or something.Obviously wouldnt be able to publish all the photos but might be good to look into that once all pics done.

I live in Clare and originally from Kerry so would be able to do some pics in Clare ,Limerick Kerry area.

It might be good to list the numbers of card you do not currently have.

amcinroy

I'm busy scanning them all so you don't need the card

But yes, the idea is to recreate the scene 100 years after the original was taken. Some of the city views are hardly recognisable while the landscape images have hardly changed.

The idea is to get as close to the original position as possible.

Floydmoon, I'm sure this project could really take off and it would be up to everyone as a collective group to decide how to take it forward (exhibition, book etc). There is a huge online irish photo network that can get involved in this, something that would not have been possible a decade ago.

I'll see about getting a list of my missing cards up although I have to be careful. I don't want to held to ransom.

amcinroy

AnimalRights wrote: »

Shirley
Smoking
Kills

This is an interesting observation and this issue could cause issues in the future. The views obviously have nothing to do with smoking but the fact that 'Gallahers' and 'Cigarettes' are plastered all over these could jeapordise a future book or exhibition. Indeed a TV company I was speaking with said they couldn't touch such a project.

I have always found the cards to have a quaint novelty rather seeing them as politically incorrect. I dare say that these cards may have contributed in a small way to the deaths of many people. That does seem strange when they illustrate Ireland full of life.

humberklog

AnimalRights wrote: »

Shirley
Smoking
Kills

Never underestimate the power of advertising, AR your posts have me reaching for my Lucky Strikes and whistling On The Good Ship.

CabanSail

Have you considered the copyright of the original cards? This will have to be established before you think about an exhibition or publishing. It is probably a concern while scanning & posting online.

amcinroy

Canban,

I have been trying very hard to identify the photographers involved in these early cards. Gallahers have not been able to help me so far. The cards were published in 1908, although I understand that the photos were taken in the late 1800s.

The duration of copyright for 'artistic works' based on the Berne convention was originally a minimum of 50 years after the death of the artist although there were variations between nation states. The EU Copyright Duration Directive of 1993 attempted to harmonise EU law and extended copyright to 70 years after death and this is now the situation in Ireland. This appears to be applicable to works created before this date, although not so in the UK where the law was not 'backdated'. There is certainly a chance that a photographer from this series lived until 1920s,30s. One of the photographers, Robert Welch lived until 1936 which means that his photographs expired copyright in 2006 (EU/Irish Law) or 1986 (UK Law). There is also the question as to whether these cards are classified as 'artistic work' or as 'published editions'. Copyright only covers published editions for a period of 25 years after publication.

I would say that this project is 'fair game'. There is no absolute certainty of course. I am, of course, still trying very hard to ascertain the authorship to confirm this. However, at this stage I think it is a fair assumption that copyrights on these works have expired. If the authorship of public work is annonymous or cannot be ascertained by reasonable search, then copyright extends only to 70 years after creation which again would cover this project by a wide margin, with copyright having expired in 1978.

Of course, after copyright has expired, the images then enter the public domain and I cannot claim ownership of the scans I make of them. Therefore, I cannot claim a fresh copyright on these scans and they are free for anybody to use. Although interestingly, there is an important legal case ongoing now between the Wikimedia Foundation and the National Portrait Gallery which revolves around the ownership of copied public domain artwork.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574318592490076598.html

During my antrim sea cave project, I research copyright law in some detail. I had to be sure that many of the old etchings and photos had their copyright expired. so that I could include them in my project I also had several dealing with museums who were under the assumption that they hold a new copyright over public domain works which they have digitally copied. This is not so and really, and they have no rights to keep them under lock and key.

I am a firm believer that copyright-expired artwork should be made freely available on the web. I also believe that we should be allowed to photograph them ourselves (without flash) in museums. This is something which most museums currently forbid.

Here's today's scans, these are the last for this thread. All new updates will be through twitter.
http://www.twitter.com/andymcinroy

m_s_nixon

do you know how many of these it won't be possible to recreate?

Nelson's pillar could be a tricky one

amcinroy

Nixon,

Interesting question.

These will be impossible

No.14 Building a White Star Liner at Harland and Wolff's Belfast (Sunk)
No.19 Wedding Dance Mask of Plaited Straw (probably lost)
No.27 - Gallaher Factory (now demolished)
No. 150 - A portrait of Thomas J.P Gallaher himself (deceased)
No. 155 Walkers Monument and Grand Bastion, Derry (blown up)
No. 168 - Descendants of the Firbolgs, Aranmore Donegal (unless we can find new descendants)

Several others will have changed beyond recognition, but there is no reason why they can't be photographed from the same position.