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Images on the move: some notes on the Bibliothek Warburg Bildersammlung (Hamburg) and the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection (London)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Katia Mazzucco
Katia Mazzucco*
Affiliation:
The Warburg Institute, University of London, School of Advanced Study, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB, UK
*
Email: katia.mazzucco@gmail.com
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Abstract

Created by Aby Warburg as a tool for his research and as a counterpart to his collection of books, the Bildersammlung (image collection) acquired its first subject-based system in the late 1920s. This system was structured according to four binomial theme-motif pairings of key concepts. In January 1933, following the Warburg’s move to London, the books and the image collection were organised according to an iconographic classification system that still makes it unique. While the importance of photographs in the research process was part of the cultural inheritance transferred to the UK, the question of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, as a corpus, has received little attention. The original, subsequently disregarded plan for the Bildersammlung, together with other documents, may shed some light on this question.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , 2013 , pp. 16 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2013

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