Photherel is an online project addressing the complex information structure offered by visual media, and in particular photographic heritage, documenting the (fairly) recent past. It touches on several domains: visual and media literacy, digital repositories of visual cultural heritage, conservation of endangered visual cultural heritage, distributed course content creation for e-learning, and using a museum or archive in an e-learning context. This article deals mainly with the basic theoretical stances defended during the elaboration of the project, which attempts to valorize the cultural aspects of digitization.   The Photherel website is available at: http://www.photherel.net/

About the author

Jan Baetens is Professor at the Institute for Cultural Studies of the Catholic University of Leuven. He has published or (co)edited some thirty volumes, including Close Reading New Media: Analyzing Electronic Literature , edited by Jan Baetens and Jan van Looy (Leuven, 2003) and Romans à Contraintes (Amsterdam, 2005).

 

The following people also contributed to the project: Sorin Alexandrescu ( Centre of Excellence in Image Studies , University of Bucharest), Eric Castex (University de Toulouse- Le Mirail), Ann Deckers (Museum of Photography, Antwerp), Eric Ferrante (University de Toulouse- Le Mirail), Marius Purice ( Centre of Excellence in Image Studies , University of Bucharest), Sara Roegiers (Catholic University of Leuven), Fred Truyen (Catholic University of Leuven), Mariet Vriens (Catholic University of Leuven)