Hi Jacob, I recently contributed two short texts (on photographs of TV-screens - so not exactly your subject, rather its pre-history) to Winfried Gerling, Sebastian Möring and Marco de Mutiis's book "Screen Images. In-Game Photography, Screenshot, Screencast" which will be published these days (https://www.kulturverlag-kadmos.de/programm/details/screen_images), and it probably is worth getting in touch with them as they have been doing research on the subject for much longer than me. Also I'd like to point your attention to the annual conference After Post-Photography (after-post.photography), and my co-organizers and I would be more than happy to have a paper from you. Drop me a line if I should add you to our mailing list (which rarely generates more than two or three mails/year - the CfP and the program of the conference); and should those pics of TV-screens be of any use for you I'm happy to share what I have. Cheers Friedrich Quoting Jacob Gaboury via Members <members@lists.sigcis.org>:
Hi All! SIGCIS has been so instrumental to my work over the past decade that I wanted to begin a new project by reaching out to the list for thoughts and feedback on resources related to this topic.
In short I am writing a history of screenshots, based loosely on a series of short articles <https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/series/screens-shot/> I wrote a few years ago. I'm interested in how we have historically remediated computing as visual output, that is, how we got pictures off our screens and into the world. This jumps off from some of my earlier work in Chapter 2 of *Image Objects* <https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045032/image-objects/> on screen photography from the 1940s-1970s, but also moves into the development of WYSIWYG systems for print output at PARC in the 1970s, the use of CRT cameras for advertising and documentation <https://www.ebay.com/itm/275154558746> in the 1980s, and even more "vernacular" practices of screen documentation, such as children photographing video game high scores and taking screen selfies on beating a game. I also plan to approach contemporary screenshot cultures, such as the use of screenshots as "receipts" in texting and social media as well as screenshot practices in meme cultures <https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/deep-fried-memes>. The goal is to understand how we have arrived at a moment when so many of us are taking dozens, even hundreds of screenshots every week, and screenshots have become a kind of evidentiary object for cultures of use and individual actions taken via a computer.
I'm on sabbatical this year planning archive trips, and would love any insight the list might have on where to look. I will be at the Computer History Museum to look at materials on the Alto and Apple Lisa, but would also love to hear from anyone that had experience with screen photography during their careers, or with thoughts on any objects, sites, or individuals I might look into or include.
Happy to hear from any and everyone with thoughts! Feel free and reach out to me directly at: gaboury@berkeley.edu, and thank you!
_Jacob
-- Jacob Gaboury (he/him) Associate Professor of New Media History and Theory Dept. of Film & Media, University of California at Berkeley jacobgaboury.com/ <http://www.jacobgaboury.com/>
*Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics* (MIT Press, 2021) Winner of the 2022 Computer History Museum Prize https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/image-objects