Landmarks of Printing History

In 2003, I was awarded a Faculty Development (FEAD) grant to carry out a project on current digital printing technologies. Initially, I was going to use existing photographs from my own archive. Since I wanted the project outcomes to be displayed in a venue outside of RIT's School of Photography, I approached David Pankow, curator of the Cary Collection, about using the Cary exhibition cases. Understandably, David was not enthused about using imagery that had nothing to do with the collection or the history of printing. After further discussion we decided to collaborate on a series of photographs using objects from the Cary Collection that would not normally be seen by visitors. The objects were selected and I spent three days last summer making the twelve photographs upon which this exhibition is based. 

I would like to thank Joan Stone, Dean of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, and the FEAD grant committee for providing the funding to complete this project. I would also like to thank my colleagues in both the photography and printing schools for advice and. suggestions relating to the work on display. A special thanks goes to Mike Riordan for proofreading the technical data for clarity and accuracy. Finally, I would like to thank David Pankow for allowing me access to the collection last summer and for helping to art direct the pictures. I hope the photographs you see here represent, in some small way, the astonishing beauty and variety of the objects David, and his predecessors, have assembled since the collection was established at RIT in 1969. 

Doug Manchee, March 2004