Tag Archives: Digital Salem

Stereo Scenes of Salem, 1897-1947

Browsing through the vast collections of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) last week,  I came across a haunting image of the Corwin or “Witch House” in Salem. It was a stereo image taken by photographer Harry L. Sampson in 1947, so I assumed it was an artistic composition as that is very late for a stereoview, but it is deceptive: it’s not a stereoview or card but rather a dual image on a contact sheet, and part of of the Keystone-Mast collection of 350,000 images at the California Museum of Photography located at the University of California, Riverside. About twenty percent of this collection  (with more to come) can be accessed digitally via the portal Calisphere, which is linked to the DPLA. The Keystone-Mast Collection is the archive of the Keystone View Company of Meadville, PA, which was active from 1892 to 1963,  and constitutes a major source of visual documentation of the twentieth-century world. I’ve seen some of these images before, but not all, and I’m grateful for the context and source information as so many Salem images are floating out there without either.

Witch House 1947

Witch House 1926 Keystone-Mast Henry Peabody

Witch House 1920 Keystone Mast Henry PeabodyViews of the Jonathan Corwin “Witch House” in 1947, 1926, and 1920 by Harry L. Sampson and Henry Peabody, Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.

Hawthornes House 1926 Keystone Mast

Keystone-Mast Underwood and Underwood

Pioneer Village 2 Keystone-Mast

Pioneer Village KeystoneNathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace in its original location in 1926 and 1897 (Underwood & Underwood); the newly-built Pioneer Village in 1930, Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography.

Old Custom House 1926 Henry Peabody Keystone-Mast

Gables Keystone-Mast 1926

Conant Statue Keystone-MastThree 1926 images: the entrance to the Old Custom House, the House of the Seven Gables, and the Roger Conant Statue, Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography.

While I’m discussing visual sources, repositories, digitization and access, I’m going to make a (-nother) little plea to the Peabody Essex Museum and Phillips Library: according to the 1925 Catalogue of Negatives in the Essex Institute Collections, the museum has among its collections thousands of negatives representing every single street in Salem (and many of towns and cities) in the early twentieth century: could some (many, all) these be digitized and shared via the DPLA, please? Such an initiative would be an amazing compensatory gesture on behalf of the PEM.

Negatives collageJust a few negatives listed in the 1925 Catalogue of Negatives in the Essex Institute Collections, which is available here


Spectral Visions on Derby Wharf

All summer and fall the Salem Maritime National Historic Site is featuring a virtual exhibition called “The Augmented Landscape” which brings eight spectral sculpture assemblages–visible only through a smartphone equipped with the layar app–to Derby Wharf. It’s a more artistic form of Pokémon Go, with global and topical themes and layered connectivity. Everyone in Salem is missing the site’s major attraction—the Friendship–and while this exhibition/experience is not a replacement, it is certainly a distraction! The creations are the work of four artists commissioned by Boston Cyberarts: John Craig Freeman, Kristin Lucas, Will Pappenheimer and Tamiko Thiel. Thiel’s “GardenAnthropocene” imposes a vivid and chilling vision on a familiar place, a “dystopian science fiction future for the landscape as we enter the Anthropocene, a new geologic time period created by human activity……[in which] native plans grow and mutate in response to the earth’s changing conditions, adding to their evolving climate and altering the landscape as we know it”. This doesn’t sound–or look–good!

Spectral Collage

Spectral Garden GardenAnthropocene

Thiel’s other installation, “TreasuresOfSheRem” focuses more on the past than the present, featuring the coins and commodities that Salem traders brought to the East to exchange for tea, spices, porcelain and other exotic goods. Poppies, yes, but somehow I didn’t know that sea cucumbers were so important to the China Trade……

Spectral Money

Spectral Treasures 2

Spectral Treasures TreasuresOfSheRem

More familiar cod hover over the wharf in Will Pappenheimer’s “Ascension of Cod” and privateers clash, visualized through a “virtual ball of classic galleon type ship masts obtained from disassembled ship models accessed from shared 3D model websites”. I think I was supposed to conjure this up (and that’s what it feels like) in front of the Derby House rather than by Pedrick’s storehouse—I couldn’t quite master the geographical aspect of these installations and ended up with strange things in strange places (but maybe that’s the point?)

Spectral Cod

Spectral PrivateersAscension of Cod and Privateers

My favorite installation is Kristin Lucas’s “Elephant in the Room”, referencing the Crowninshield Elephant that landed in Salem in 1796. He looked funny in the Derby Garden and a bit better in front of the Custom House, but never really in his element. Lucas’s “Goodbyes” also stressed out-of-element images, representing departure, which (on the other hand) is of course quite appropriate for a port. For me, the most literal of the virtual installations are John Craig Freeman’s “Virtual China” and “Virtual Russia”, which project images of Wuhan and St. Petersburg onto Salem’s port[al], emphasizing global connectivity, past and present.

Spectral Goodbye

Spectral people

Specral China

Spectral RussiaGoodbyes, Virtual China and Virtual Russia


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