Protographic documentary analysis

Author(s)

Míriam Paula Manini

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA/SBD)
• Defense date: 2002-05-06

Examining board members

Johanna Wilhelmina Smit; José Augusto Chaves Guimaraes; Nair Yumiko Kobashi; Etienne Ghislain Samain; Maria de Fatima Goncalves Moreira Talamo

• Advisor: Johanna Wilhelmina Smit

Abstract

This work focuses on Content Analysis applied to photographic images belonging to different repositories such as archives or image databases. Although there are many fine tools to help with the description and organization of visual documents such as photographs, and even though one asks who is in the photo, what was pictured, where, when and how that image is represented, the person who is processing the information still finds gaps on answering the representativeness of the image content. Photographic documents are important sources of cultural and historical information and for this reason it requires specialized management. Creating structural metadata on visual documents demands the use of standards and specific practices and, in some cases, authority lists. This methodology here presented leads the analysis toward the indice of the photographic document as so as to the importance and function of the referring on building the indice character. We propose this methodology to give guidance on the interpretability of the meaning of a photographic document in order to find the user information needs. Considering the theoretical matters of the Documentation Science we present approaches related to the generic content, to the specific content and to the meaning of the images. From this perspective and aiming a more conclusive approach, we examine how the content and the meaning of a photographic image manifests itself: its Expressive Dimension. Concerning the user information needs and the accuracy of the information retrieved, there is a cross-reference of some criteria that can be used to choose among several images according to their use. In addition to the proposed theme theoretical reference analysis, another procedure adopted was to observe the current situation of the Content Analysis of Photographic Images in some Brazilian archives, as well as the behavior of our proposal into some examples that were created. (AU)