[00:06:57] Host: When we're talking about photo albums and family albums and those more candid amateur photographs that you come across, what is the value of those to an archive? In my head, it seems obvious, but how do you differentiate between something that would be of value to what you're doing and then something that is not?

[00:07:26] Li Wei: I think when it comes to the type of everyday family photograph album, for example, of a Japanese-American family, I'm always on the lookout for these types of materials, only because these type of materials offer us a degree of intimacy that is not possible with some of the other genre of photography. When we talk about photography, we have to think about what is considered public and what is considered private. When I say public, I mean some of these photographies that was being created for consumption by the public. These can be done by famous or not famous photographers with the mind of selling these photography to the general public to make a profit. The intent of the photographer is very straight. It's something that we can tell right away by looking at these photographs that's being created for public consumption.

When it comes to the private, we're talking about photo albums that maybe my grandfather would be taking photographs of his family, of his home, of his workplace in the 1930s, or whatever you can think of, and that they have a very special look, a very different look from the photographs being created by the portrait studio, for example. These were not meant to be circulating in public in the first place. The degree of intimacy and how people compile these photographs, how people curate them, compile them into photograph albums. Sometimes they will even write caption to describe what was happening into each photograph as well, too, that to me, is where the value is. It gives us a rare look inside the family's history. It gives us a look into what was the thinking, what was the situation when this photo was taken. It also places the family within the United States, how the family was function as a minority, say Japanese-American family, Chinese-American family, and how they see themselves by placing themselves at the center of this photograph as well, too. To me, that's what's so special about these photographs.

Whenever I see these types of photographs in the markets or maybe at homes of different families, I'm always very interested to look at them, to see what was going on, and then try to piece together the puzzle. Again, because photograph itself, if you don't have the context, you don't have the description, might not be able to tell you much. These are the people that I do not recognize. It's hard for me to know what the background is. If you can use the photograph in conjunction with whatever that was available, such as correspondence that they wrote or whatever caption that they supplied, that can give historians a really powerful way of telling the history of that particular time period.

[00:10:24] Host: In your sleuthing history detective work, can you share some moments of things that you found that really surprised you or were really fascinating, that just popped out of a photograph and was like, "Whoa, there's something here."

[00:10:53] Li Wei: One of the newer collections that I came across recently, it is not a private photograph as I described, but it is more of a public photograph. I was working with the author Lisa See fairly recently, and she donated a collection of glass plate negatives. These glass plate negatives, which numbers at around 300 of them, they were done around maybe the late 19th century, early 20th century. These were photography photographs that was taken by an unknown, probably Chinese-American photographer based in LA Chinatown. These photos have not been seen for at least 70, 80 years.

The story was that Lisa See's family back in maybe the early 20th century came across these photos, the glass plates. These are individual glass. If you can imagine, these are negatives made of thin glass. They're very fragile, so you have to be very careful with them. The fact that they were recorded on the glass medium, the images are very, very sharp if you're able to develop them. Her family's safeties, they probably came across the photographs in an abandoned building, maybe in a dumpster. She doesn't really know, but the family kept all 300 of these glass negatives.

Because they are the negative image, it was hard to tell what they are just by looking at the negatives itself because everything was in reverse. She kept it in her family for a very long time. Her family kept it, and then it passed on to Lisa. Eventually, Lisa was able to donate this collection to the Huntington because she knew that these were important and that recorded the history of Los Angeles old Chinatown, which was eventually demolished starting in 1930. This is essentially a neighborhood that no longer exists today, but they were somehow captured in this collection of glass plate negatives. Looking at these collections, we were able to clean them by sending them to our conservation lab here at Huntington.

They were able to clean the plates. They were able to make sure that there are no serious defects, or maybe they needed a lot of work. Eventually, they were moved on to our digitization lab, and they were able to basically develop these images using DSLR cameras. They were able to transform them into actual photographic prints in the positive and that we're able to see for the first time in a very long time what these images tell us. A lot of these images were portraitures of individual Chinese men. I think that they were taken because this was during the Chinese Exclusion era, and so the Chinese were required to carry a very unique identification that was applied only to the Chinese.

That's why these men were going to photo studio to have these images taken and then send these photos to the immigration bureau so that they can have these special identification that was designed to keep track of the Chinese in the country during the Exclusion era. Also, we have images not only inside the studio but then also outside the studio because of the advancement of photographic technology around this time, it became easier to take the photography from the inside to the outside. This presumably Chinese-American photographer were going around the Chinatown neighborhood. He was able to photograph children, women, men in the neighborhood.

Some of them were doing different type of jobs around the Chinatown neighborhood. There was a photo of a few young men holding down a pig. I think they were holding down the pig, they're getting ready to slaughter the pig for some festival as well, too. There's definitely a lot of things that we don't have in the whatever archival collection that we hold today. Thanks to this collection that was able to come in, that we're able to see so many different dimensions, so many different things of Chinatown that we thought were lost forever.

[00:15:10] Host: When you're in a private home, or an estate sale or not sale, but in these situations where you're coming across more of these private collections of photos, photo albums, obviously, those albums, those photos have value to the families that they belong to. How do you with your work assess value to what would benefit what you're doing with the Huntington?

[00:15:46] Li Wei: I think this is something that I always communicate with people who have the interest or maybe who have questions about donating their family collections to a place like the Huntington or any other special collections. One of the things is that the Huntington offers a place where for people who don't know how to take care of their family history, or maybe they don't have the room. A lot of time, these are grandfather, grandmother who are still hanging on to the collection, but maybe their children don't have the interest to take care of the collection.

The Huntington offers a place for them to place this material, to donate these materials, with 24/7 security, with 24/7 temperature, humidity control, a very stabilized environment to keep these paper-based materials in a very safe and sound place so that they can be preserved for future scholars or for future members of the family to come and take a look at these collections. I always tell the family members that if you can take care of the photos if you can take care of the family collection by yourselves, please do so. It's not like I want to take these things away from the family against their will.

[00:17:00] Host: Sure.

[00:17:01] Li Wei: We are simply offering an option to them if, for some reason, they really do not have the room, they do not have the expertise or the energy to care for these collections. We have to be realistic; it takes a lot of money to keep these collections safe in a place. The AC costs money. The conservation lab costs money. The curatorial work takes money, and then also just the storage space that you need to house these collections, which can be numerous. That's why I offer these type of options to the families. I'm also happy to just talk to the family to give them tips about how to keep their family collections, how to keep their photographs safe at home.

When it comes to private photographs, we were talking about these photo albums really offer a very unique look into whatever locale they may be in that's not offered anywhere else. If we can somehow combine these photographs along with the family history, and if the family wants researchers to access these files at a place like the Huntington, then I will also invite the families to come to the Huntington to look at the facility, to see how we work with researchers, to see how the fellowship system work here at the Huntington, so that they are comfortable donating these files to a place like the Huntington.

If something is donated to the Huntington, it basically stays there forever. It becomes a permanent collection of the institution, so families don't have to worry that these collection might end up somewhere else. If for some reason, people decided they don't want this collection. That doesn't happen here at the Huntington. When something that comes in as a collection, it will stay here as a collection.

[00:18:46] Host: I imagine having one individual family's photographic historical evidence offers a limited scope or view into what was happening at that point in time in that place, but when you get an aggregate of multiple families, multiple photo albums, even though they are these personal images of their moments, you're getting a better understanding of culture, even just fashion. You'll get images of food, of dishes that maybe aren't prepared anymore. I think I would imagine that's where a lot of that value comes from. Not necessarily just the individual photo, but it's that aggregate of everything from that time.

[00:19:42] Li Wei: I think it's really like filling in the puzzle for the history of LA. I can give you one example. When it comes to collecting Asian-American history, this is actually a fairly new development at the Huntington. The Huntington, the library itself was built around 1919, 1920. Over the next decades, you really didn't have a heavy emphasis or priority when it comes to collecting Asian-American history. I'm actually the first curator to hold the title of Curator of Pacific Rim Collections focused on Asian-American history. One of the things that I wanted to focus on was some of the early Japanese-American families here in LA, especially the Japanese-American families who was in the flower trade business.

I know through the studying of history and through a collection of Asian-American history, Chinese-American history, there were a large number of early Japanese families who came to the United States, and they were in the agricultural trade. They were doing farming and also the flower trade, the cut flower business. The farming of flowers was a huge business with some of these families that they could get into despite the various exclusionary attitudes that was being geared toward these Asian families. Like you were saying, the papers, the photographs from one single family might not give us the overall picture.

Through these collections, if we add more collection of similar nature, and we're able to link from one family to the next, we were able to have a better look in the early history of these families that came to the United States and were able to prosper, were able to build their families and businesses in these trade as well, too. Right now, I started out with the Arthur Ito papers. The Ito families was one of the earlier families that came to the United States. At one time, the Ito family actually moved to Mexico from the United States because of the Alien Land Law that prevented them from owning land.

They went to Mexico for eight years, but eventually, their business over there did not prosper, did not succeed. Some of the family members eventually relocated back to Japan, but some families went back to the United States. Then the family members who came back to the States were able to build one of the most famous flower shops in the Los Angeles area as well, too. Then going from the Ito families, we are able to connect with other Japanese-American families in this fashion as well, too.

[00:22:25] Host: With regards to preservation, how much of these photographic images are digitized?

[00:22:36] Li Wei: We digitize on demand. That is to say that we cannot digitize everything within the collection. We did a study about 20 years ago, how long it would take to digitize the entire content of the Huntington Library. Our study at the time turned out that it's going to take us anywhere from 65 to 75 years-

[00:22:58] Host: Oh, geeze. [chuckles]

[00:22:58] Li Wei: -if we stop collecting at this point to digitize everything. Digitization, it's a very complicated undertaking because it's not just about shooting the actual items. The shooting part is probably the easiest thing that you can do. It's the post editorial work, it is the metadata that needs to be incorporated into the image so that we can actually locate the images later on. If we just shoot everything, put them in the hard drive, how do you look for things? It’s just a bunch of numbers.

[00:23:29] Host: Because you're just looking at numbers.

[00:23:32] Li Wei: Right. Right. That's why digitization takes so much time. We do digitize based on demand. If a researcher at a Huntington or a fellow at a Huntington wanting something digitized, they can submit a request, and we usually can fulfill those requests fairly easily. Sometimes there might be conservation issues with a particular item. For example, if there was a book that cannot be open for some reason, maybe the binding was broken, photographs that have conservation issues as well, too, then those items need to be examined and maybe undergo some kind of repair work with the conservation lab as well, too.

For the most part, we digitize according to what people are looking for. If sometime we wanted to preserve a collection because of fragility, because of condition issue, then we would digitize that collection and then make that collection available so that we can minimize the actual handling of the material. The perfect example would be a photograph that was falling apart. We don't want people to be handling the photographs as much as we'd like to avoid that. We would digitize the photographs; put them on our digital library so that people can just look at a digital copy without putting more stress on the actual photograph.

[00:24:51] Host: Now, as an archivist, what are your thoughts on this move to digitize digital information while it is preserving, it's still stuck on a hard drive or in some cloud system, or however it is preserved? I'll just give you an example. My mother is moving. She's trying to downsize. She has photo albums and photographs from 70 years of life and wanting to digitize so that she can save space, but then there is this potential of loss. I guess with anything, there's always a potential of loss, but losing that physical artifact and trusting everything in 1s and 0s seems like a risk.

[00:25:50] Li Wei: You are exactly correct. When it comes to digitizing collections, it is really not a one-to-one replacement of the original. I think we should always remember that when we digitize something, it's really just to create a copy of the original, but it does not replace the original. I think the thinking that, "Oh, if you could digitize something, then you can get rid of the original to save space, whatever." I think that is a very wrong and also very dangerous thinking because, let's say if you digitize something 20 years ago in early 2000s. Those images today would sometime not fit our criteria for something that's considered high risk because technology changes, format changes.

Some of the early images were being stored on laser disc as well too, and these things are hard to go back to now because either we don't have the players to play the laser disc, or because the megapixel is simply too small for today's more advanced devices, the iPhone that we hold, for example. We have to remember that just because you digitize something today, the digital images are not going to last forever. In fact, their lifespan is probably a lot shorter than the actual original.

We have to remember that these are simply temporary surrogates that we created for the time being, but at some point, we're probably going to have to go back and re-photograph from the original to fit whatever the technology is in the future as well, too. I always caution people about trying to digitize their collection and then thinking that they can get rid of the original. We wanted to make sure that we've always original. The original cannot be replaced. Original it's always going to be the best possible source for us to go into. We digitize the original so that we can maybe relieve some of the pressure that's being placed on the original item, but it is not a permanent replacements.

[00:27:59] Host: Now, with that being said, what are your thoughts about where we are now, where I would say we are definitely taking more photographs than we ever have in human existence, but there is nothing physical or tangible. Everything is just this information on some device, which does have a fragility to it. Are we setting ourselves up to possibly not have a source of representation of this history that we're in right now?

[00:28:40] Li Wei: That's a really great question. I think what you're referring to is what we call born-digital materials. We're actually not talking about digitizing something from the actual photographs or photo album, but something that we take on our phone that was created digitally. I think there is a lot of potential because since everything is considered born digital nowadays. There could be a very good way of preserving our history, our lives that way, but then, at the same time, how do we access these materials? These materials are like you were saying, they live in devices, they sometimes live in the cloud. I think accessing them is not as easy as going to see an actual photo album from the 1920s.

Sometimes they're password-protected. Sometimes they're not accessible when people die. I don't know exactly how people are dealing with these materials that are living in their computer, living in their phone as well, too. Then, most of the tech that we are dealing with today sometimes they're owned by these giant tech corporations as well, too. I think it creates lots of questions and tensions. Even though we are, to a greater degree, documenting everything that we are doing, everything that we are seeing with all these gadgets that we have, I think it is about how this tech will be able to be accessible down in the future, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, or a 100 years later, by historians of the future. That is the biggest question that I don't know if we have an answer today, and that is what worries me a lot as well, too.With that said, I think we still have a lot of work to do today when it comes to dealing with the materials from the 20th century, 19th century, and before that as well too, just because there were so much paper that were created on so many letters, so many photographs that were created that we still have a lot of work to do dealing with the analog materials versus the digital. There are archivists, there are curators would deal exclusively in born-digital materials nowadays.

It's a very vibrant field and students are going into graduate studies program studying the best practices and all the techniques when it comes to digital preservation as well, too. I'm curious to see. I don't have the answer right now, but I'm curious to see in 20, 30, 50 years, what future historians have to deal with these digital materials and what can they say about accessing these materials about the lives that we're living?

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[00:31:26] Outro: We'd like to thank Li Wei Yang for his time, his expertise, and his passion. Medium History is produced by Past Forward with support from Chapman University and Dr. Stephanie Takaragawa. For more socially conscious content, visit pastforward.com or follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

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