(Photographic) Subject-matter: Fritz Saxl Indexing Mnemosyne-A Stratigraphy of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection's System

摘要

Aby Warburg (1866-1929) created his photographic collection in Hamburg as a research tool. As new documents now reveal, in the late 1920s, a first system, focused on "subject matter," was planned for the Bildersammlung (image collection) of Warburg's library. The origin of the current iconographic arrangement has been dated to after the Institute's move from Hamburg to London in 1933. The new source discussed here adds some elements to this story: the first step of the iconographic turn that occurred in London was initially designed by Fritz Saxl (1890-1948) in Hamburg within the context of work for the atlas Mnemosyne. This paper discusses the role of Aby Warburg and Fritz Saxl in developing the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg as a dual entity library, with an image collection ideally conceived as a counterpart of the book collection. It also aims to raise some questions about the impact of photography on the praxis of description, interpretation, and classification of images as core questions of early "iconological studies."