If you’ve stopped in at Ike’s Café in IKBLC for a coffee lately, you’ve probably noticed the collection of stunning photographs adorning the west wall. The exhibit features images from the Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs and was curated by Ashlynn Prasad who is pursuing a dual master’s degree in archival studies and library and information studies from UBC’s iSchool.
Prasad, who spent the fall of 2017 working under the guidance of archivist Krisztina Laszlo in Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) was thrilled to work on the exhibit as it helped her to reacquaint herself with British Columbia, where she spent the first half of her life before moving to the United States.
The exhibit, which includes photos of Stanley Park, the Fraser River and the provincial government buildings in Victoria among other BC landmarks, was curated with the Ike’s Café audience in mind. “I knew that the individuals coming through the café would have varying levels of familiarity with British Columbian landmarks – some would know them well, some would be experiencing them for the first time, and many would fall somewhere in between,” Prasad explains, “I tried to curate an exhibition that could appeal to anyone on that spectrum by showcasing landmarks that are generally quite well known, and which a large majority of people will at least have heard of– even if they’re completely new to the area.”
After familiarizing herself with the size of the space she had to work with, Prasad got to work on the curation, starting her search online in the library’s Open Collections. “As I found images I was interested in, I would pull the original images from the collection to look at them more closely. I worked with very high definition scans of the photographs, the original photographs are actually quite small – about the size of a standard 5” x 7” photo.”
The Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs is a point of pride for UBC Library and consists of more than 18,000 rare and unique early photographs from the 1850s to the 1970s. It is considered the premiere private collection of early photos of B.C. and an important illustrated history of early photographic methods.
“It was an honour to host Ashlynn’s internship at RBSC at the start of her graduate program at the UBC iSchool, ” says Krisztina Laszlo, “She was the perfect choice to look at the collection as she has roots in Vancouver, but has been living in California for most of her life. She has the advantage of looking at the images with fresh, yet familiar eyes and came up with a great curatorial concept based on this. The end-result turned out wonderfully well!”
Prasad has found the experience on the project invaluable. “I have really enjoyed working on this and I would love to do more – it has made me think that exhibits are really what I want to do in the future. I learned so much from Krisztina and about BC in the process, and it’s so fantastic to be able to make this collection more visible to UBC students.”
A British Columbia Time Capsule exhibit can be viewed until the end of 2018 in Ike’s Café, located on Level 2 of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs, is available for public viewing in Rare Books and Special Collections in the Irving K. Barber Learning Center, and can be found online in our Open Collections. Visit the iSchool’s blog to learn more about Ashlynn and her ARL Mosaic Fellowship.