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Holly Schulte

Curator

Portrait of woman against background of prickly pear foliage.
As Curator of Digital Assets, Holly combines her interests in photography, history and digital imaging technologies.

Holly has worked in collection, digitisation and curatorial roles in the cultural heritage sector since 2002. She completed tertiary photography studies at a time when the medium was transitioning to incorporate digital technologies, and this has provided a strong foundation for her research and focus on photography and digitisation in the museum context.

Since 2006, Holly has worked with the NSW Police Forensic Photography Archive, held by Sydney Living Museums (SLM). She is responsible for the ongoing management of physical and digital collection materials, preservation strategies, digitisation workflows, research and cataloguing. She also commissions photography and manages SLM’s digital asset management system. Holly’s current research focus is on the police use of analogue photography, camera technologies and photographic processes of production. 

 

Stories by Holly Schulte

Black and white negative of woman sitting on chair in garden.

Creating glass plate negatives

Photography practitioners today are rediscovering historical, analogue photography processes.
Dual mugshot of woman seated and standing, with standing shot showing blurred movement.

Photography with slow emulsions

Many of the Special photographs show evidence of long exposur
People standing around camera setup outdoors.

Channelling the police photographer

As part of a workshop with Ellie Young at Gold Street Studios in Trentham, Victoria, I had the opportunity to take my own photographs using dry glass plate negatives.
Lightbox with old negatives sitting on it, with hands holding a negative above.

Captured on glass

It’s almost 100 years since New South Wales police used glass-plate negatives to photograph suspects in custody.
Group of cardboard boxes on table.

The archive’s negatives

The New South Wales Police Forensic Photography Archive contains photographic negatives in several formats and sizes created between around 1910 and 1964. These negatives are both a record of how New...
Closeup of face.

Police photographer George Howard

George B Howard was a prominent police photographer in Sydney during the 1920s, when the use of photography was emerging strongly as an aid to identification and the investigation of crime.