[Sci-tech-public] background information for STS Colloquium, April 25th

[Debbie Meinbresse]

STS Colloquium - April 25th


Looking at Laboratories:
MIT Lab Photos from the '80s

  Scott Globus, MIT '84



In 1983 MIT undergraduate Scott Globus began a UROP project under the 
direction of Sharon Traweek to photograph MIT laboratories and the 
scientists and students who worked there. Globus shot approximately 3,000 
black and white images, making his collection the most comprehensive visual 
documentation of MIT laboratories in the second half of the 20th 
century.  The MIT Libraries displayed about sixty of these prints when 
Globus graduated in June 1984 in an exhibition called: "Visual Ethnography: 
Photographs of Science and Technology." Following graduation, Globus 
traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area (where he still resides) and 
continued to make images in academic and commercial labs in Silicon Valley 
for a couple of years.  For most of his career, Globus has worked as a 
casting director building one of the nations largest online talent 
databases.  More recently, he has worked as a production, casting, and 
marketing consultant for a wide range of media clients.

This collection of laboratory images is now the basis of two 
projects.  Part documentary photography, part ethnographic study, and part 
creative photography, Globus is working on a book of these images to give 
researchers and others interested in the history of science and technology 
a glimpse of laboratory life in America.  A second project is underway by 
STS and the MIT Museum to create a digital archive and database of Globus' 
collection for use by the faculty and students of STS. Scott Globus will 
share some of these images with us at his STS colloquium on Monday, April 
25th.  In this colloquium, Globus is looking for our feedback as academics 
on the research, educational, and outreach possibilities for his archive of 
MIT laboratory photographs.  Please join us at 4:00 Monday in E51-095.


Debbie Meinbresse
STS Program, MIT
617-253-4062 
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