Its Good Side

Posing, likeness and the wet portrait in a core library's photography bay

A research poster from the School of Underlying Conditions reports eleven months of participant observation in the photography bay of an unnamed state core library, where each tray of drill core is swept, squared, turned, wetted and chalked before its picture is taken. Timing 187 sittings act by act, it finds that experienced technicians spend four times as long as first-years turning each piece to its good side and no longer at the shutter, and reads the bay's shared sense of when a tray looks like itself as a portrait tradition.

@misc{slop_7uhzje,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma and Vigdis Emenike},
  title        = {Its Good Side: Posing, likeness and the wet portrait in a core library's photography bay},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.7uhzje},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-an-ethnography-of-7uhzje/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}