Thomas Smits
Biographic Data
| ID | 911208 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Smits |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Smits |
| SIGNATURE | SMITS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8579-824X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Visual Memory of Protest: Introduction
this is an introduction to the background, aims, and contents of the collection of essays called The Visual Memory of Protest
(Machine) Learning about the Victorians
Projecting cities: Illustrated lantern lectures as forgotten practice of place promotion in Belgium, c. 1900 – c. 1920
This article examines the role of illustrated lantern lectures in promoting Belgian cities and towns during the early twentieth century. Drawing on two original databases of lantern slides and a database of lantern lectures, it demonstrates how these lectures served not only tourism, but also broader social, political and cultural agendas. The projection lantern functioned as a powerful medium within an emerging circuit of education and entertain…
Revisiting the Kahn collection: Multimodal artificial intelligence and visual patterns of presence and absence in the Archives de la Planète , 1909-1931
Financed by the French banker Albert Kahn, the Archives of the Planet is one of the most important collections of early photography. Produced between 1909 and 1931, its 72,000 autochromes show a world we are accustomed to seeing in black and white, captured in colour. While Kahn focused on volume, scholars have mostly studied the collection by close reading a small number of pictures. In contrast, this article applies a distant viewing methodolog…
Stochastic Remembering and Distributed Mnemonic Agency: Recalling Twentieth Century Activists with ChatGPT
This paper introduces the concept of stochastic remembering and uses two prompt engineering techniques to critically examine the text generated by ai chatbots. These techniques – step-by-step prompting and chain of thought reasoning – are then experimentally applied to understand how ChatGPT, the most commonly used ai chatbot, shapes how we remember historical activists. This experiment suggests that hegemonic forms of memory influence the data o…
Coloring in the world of others: Color use in visual orientalism, 1890–1920
This study investigates the impact of media on color sense: our ability to see different colors and use them to interpret the world. Specifically, we examine the role of color in the cultural construction of the Orient—an ‘imagined geography’ used to justify colonial domination—in two turn-of-the-twentieth-century types of color(ed) photographs: photochromes, where a printer added color, and autochromes, where colors were captured during exposure…
Projecting the world: The mediated geography of the projection lantern in Belgium c.1900-c.1920
A Fully-Searchable Multimodal Dataset of the Illustrated London News, 1842–1890
This paper introduces a dataset of 72,081 wood-engraved images extracted from the Illustrated London News (ILN) from the years 1842 to 1890. In the mid-19th century, the ILN revolutionized news consumption by combining text with high-quality wood-engraved illustrations published at scale. While digitization has facilitated text-based analysis of historical periodicals, visual content remains challenging to explore systematically. We address this …
The Visual Memory of Protest
Visual Memory of Protest
Roundtable: The European Illustrated Press And The Emergence Of A Transnational Visual News Culture, 1842–1870
Notes1 Wimmer and Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond.”2 Broersma, “Transnational Journalism History”; Cronqvist and Hilgert, “Entangled Media Histories.”3 Harder and Mittler, Asian Punches.4 Kinoshita, “Witnessing the Action of Current Events from the Comfort of Your Chair.”5 Van Gogh, “To Anthon van Rappard. The Hague,” February 4, 1883.6 Dobraszczyk, “Sewers, Wood Engraving and the Sublime: Picturing London's Main Drainage System …
Does transnational contention lead to transnational memory? The online visual memory of the February 2003 anti-Iraq War protests
In the last weekend of February 2003, between six and ten million people in 60 different countries protested against the imminent Iraq War. Commentators quickly described the worldwide protests as a manifestation of a new form of transnational contention, which would lead to new forms of transnational memory and identity. Building on efforts to connect social movement and memory studies, this article examines if the massive size and transnational…
The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market
Book review of: Nadya Bair, The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), 322 pp., ISBN 978-0-520-30035-4 0520300351
The Great Unseen. Photojournalism and the archive: From analogue to digital
Introduction to the special issue on photojournalism and the archive
A network of photographs: The visual public memory of the Dutch Provo movement, 1967–2016
This article builds on efforts to connect visual culture, social movements, and memory studies. It introduces the concept of visual public memory through a study of the circulation of photographs of the Dutch anarchist movement Provo between 1967 and 2016. It demonstrates that the visual public memory of a movement can be captured in a network composed of carriers of memory (newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, books), memorata (the remembered eve…
The agency of computer vision models as optical instruments
Industry and governments have deployed computer vision models to make high-stake decisions in society. While they are often presented as neutral and objective, scholars have recognized that bias in these models might lead to the reproduction of racial, social, cultural and economic inequity. A growing body of work situates the provenance of bias in the collection and annotation of datasets that are needed to train computer vision models. This art…
Distant reading 940,000 online circulations of 26 iconic photographs
How do digital media impact the meaning of iconic photographs? Recent studies have suggested that online circulation, especially in a memeified form, might lead to the erosion, fracturing, or collapsing of the original contextual meaning of iconic pictures. Introducing a distant reading methodology to the study of iconic photographs, we apply the Google Cloud Vision Application Programming Interface (GCV API) to retrieve 940,000 online circulatio…
Looking for The Illustrated London News in Australian Digital Newspapers: Colonial readership and the formation of imagined communities, 1842–1872
This article will demonstrate that digital newspaper archives can be used to shed new light on the historical readership of nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. The digital newspaper archive of Australia (Trove) was used to study the distribution and reception of the renowned Illustrated London News (ILN) in the Australian colonies between 1842 and 1872. As a result of this research, this article shows that around 17,000 copies of the mag…
The agency of computer vision models as optical instruments
Industry and governments have deployed computer vision models to make high-stake decisions in society. While they are often presented as neutral and objective, scholars have recognized that bias in these models might lead to the reproduction of racial, social, cultural and economic inequity. A growing body of work situates the provenance of bias in the collection and annotation of datasets that are needed to train computer vision models. This art…
Looking for The Illustrated London News in Australian Digital Newspapers: Colonial readership and the formation of imagined communities, 1842–1872
This article will demonstrate that digital newspaper archives can be used to shed new light on the historical readership of nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. The digital newspaper archive of Australia (Trove) was used to study the distribution and reception of the renowned Illustrated London News (ILN) in the Australian colonies between 1842 and 1872. As a result of this research, this article shows that around 17,000 copies of the mag…
Revisiting the Kahn collection: Multimodal artificial intelligence and visual patterns of presence and absence in the Archives de la Planète , 1909-1931
Financed by the French banker Albert Kahn, the Archives of the Planet is one of the most important collections of early photography. Produced between 1909 and 1931, its 72,000 autochromes show a world we are accustomed to seeing in black and white, captured in colour. While Kahn focused on volume, scholars have mostly studied the collection by close reading a small number of pictures. In contrast, this article applies a distant viewing methodolog…
Projecting the world: The mediated geography of the projection lantern in Belgium c.1900-c.1920
Does transnational contention lead to transnational memory? The online visual memory of the February 2003 anti-Iraq War protests
In the last weekend of February 2003, between six and ten million people in 60 different countries protested against the imminent Iraq War. Commentators quickly described the worldwide protests as a manifestation of a new form of transnational contention, which would lead to new forms of transnational memory and identity. Building on efforts to connect social movement and memory studies, this article examines if the massive size and transnational…
Distant reading 940,000 online circulations of 26 iconic photographs
How do digital media impact the meaning of iconic photographs? Recent studies have suggested that online circulation, especially in a memeified form, might lead to the erosion, fracturing, or collapsing of the original contextual meaning of iconic pictures. Introducing a distant reading methodology to the study of iconic photographs, we apply the Google Cloud Vision Application Programming Interface (GCV API) to retrieve 940,000 online circulatio…
Looking for The Illustrated London News in Australian Digital Newspapers: Colonial readership and the formation of imagined communities, 1842–1872
This article will demonstrate that digital newspaper archives can be used to shed new light on the historical readership of nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. The digital newspaper archive of Australia (Trove) was used to study the distribution and reception of the renowned Illustrated London News (ILN) in the Australian colonies between 1842 and 1872. As a result of this research, this article shows that around 17,000 copies of the mag…
A network of photographs: The visual public memory of the Dutch Provo movement, 1967–2016
This article builds on efforts to connect visual culture, social movements, and memory studies. It introduces the concept of visual public memory through a study of the circulation of photographs of the Dutch anarchist movement Provo between 1967 and 2016. It demonstrates that the visual public memory of a movement can be captured in a network composed of carriers of memory (newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, books), memorata (the remembered eve…
The agency of computer vision models as optical instruments
Industry and governments have deployed computer vision models to make high-stake decisions in society. While they are often presented as neutral and objective, scholars have recognized that bias in these models might lead to the reproduction of racial, social, cultural and economic inequity. A growing body of work situates the provenance of bias in the collection and annotation of datasets that are needed to train computer vision models. This art…
Distant reading 940,000 online circulations of 26 iconic photographs
How do digital media impact the meaning of iconic photographs? Recent studies have suggested that online circulation, especially in a memeified form, might lead to the erosion, fracturing, or collapsing of the original contextual meaning of iconic pictures. Introducing a distant reading methodology to the study of iconic photographs, we apply the Google Cloud Vision Application Programming Interface (GCV API) to retrieve 940,000 online circulatio…
The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market
Book review of: Nadya Bair, The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), 322 pp., ISBN 978-0-520-30035-4 0520300351
The Great Unseen. Photojournalism and the archive: From analogue to digital
Introduction to the special issue on photojournalism and the archive
The Visual Memory of Protest
Visual Memory of Protest
Roundtable: The European Illustrated Press And The Emergence Of A Transnational Visual News Culture, 1842–1870
Notes1 Wimmer and Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond.”2 Broersma, “Transnational Journalism History”; Cronqvist and Hilgert, “Entangled Media Histories.”3 Harder and Mittler, Asian Punches.4 Kinoshita, “Witnessing the Action of Current Events from the Comfort of Your Chair.”5 Van Gogh, “To Anthon van Rappard. The Hague,” February 4, 1883.6 Dobraszczyk, “Sewers, Wood Engraving and the Sublime: Picturing London's Main Drainage System …
Does transnational contention lead to transnational memory? The online visual memory of the February 2003 anti-Iraq War protests
In the last weekend of February 2003, between six and ten million people in 60 different countries protested against the imminent Iraq War. Commentators quickly described the worldwide protests as a manifestation of a new form of transnational contention, which would lead to new forms of transnational memory and identity. Building on efforts to connect social movement and memory studies, this article examines if the massive size and transnational…
Stochastic Remembering and Distributed Mnemonic Agency: Recalling Twentieth Century Activists with ChatGPT
This paper introduces the concept of stochastic remembering and uses two prompt engineering techniques to critically examine the text generated by ai chatbots. These techniques – step-by-step prompting and chain of thought reasoning – are then experimentally applied to understand how ChatGPT, the most commonly used ai chatbot, shapes how we remember historical activists. This experiment suggests that hegemonic forms of memory influence the data o…
Coloring in the world of others: Color use in visual orientalism, 1890–1920
This study investigates the impact of media on color sense: our ability to see different colors and use them to interpret the world. Specifically, we examine the role of color in the cultural construction of the Orient—an ‘imagined geography’ used to justify colonial domination—in two turn-of-the-twentieth-century types of color(ed) photographs: photochromes, where a printer added color, and autochromes, where colors were captured during exposure…
Projecting the world: The mediated geography of the projection lantern in Belgium c.1900-c.1920
A Fully-Searchable Multimodal Dataset of the Illustrated London News, 1842–1890
This paper introduces a dataset of 72,081 wood-engraved images extracted from the Illustrated London News (ILN) from the years 1842 to 1890. In the mid-19th century, the ILN revolutionized news consumption by combining text with high-quality wood-engraved illustrations published at scale. While digitization has facilitated text-based analysis of historical periodicals, visual content remains challenging to explore systematically. We address this …
The Visual Memory of Protest: Introduction
this is an introduction to the background, aims, and contents of the collection of essays called The Visual Memory of Protest
(Machine) Learning about the Victorians
Projecting cities: Illustrated lantern lectures as forgotten practice of place promotion in Belgium, c. 1900 – c. 1920
This article examines the role of illustrated lantern lectures in promoting Belgian cities and towns during the early twentieth century. Drawing on two original databases of lantern slides and a database of lantern lectures, it demonstrates how these lectures served not only tourism, but also broader social, political and cultural agendas. The projection lantern functioned as a powerful medium within an emerging circuit of education and entertain…
Revisiting the Kahn collection: Multimodal artificial intelligence and visual patterns of presence and absence in the Archives de la Planète , 1909-1931
Financed by the French banker Albert Kahn, the Archives of the Planet is one of the most important collections of early photography. Produced between 1909 and 1931, its 72,000 autochromes show a world we are accustomed to seeing in black and white, captured in colour. While Kahn focused on volume, scholars have mostly studied the collection by close reading a small number of pictures. In contrast, this article applies a distant viewing methodolog…
Computer Science (9 works) · Art (7 works) · History (6 works) · History (5 works) · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society (5 works) · Photography and Visual Culture (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Visual arts (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Media studies (4 works)