 Alright. Hi Erin. Hi Ellie. I was wondering if you could please introduce yourself and tell us your role at OU Digital Archives. Sure. I am the digital imaging specialist and lab manager within the digitization unit at Ohio Libraries. I oversee the image production that occurs in our department in order to make archives and special collections materials available online. I also manage the student workers that assist with either flatbed scanning or camera-based capture. And we have a photo studio at the library where we use specialized lighting and equipment designed for photographing cultural heritage materials. And we digitize things in a variety of formats, everything from rare books to posters, manuscripts, and film negatives like those from the Peter Goss collection. And could you tell me a little bit about who Peter Goss is? Sure. And while I'm doing that I'm going to share a slideshow of some of his work. So Peter Goss is an OU alumnus with a PhD in comparative arts who attended Ohio University between 1966 and 1970. And in more recent years he's donated his body of work from this time to the libraries. And it presents a very authentic depiction of student life at the time, as well as documenting the culture and character of the surrounding region. Goss came to Athens from the Northeast. He was originally from Long Island. He had an interest in photography from an early age and was very attuned to the influence that documentary photography had on society and its cultural impact. He was primarily self-taught and incredibly self-driven. Before attending OU he photographed for student yearbooks, worked as a darkroom assistant, documented surfing, which was a new sport at the time, and wrote and submitted articles for publication. When he moved to Athens he became a stringer photographer for the Columbus Dispatch newspaper and traveled throughout the local area to cover events ranging from the Athens County Fair to small community auctions, either on assignment or out of personal interest. And his work from this period also includes a powerful series of student protest images documenting the campus reaction to the Vietnam War and the 1970 Kansas State shootings. Though ultimately he pursued a 39-year career as an instructor of architectural history at the University of Utah, he pursued photojournalism throughout his life out of passion. And while these two interests certainly overlap, his photographic work is exceptional in its own right, and that is the focus of the exhibit, his journey as a photographer. And that kind of leads into my next question. Could you tell me a little bit about the exhibit and how you specifically went about collecting the information and creating it? Last year the library's digital initiatives unit began digitizing his film negatives with our high resolution camera configured for transmissive capture, and the resulting images reveal in high detail the true breadth and quality of Goss's work. So as we started looking at the images more closely, it became clear that exhibiting his work could gather inches from a variety of angles. There's local history, there's campus history, there's architecture, and because Peter had been so generous in donating his work and agreeing to let us share it digitally, we thought it would be great to interview him and bring his voice into the exhibit. So much of the text is based on my interview with Goss, and that recording is available in our digital archives along with the film roles that we've digitized from his collection. You mentioned that some of the photos from the exhibit are from his documentation on the camera shooting. So what was his experience as a photographer and a student during these moments and the moment that followed? Yeah, actually that's what's showing in the slideshow right now. And in the interview he provides a lot of detail about that and his personal experience. What kind of stands out to me is that his experience of those events is influenced by his role as a teaching fellow leading classes and responding to his students reactions. He mentions that of course campuses were affected all across the country but his account from OU seems somewhat unique for one thing faculty were encouraged to engage in discussion during normal class times. The administration thought that this would help maintain peace by allowing students to freely voice their opinions and faculty were further encouraged to move their classes outdoors and to congregate with other groups and have what were called teachings or informal open lectures. The details that Peter recounts in the interviews surrounding the campus closure are pretty startling, especially once the National Guard became involved and the situation sort of escalated. I think it gives some perspective to the tumultuousness of our current events and the unpredictability of that. And a lot of his photos which are showing up right now exhibit focus on small town life. What do you think drew him to capture Athens, Ohio and other surrounding small towns like the Plains and Nelsonville? I think his work demonstrates an interest in documenting a variety of environments and experiences. While he may not have recognized that he was capturing history he was certainly interested in preserving culture and that's in part why he photographed the vernacular architecture of the region which are structures not designed by architects but using local knowledge and resources, things like barns and brick sheds which really capture the character of the region. I think he genuinely enjoyed exploring the small towns of southeastern Ohio and he continues to do this around Salt Lake City where he now lives and ventures out to the more rural areas to photograph events. It's just remarkable to me that he continues to pursue these interests and build upon the work that he was doing 50 years ago in Athens County. And what do you think makes his photography his what makes his work special to you? Well I would say his technical skill is clearly evident in the way that he frames his subjects. First of all he rarely duplicates shots to correct exposure but rather moves from one subject to the next with confidence no matter how dynamic the scene you know a motorcycle race or a student protest where there's a lot of movement and a lot of people he seems to navigate those events with a lot of confidence. He also had a great sense of composition and this really struck me when I was working on the exhibit layout and found I didn't feel the need to crop a single image they were all perfectly framed when originally shot which really speaks to his eye and his vision. The other unique thing about Goss is his ability to capture people in a way that feels natural and non-invasive. He truly has a gift for this. I think his images of people really shine throughout the collection and exhibit and he has said that he found the people of this area unique in their friendliness and that was something less familiar to him coming from a bigger city in the northeast and he really appreciated that about the local culture. And where can people view the collection and the exhibit? So the exhibit can be accessed on the library's main site. There's an exhibit's sub-page. The exhibit is called Framing Time, the photographic legacy of Peter Goss 1966 to 1970. And the collection can be accessed on our main digital archive site which is media.library.ohio.edu. And if you go to that site there's a search bar and you can simply type in Peter Goss, G-O-S-S. And that should bring up a number of results including around 30 roles of film that we've digitized thus far from his collection as well as the interview that I previously mentioned. Thank you so much, Erin. Yeah, thank you. I'm happy to share this with the world.