Bromberg, Nicolette A.

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BROMBERG, Nicolette A.

PERSONAL: Born in Olympia, WA; daughter of Erik (a librarian) and Ailene (a librarian) Bromberg. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of Oregon, M.A. (photography), 1974, M.F.A. (photography) 1976; University of Kansas, M.Arch. (architecture), 1996.

ADDRESSES: Office—University of Washington, Allen Library—Box 352900, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Lower Columbia College, Longview, WA, director of media center and photography instructor, 1979-83; University of Kansas, Lawrence, photo archivist, 1983-93; Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, curator of visual arts archive, 1993-2000; University of Washington, Seattle, curator of photographs and graphics, 2000—.

WRITINGS:

Wisconsin Revisited: A Rephotographic Essay, State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Madison, WI), 1998.

Wisconsin Then and Now: The Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Rephotography Project, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2002.

Contributor to journals, including Ephemera Journal, Journal of the West, and Alaska Journal.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Clarence LeRoy Andrews and Alaska; An Ordinary Life: The Photographs of Joseph Judd Pennell; The Fastest Route to Denver: The Road across Kansas; research on the photography of Don Wallen, techniques for the care and management of photograph collections, and the Japanese Seattle Camera Club.

SIDELIGHTS: Nicolette A. Bromberg's career has been focused on the preservation of historical photographs, and as a curator of the Wisconsin Historical Society she collected the visual materials presented in Wisconsin Revisited: A Rephotographic Essay. The project was begun in 1995 and includes approximately seventy photographs depicting Wisconsin from its first days of statehood. By comparing photographs taken of the same place in different years, observations may be made of both how things have changed and how they have remained the same. Other photograph comparisons can be made of similar scenes in different places, such as those of families photographed in Milwaukee County in 1955 and Outagamie County in 1997, and of two different women standing beside cows, one in 1899, and the other in 1997.

James D. Lowry, Jr., who reviewed the volume in the Journal of Cultural Geography, wrote that "even though this second style of photographic sets does not rely upon a specific location, the messages of change and continuity are still as strong as in the first style." Lowry concluded by calling the collection "a great idea."

Bromberg also collected the 100 archived photographs that were taken over 150 years and 100 contemporary photographs by twenty photographers for the longer Wisconsin Then and Now: The Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Rephotography Project. This volume includes essays by Bromberg and by geographers Steven Hoelscher and Thomas R. Vale, and here again, Bromberg includes photographs that invite comparison. One pair shows a group of Native American men playing cards on the grass and the modern Oneida bingo and casino complex. Bloomsbury Review contributor Lori D. Kranz said that "although it's inevitable that many of these photographs will provoke nostalgia for what has been lost … they also celebrate what has been found."