Proposal: 
For my final project, I want to begin developing my capstone project—a website featuring an interactive map, multimedia essay, and virtual exhibit exploring the history and legacy of the Limelight, a short lived Greenwich Village Cafe and Photo Gallery open from 1954 to 1961. 

The Limelight was the first gallery in the US dedicated exclusively to photography. It opened when photography was at a crossroads between documentary and fine art and showed an incredibly diverse mix of work from Bauhaus, proto-surrealism, landscape, and humanism. Along with featuring the work of pioneers like Ansel Adams, Robert Frank, and Imogen Cunningham, the gallery also showed work by lesser-known artists at the time, such as Jack Smith (who would become a founding figure in underground cinema), Weimar era photographer Ellen Auerbach whose photos at the Limelight documented her exile in Central America, and Claudia Andujar, Romanian born Swiss-Brazilian photojournalist who also escaped Europe during the war. 

I want to make visible the diverse paths that photographers took to Greenwich Village (and to the Limelight), and explore the cultural and political lineages that shaped their sometimes competing versions of modernism. 

Deliverables:
I anticipate three components of this project. The third component is out of scope for this semester.

1. An interactive global map tracing the path of photographers to Greenwich Village and the Limelight. Site visitors will be able to select the cities and key locations in the artist’s journey to New York. Each map item will have a written component as well. 
2. A multimedia essay telling the story of the Limelight Cafe’s founding, including audio clips from taped interviews with recollections from artist Lelan, daughter of Limelight Curator Helen Gee. and photographs from Arthur Levine and Charles Berland (my late grandfather). 
3. A virtual Limelight exhibit featuring the photographs of lesser known artists who showed their work at the Gallery and who influenced post-modern and contemporary photography.  

Sources:

• The Limelight / Helen Gee Archive at the University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography contains correspondence between Limelight Curator Helen Gee and photographers, photographs of the space, and ownership/financial records. 
• My Grandfather Charles’ collections of negatives and writings.
• Interviews with surviving members of the scene 

Platform and Hosting: 
I anticipate using WordPress for this project, as I think it will provide me with the best customization options and plugins. I am still determining which map application to use (Google Maps, Leaflet, or OpenStreetMap).

Pain Points: 

• I have basic HTML and CSS competencies but am not very confident in my ability to customize the look of my WordPress site. This piece could take a significant amount of my time this semester. 
• The Limelight held sixty-one exhibitions. I will need to decide whether the purpose of my project is cohesiveness (to map as many names as possible) or a more curated approach that enables me to write more in-depth on each photographer. 
• Rights will be an issue. I can imagine that reaching out and asking permission for various photographs may be time-consuming. 

Timeline:

And finally, here’s a picture taken of a dog patron of the Limelight by Weegee in 1956: