Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Frank Corley

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 01:07, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Frank Corley[edit]

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Fails WP:ARTIST and WP:ANYBIO and WP:GNG. In a before search I only found one or 2 local interest stories like this one [1]. There is nothing very notable about this person but eventually the exhibition might be notable when it opens but it is too early to say that yet. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Artists-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Photography-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New Zealand-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep for now. "There is nothing very notable about this person": personally (away from Wikipedia), I'd agree, and I'd add "or his photography". However, I don't live anywhere near Brisbane. He's demonstrably of some interest there. He's long dead and I can't see anything promotional about this article. "[E]ventually the exhibition might be notable when it opens but it is too early to say that yet." Indeed. But the exhibition will, we're told, be held from December 2018. (There's no reference provided for this assertion, but we are authoritatively informed that 50,000 of the man's ~~negatives~~ photographs have been scanned and "will inform future exhibition and public engagement initiatives" ... whatever that might mean.) December 2018 is pretty soon. Why the rush to delete? -- Hoary (talk) 23:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC) Changed my mind; see below. -- Hoary (talk) 12:51, 26 October 2018 (UTC) || corrected -- Hoary (talk) 06:43, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My nomination is based on the person's notability and not the potential notability of an exhibition that may or may not actually take place. The "what's on" page of the State Library of Queensland [2] does not mention it. As per WP:NOTCRYSTALBALL this event does not meet the notability WP:NEVENT criteria so this cannot be used as an argument to notabilty for someone linked to the event. In your keep !vote you agree that the person and his photography are not notable and as this is about the person and not the event I am having trouble understanding why you are !voting keep. --Dom from Paris (talk) 10:27, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite. I said that from my personal, Wikipedia-unaffiliated POV they're not notable. Ditto for Star Wars trivia, Simpsons episodes, Playboy "playmates", talk radio "personalities" and very much more. I am, or rather was, voting ("!voting") "keep" because there's no rush for this AfD. -- Hoary (talk) 12:51, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Move / rename to Frank Corley photograph collection or something similar and rewrite accordingly. I can find nothing in depth about Frank Corley, but his collection is notable and would seem to be a valuable historical photographic record (and notability is not inherited). The digitisation of the collection has won a state government sponsored award. See also this and this. Note that while these might be perceived as "local interest", the latter is a state wide publication and both have a demographic reach of a couple of million people. There are several more easily findable but not so independent or reliable sources. Aoziwe (talk) 11:15, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
FYI if interested here. Aoziwe (talk) 12:34, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To quote Aoziwe: Move / rename to Frank Corley photograph collection or something similar and rewrite accordingly. For the reasons that Aoziwe gives. -- Hoary (talk) 12:51, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think there is potential for an article once the exhibition has been covered in in-depth reliable sources but for the moment we are talking about something that is potentially notable but not yet notable. The 2 articles that you found date from 4 years ago. I don't really know if the collection is notable or not to be honest. Librarys and Museums will sometimes acquire a very very large number of documents (especially if given for free) that are never used and finish being stocked away forever. Just for info it was not the digitisation of the photos that won the award but the work of the local history group in identifying the different houses [3]. These are photos from only 40 odd years ago I am having a hard time imagining the historical importance of identifying at what address a particular photo was taken at in 1972. I can't imagine why anyone would want to go to an exhibition of 50,000 house photos by a photographer that "was not well known in the professional photography circles in Brisbane". For the moment it is just the sheer volume of the photos that seems to be impressive but we don't even know how many houses this represents (multiple shots of the same house?) and just as a side note his business model may have been horribly flawed if there were 50k unsold photos. Anyway I'll leave it up to others to discuss now. Dom from Paris (talk) 14:07, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dom from Paris, by "50k unsold photos", are you perhaps referring to the fifty thousand negatives? Errr ... you do realize that a commercial photographer only very rarely sells their negatives to a client? The client just gets the prints. If there's a demand later for more prints, the photographer locates the negative(s), makes more prints from these, and sells them. -- Hoary (talk) 23:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC) The comment that currently is immediately below (thank you, Expertful) came as a surprise. I'd read of thousands of negatives being scanned, hadn't I? I checked again, and no I hadn't. Oops! Sorry, Dom from Paris. (And a reminder to self: Engage brain before posting comment.) -- Hoary (talk) 06:43, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of clarifications in response to this thread, there are almost no repeats in the collection, there are 60k photographs of almost 60k buildings which are almost exclusively houses (with a few corner shops here and there). The negatives have been lost, so only the prints remain. One of the documents in a report from the Annerley Stephens history group suggests they've assumed he may have sold around half the photographs (meaning he would have taken at least 100,000 photographs of Brisbane and some neighbouring towns. These photographs provide an historic record of Brisbane's past that is of interest from all kind of historical (and even environmental) angles - architectural history (it captures buildings as constructed, before they were altered or domolished, gives a thorough record of housing and suburbia in 1960s-70s - anecdotally - architectural historians sometimes use this collection to try and identify 'contemporary' images of architect-design properties), garden history (record of gardening, tree plantings), people tracking car ownerships and types (many of the images include historic cars) etc etc, just to name a few angles. Part of the interest in Corley's work is for the reason the importance of this article is being debated - because he 'objectively' documented the everyday rather than being works of 'art' like Ruscha's 'Every building on the Sunset Strip' (which was a project undertaken in the USA around the same time that gives a similar type of survey of a just one street in Los Angeles). comment added at 03:47, 27 October 2018 by Expertful

I am sorry but these are all assumptions about the importance of the collection. Until the collection receives coverage in reliable secondary sources we cannot say what that importance is it is not up to us to decide but to document faithfully what others are saying about it. This really needs more coverage. As I said this could well be notable in the future but as per WP:CRYSTALBALL we should not be creating articles in anticipation of anything unless that future event has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources. By the way if you have any connection to the history group or the collection you must declare it because your comments suggest that this page is to promote an upcoming exhibition and this is contrary to WP:NOTPROMOTE. As a general rule we do not create articles for future shows and exhibition unless they have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources. For me this is WP:TOOSOON (no problems for the assumption it was negatives I was also surprised to see it was prints when I read the library page about the collection. Dom from Paris (talk) 06:59, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - this article draft was created in anticipation of the major exhibition showcasing Corley's work. The exhibitition will be on display at the State Libray of Queenland for 6 months from December 2018. While there is little documentation of the exhibition on the internet yet, there is currently some signage on display in SLQ regarding the exhibition installation, and a reference to the exhibition in this public document: http://www.plconnect.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/412837/Minutes-Meeting-24-September-2018.pdf. Within a few weeks futher information will be available on the SLQ website, and it would be useful to have this entry already available once it is publicised. At present Corley is a little known photographer, agreed, especially outside of Brisbane, however the work of the Annerley Stephens history group in relation to this collection has received local media coverage on numerous occasions (e.g. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-16/local-community-tires-to-identify-60000-photos-of-brisbane/5817718), and a number of their reports are available via Trove (as are Corley's photographs). Once this exhibiiton has opened his work will be much better known, and the entry will hopefully provide some basic biographical information. Corley's survey of Brisbane suburbia in the 1960s and 1970s (althought the exact dates are difficult to confirm) is not unlike Atget's famous survey of Paris. Much of this very large collection has been digitised and is available globally via the SLQ website and Trove. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Expertful (talk • contribs) 13:42, 26 October 2018 (UTC) — Note to closing admin: Expertful (talk • contribs) is the creator of the page that is the subject of this XfD. [reply]
Keep -- A collection of the size of his has clearly been identified by the Queensland State Library as an important one. Whether we have an article on the collection or on the man (and we should not have both), it is going to have to cover both his life and the collection. I do not see any reason not to have one or the other, but preferably the bio. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:15, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The collectiion is a significant body of work with historical importance. Curiocurio (talk) 22:42, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The exhibition at the Queensland State Library is less than 2 months away! It seems not very useful to delete the article now and have to rewrite it very soon. No doubt there will be articles in newspapers and journals about the man and his work, which can be added to this article. It was perhaps a little premature to write an article before the exhibition, given Wikipedia's love of general coverage, but better to keep it and revise it (perhaps rename it/refocus it on the collection) when more sources are available. (As far as the sources Aoziwe found being 4 years old - that does not make them any less reliable, independent, non-local, secondary sources (I don't live in Queensland, and I certainly remember the ABC article) (WP:NTEMP).) RebeccaGreen (talk) 15:39, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We don't base notability on unwritten/potential coverage. There might be articles, there might not be. The exhibiton might happen or it might not. We are strictly an after the fact business, per WP:CRYSTAL.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 16:07, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And the flip side of NTEMP is WP:SUSTAINED. This person has received coverage for 1 single exhibition of his work that might or might not take place and might or might not end up being notable. Dom from Paris (talk) 17:01, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete here we have an artist who has never had an exhibition, nor an exhibition review. All that has happened here is that someone recognized the cultural value of the photographs produced by the subject's company, Pan American Home Photographic Co, and is planning an exhibition. It's possible they will become well-known and deserve an article, but not at the moment. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 16:16, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Expertful, if you don't already have this article in your sandbox, you may want to copy and paste it there, then, if it is deleted, you can recreate the article when the exhibition and news coverage appears! RebeccaGreen (talk) 16:36, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per Pererkingiron and Curiocurio. Multiple reliable sources exist that establish WP:GNG. EnPassant (talk) 18:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, suggest it is left where it is until the exhibition is opened and reviewed, certainly a notable collection. Szzuk (talk) 17:03, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.