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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Greetings<BR>
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Let me echo Martha’s thanks to the organizers. I look forward to a productive week.<BR>
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I am intrigued by the emphasis on place that we are bringing to this discussion. In our graduate program we have developed a series of questions to interrogate the materiality of any photographic object. The “place” questions include:<BR>
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Where was it made?<BR>
Where was it found?<BR>
How did it get there?<BR>
(Nick Thomas’s notion of “trajectory” may be useful here.<BR>
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There are “time” questions too. Perhaps most important are:<BR>
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What are the marks on the object that indicate its use (s) over time?<BR>
What, if any, changes in ownership, condition, and function have occurred over time?<BR>
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I like Martha’s addition of our own emotional/psychological response to this material, since that is part of its present day context.<BR>
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It may be helpful too to consider some definitions, especially in light of Catherine’s request that we emphasise consideration of the private versus the public spheres. I believe most family albums are made for consumption beyond the eyes of their maker. It behooves us to consider what an album’s original audience may have been, how that audience may have changed over time, and at what point ( by circumstance) does the audience change radically, departing from the maker(s) ‘s original intent.<BR>
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It might be useful for some to look at my description of a group of 19th century albums made up almost entirely of commercial mass-produced photographs used to construct a very specific narrative a Brooklyn family’s multi-year travels in Europe, North Africa and the Holy Land.<BR>
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see:<BR>
"Making a Journey: The Tupper Scrapbooks and the Travel they Describe,” in <U>Photographs,Objects, Histories: On the Materiality of Images</U> Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, editors, London and New York: Routledge, Spring, 2004 <BR>
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Is this a “family” album? If not, how does it relate to family albums? How might the questions we devlope to interrogate this album be applied to family albums?<BR>
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Enough for now.<BR>
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Alison<BR>
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PS As Catherine knows, I am in New York today and Toronto tomorrow and Wednesday. I am shooting for two posts a day until Thurs-Fri. When I can be a bit more involved. Onward!<BR>
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