So many wonderful threads of this discussion could be followed....<br><br>The issue of context has been brought up a number of times and I think we could say much more about this. Context is, after all, central to the archival endeavour. But, as Martha pointed out this morning, it can be hard to pin down. The uses and meanings of photographs change in each viewing - even when the same image is viewed by the same person in different times or circumstances. While rather a rather pessimistic outlook, realistically speaking it is impossible to capture all these different meanings and contexts and uses in archival descriptions. We are lucky if we are able to apply know what the photographs meant to the last owner, let alone the creator and all those who used the images in between. And, of course, the photos continue to have a life once they are in the archives, continuing to accrue new meanings as new users apply them to new contexts. Yesterday I launched a nursing alumnae gallery at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston. Naturally, I installed quite a few photographs in the displays. It was remarkable to hear the discussions and anecdotes sparked by the images on the wall and in the cases. I made my own connections to the images but the relationship was very different for the nursing grads who found themselves and their friends on the wall, as well as for the women who found their great aunts, grandmothers etc. in the class photos, and for the gentleman whose father was a doctor at the hospital in the 1940s and who spent his younger days "terrorizing the Sisters" as he put it. While we cannot hope to capture all of this, we, as archivists, must do are best to capture as much of it as possible. It is just far to important (not to mention entertaining) to let it go unrecorded. As I tried to suggest in my article, photographs are catalysts for narrative, a point which definitely proved itself to be true yesterday. <br>
<br>The possibilities afforded by presenting photographs online in a Web 2.0 environment are quite exciting from this perspective - although as Alison pointed out following Sassoon's wonderful article, much can be lost as well. Connections can be made and appended digitally and the images can easily can be incorporated into new contexts, works of art, etc. This can be seen as photos in Flickr become part of different streams and pools, gaining new meaning by being linked to different sets of images. But as technology evolves so does the relationship of people to images. Photographs are becoming less formal (the everyday increasingly being documented in ways that would have been considered almost taboo a short time ago). I do shudder to think what photographic holdings of the future will be made up of - will they exist at all? Without carefully attending to acquisition of digital photographs archival collections may have a very large gap in their holdings. Perhaps those photos that are most valued by people - and which are printed - will be the ones that are saved and transferred. But what of the rest? There sadly will be no digital flea markets where those wonderful yet abandond albums and prints will be able to be found. <br>
<br>Quickly, in relation to Alison's daughter's practice of taking a photo on the camera/cell phone and sharing it, this has been discussed here:<br><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Crhsjsjp%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>
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</style><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Daisuke Okabe, "Emergent Social Practices,
Situations and Relations through Everyday Camera Phone Use," paper presented at
<i style="">Mobile Communication and Social Change,
the 2004 International Conference on Mobile Communication in Seoul, Korea,
October 18-19, 2004</i>, p. 2 <<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="http://www.itofisher.com/mito/archives/okabe_seoul.pdf">http://www.itofisher.com/mito/archives/okabe_seoul.pdf</a></span>></span><br><br>And Michael's comment from the first day of the discussion regarding family photographs having "a greater public life" is discussed here:<br>
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</style><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Luc Pauwels, "A private visual practice going
public? Social functions and sociological research opportunities of Web-based
family photography," <i style="">Visual Studies</i>,
vol. 23, no. 1, (April 2008).</span><br><br>It appears that some of the most interesting scholarship on current photographic practices is coming out of Sociology departments and that we (as archivists, historians, etc.) could learn a great deal from their methods in examining how photographs are used in peoples lives for furthering our understanding of the contexts of creation and use of photographs (past and present).<br>
<br>All the best,<br><br>Rodney<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Martha Langford <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mlangford@qc.aibn.com" target="_blank">mlangford@qc.aibn.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Wednesday morning<br>
<br>
Alison's note deserves a longer reply than I can give it right now. I<br>
just want to add a few thoughts.<br>
<br>
Alison, I have to question the terms of your correlation with memory -<br>
memories may sometimes strike us as truthful, but memory as we know it<br>
on everyday basis is pretty patchy, while copious (only one of the<br>
paradoxes within). Mis-remembering is an everyday occurrence<br>
(especially, it seems, in political life). So 'inclusive and<br>
informative' are not memory's characteristics, as Lorie Novak's layered<br>
and often mysterious oeuvre has shown. When artists work with the<br>
fluidity of memory, something pretty interesting happens, as I have<br>
tried to argue about Johnson and her confessors, Feldmann, Rosier, and<br>
the two Snows. I also want to say that this argument does not privilege<br>
artists' uses, but uses them as case studies writ large to interpret our<br>
everyday responses to similar objects. They are subjective responses, to<br>
be sure.<br>
<br>
Use and context are no more scientific. They are very evocative,<br>
especially when they summon the other senses, touch, smell, hearing the<br>
crinkle of the paper. We are not forensic scientists, though, but<br>
historians. The trajectory you speak of is highly speculative, a way of<br>
narrating the life of the object 'before now'. Archivists are also<br>
storytellers, and often very good ones because they have so much<br>
enriching information at hand. The Sassoon article is very good at<br>
laying out the materiality question, I agree, and it sounds an alarm<br>
that few of us are capable of responding to (don't we all love to<br>
discover 'great images' on line).<br>
<br>
Your illustration of your daughter's use of photography as a social tool<br>
in the present is just what I was getting at when I wrote about<br>
'entertainment'. Cartes-de-visite also show us clearly that people were<br>
not exclusively intent on engraving their images on history, but on<br>
making fashion statements in the present, participating in the modern<br>
culture, climbing the social ladder or theatrically slumming, and<br>
generally having a good time. The album appears to pour these events in<br>
amber, but that's only our bookish backward look. Albums have been<br>
connected to Family Bibles; they are more usefully linked to novels and<br>
poststructural novels, from the likes of Calvino, Ondaatje, and Sebald<br>
(actually, there's a lot of fiction in the Family Bible too, but that's<br>
another discussion).<br>
<br>
Alison, thanks for a longish note that allowed me to respond (I hope not<br>
too provocatively) to keep the larger conversation going.<br>
<br>
To everyone: I am really enjoying the anecdotes from the archival desk -<br>
images! as I said last night and stories about the public/private<br>
divide. And I was very touched by the attention paid to the personal<br>
genealogist - they are a dedicated lot and they do invest emotionally in<br>
their photographic knowledge.<br>
<br>
Off to school.<br>
<br>
Martha<br>
</blockquote></div><br>