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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>I won't presume to summarize this rich and wide-ranging conversation except to thank all writers and lurkers for their involvement and to wish it had been longer. Special thanks to Catherine for making it happen and trying to keep us on track.<BR>
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I agree that the issue of private things made public by a re-situation from home to archive is worthy of its own discussion and may be particularly germane to photographs because of the immediate ways we respond to them. We should also recognise that the meanings of most things will change over time; generations from now, researchers may value the intimate details about people who are no longer remembered as living beings and for reasons we cannot imagine.<BR>
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The teaching function of an archivist is something we did not directly touch on, though I think it is essential. Your specialized knowledge of photographic processes for example may be useful to researchers who lack this but there are many sources for such things. I think the most critical juncture is archivist-researcher-object and if you can stress object, especially to someone who thinks he or she is interested only in the content of the image, you are conveying a very important research approach. Materiality: placement, layout, sequence, juxtaposition, caption, condition are the context that generally remains bundled with a group of photographs. Preserve it. Note it. Point it out.<BR>
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I am more cautious than Martha is about intuiting meanings from objects we don’t know much about, but I do know that what often looks like instinct can actually be the result of years of observation and analysis, recalled so quickly that it appears to supercede logic. When you have seen hundreds of apparently banal and predictable baby pictures, wedding pictures graduation pictures and the like, you will immediately spot even the subtlest anomaly or nuance. <BR>
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Finally, I want to suggest that all of us pay attention to how we research this special kind of material. Here’s an example of a direct qualitative research technique that could, I think be adapted to intake interviews with donors to archives:<BR>
Gillian Rose<BR>
“Everyone’s Cuddled Up and It Just Looks Nice: An Emotional Geography of Some Mums and Their Family Photos” Journal of Social and Cultural Geography. <I>Routledge Vol 5, Issue4 pp 549-564<BR>
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</I>I wish you all happy research!<BR>
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-- <BR>
Alison Nordström, Ph.D<BR>
<B>- </B>Curator of Photographs, George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film<BR>
<B>- </B>Director, M.A. In Photographic Preservation and Collections Management, Ryerson University<BR>
<B>- </B>International Editor, <I>Photography and Culture</I>, University of the Arts, London<BR>
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Office 585 271 3361 x 367<BR>
Mobile 603 731 7947<BR>
<<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>anordstrom@geh.org</U></FONT>><BR>
WWW.eastmanhouse.org<BR>
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