[Personal_archives] Photography and Personal Archives--welcome

[Hobbs, Catherine]

Good morning everyone,

Welcome to our second SISPA listserv discussion on the topic of Photography and Personal Archives.  
I'd like to give a very warm  welcome to our guest experts Martha Langford (of Concordia) and Alison Nordstrom (of George Eastman House).  We are also happy to be joined by a number of their graduate students.  

The readings for this week were not explicitly directed at archivists though there are a number of archival concerns and criticisms of archival practices which are hinted at within the articles or which hover as a ghostly presence.  More than that, though, the articles and the website raise a wealth of concepts and practices which we can take and debate in terms of dealing with archival creators and their personal photographs and perhaps extend these to look at their fonds' more broadly.  

I'd like to start by acknowledging that at the basis of many of these discussions is the very visceral way in which people react to photographs (acknowledged at many points:  particularly in Chambers' article and in the mentions of Barthes' concerns).  This is, obviously, one of the primary factors differentiating photographs from other types of archival material created by people, for people and often about people.  

As a way in, I'd like to invite further discussion on the emphasis on the private vs. the public sphere.  This emerges strongly from Chambers' discussion of encoding private space and the family with broader social/cultural norms.  She mentions the use of very similar sets of poses, photographing "important" events, interior space, the "feminine sphere" of the home (though a home without housework) and photographing images of our consumerism.  The references to Barthes in Martha's paper lead us to a very different 'privacy' that of the punctum:  the realm of private feeling.  In particular, the feeling of the temporal punctum in which the individual feels a shock that the person in the photograph is very likely dead.  Very broadly, these two realms of public encoding of the private life and the private encountering seem very central to the archival concerns with respect to photographs.  

Looking forward to this week and to hearing what you have to say...
Warmly,

Catherine

(SISPA Chair)

Catherine Hobbs,
Archivist, Literary Archives (English-language) / Archiviste, Archives littéraires de langue anglaise
Documentary Heritage Collection Sector / Secteur de la collection du patrimoine documentaire 
Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada 
Place de la Cité, Room / Piece 598, 
550, boul. de la Cité, Gatineau (QC), K1A 0N4
catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca
Téléphone /Telephone 819-934-8331
Télécopieur / Facsimile 819-934-8333

Gouvernement du Canada / Government of Canada  www.collectionscanada.gc.ca



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/personal_archives/attachments/20081027/f13830f6/attachment.html