[Personal_archives] Photography and Personal Archives

[Rodney Carter]

I have been long fascinated by the private/public nature of personal
photographs, snapshots in particular. While these images often appear to be
giving viewers glances into the intimate and private worlds of those
depicted, they are created for consumption - to be placed in frames and
albums to be viewed by others who may not necessarily be a member of the
familial circle of those depicted in the images. While there are certain
treasured photographs that do not get put out for public display, I think
that the majority of photographs are created for public viewing and this
greatly effects the types of images taken and the poses adopted by those
depicted. Sitters are purposefully creating certain types of depictions of
themselves to be viewed by others . This process might very well be
unconscious but it certainly occurs - which Catherine, following Chambers,
points out - look to any archival collection of personal photographs and you
will see the same motifs and types of images appearing over and over, across
a large period of time.

Would it be too far to state that photographs are inherently public
documents which only have the sheen of the private? I think it is this
appearance of privacy is what makes them so compelling, so arresting, and
which uniquely imbues them with Barthes' punctum. The appearance of privacy
makes us overlook how these photos may have displayed or otherwise used by
their creators. We feel, coming across them in archives, that we are given
access to something secret or intimate.

I have to cut my response short for the moment but will definitely return to
the idea of personal photographs as prompts for conversations.

Rodney



>
> First I want to thank Catherine Hobbs for this kind invitation into the
> archivists' realm, a place where I have made many fruitful discoveries
> in the past, having found the subject of /Suspended Conversations/ in
> the Notman Photographic Archives here in Montreal. Her welcoming remarks
> about the navigations between private and public realms take me back to
> those days, and the first recognition that we should not consider
> photographs and albums in a public collection as private, but as
> inhabiting and informing a space between the private and the public
> realms. So the first question that I am considering is: how do we frame
> that space; how do we define it? I would like to establish a framework
> that has some solid features, before we begin to talk about its porous
> boundaries, shifts, and fissures. Barthes helps us to understand the
> sense of loss that inhabits that place, but if it were strictly morbid,
> always as sad as /Camera Lucida/, I don't think many of would want to
> stay there, work there, root our lives there. There is pleasure in this
> place. Can we also talk about that, as a product of the imagination, as
> a prompt for conversation? After all, that's what we're having.
>
> Martha


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,
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