[Personal_archives] Personal archives

[Martha Langford]

Martha Langford wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> I would like to hear more about this 'sheen of the private'. I think 
> it can be the basis of further unpacking Rodney's notion of 'personal 
> mythology' in the private photograph. At the same time, we have to 
> bear 'social performance' in mind, that is, the everyday activity of 
> self presentation recorded by the camera.
>
> There are indisputably codes and repetitions across the vast sea of 
> Kodak lives, as well as in cartes-de-visite. But I am also interested 
> in, and have seen scores of examples, of ruptures in the social fabric 
> and recombinations of codes to construct different messages. We have 
> to consider the carnivalesque aspects of everyday photography.
>
> But we need to hear from others...
>
> Martha
>
> Rodney Carter wrote:
>> 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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>>   
>