[Personal_archives] Personal archives

[Forstrom, Michael]

I'm new to the list so, first, greetings everyone. I'd also like to add up front that I greatly enjoyed the articles and appreciate the authors willingness to put them out there.

When reading Rodney's article (to pick up on the last thread) I found myself wondering about possbile distinctions between family and other forms of personal or amateur photography (e.g. snaphots of/with friends/colleagues). As far as the display or circulation of photographs is concerned, I'm of the impression (this is just personal experience) that family photographs don't circulate as broadly. In other words, they serve foremost as historical records, keepsakes, and means of communication between family members. I sat through many slideshows as a child, for example, in which images of family members were presented without narrative, description usually limited to names and biographical facts. Assuming this is true, I then wonder if technology (digital photography, email, etc.) is causing a shift, and leading family photographs into a greater public life, or if it's merely a matter of a change in the means of transmission.

Michael Forstrom
Manuscript Unit
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

-----Original Message-----
From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Martha Langford
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 2:12 PM
To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Personal_archives] Personal archives



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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