[Personal_archives] personal archives

Wed Oct 29 10:16:09 EDT 2008

I'm not sure I can find the photos I mentioned again.  Our system of cataloguing photos before 1998  isn't great, but I can try.

Judith
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Aurele Parisien 
  To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 9:30 AM
  Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] personal archives

  Hello Everyone, 

  I would like to challenge some recurring assumptions in the articles and discussion regarding snapshots, archives, and albums -- specifically the notions that "it is only the positive aspects life" that are "typically" documented in personal photography; that these "present a world with no pain"; and that these depictions are universally "celebratory." 

  The philosopher of mathematics Imre Lakatos introduced the concept of "monster barring" to characterize a common technique for defending a theory against problematic counter-examples by dismissing the latter as "monsters", i.e. as somehow disqualified from fitting the relevant category or definition (Alison's "family photograph") and, hence, not really admissible as a counter-example. 

  The 'monster' I would like to unleash into our tidy discussion is the post-mortem commemorative photograph. I should divulge that this is my area of research -- and yes, Judith, Martha is correct: I will want to know more about your stash! 

  Post-mortem photographs constitute a paradigm instance of Rodney Carter's criteria of documenting a "momentous life occasion" but otherwise bust up the mould. And while they may mainly seem "creepy" to contemporary viewers, they were common in the 19th century -- and not as hidden away taboo objects but prominently displayed in the parlor (often with elaborate framing and decoration), included in family albums, and even sent as post cards to friends and family. The Notman Photographic Archive contains hundreds of them. Although the post-mortem photograph became uncommon as a publicly displayed photographic practice around the First World War, sociologists, anthropologist, social workers, and therapists attest to the fact that it has continued to the present, probably with equal ubiquity, as a private photographic practice, shown only to a close circle of intimates. 

  This raises several issues. Much of the discussion so far has tended to generalise completely ahistorically. While there are many photographic practices and tropes that seem very widespread and consistent over time, we should not gloss over important historical changes in the cultural context that affect how different kinds of photographs were received and the complex nexus of cultural and social attitudes and practices into which they entered -- in this case, changing attitudes toward death, including drastic changes in the acceptability of talking about death and in the private/public nature of institutions dealing with illness and death (sick bed/hospital, home/funeral parlor). These changes have affected the extent to which these photographs are discussed and shown (acknowledged) but not necessarily the extent to which they are made -- in fact, I hazard to guess that, with discrete digital cameras and cellphones, even more post-mortem photographs are made now than ever before. 

  Given this, our notion of personal photography, family photograph, and archive, needs to include such a practice. So, for instance, perhaps "commemorative" would be a broader, more neutral and useful term than "celebratory" for discussing family photographs. 

  This brings me to Michael's point about the "encounter". This is crucial I think -- yes, it applies! And I'm glad he mentioned Derrida's reading of Barthes's punctum: Derrida's point (sorry) is that it is a mistake to read Barthes as positing the studium and the punctum as two independently subsisting things -- each can only exist as offset by the other, like the contrapuntal structure of a musical composition. Barthes refers to photographs as "laminated objects": just as iconicity and indexicality are laminated together by the photograph, so are the studium and the punctum, presence and absence, preservation and loss, celebration and mourning. What the post-mortem photograph forces us to acknowledge is that we turn to photography for much more than celebrating the positive moments -- we also turn to it in our greatest moments of pain and anguish. Like the studium and punctum, these needs and uses are inseparable -- post-mortem photographs also comfort, affirm, and celebrate and, similarly, the positive, affirming family photographs contain pain and anguish. 

  What we owe to the photographic object in the archive is to exert our receptive imagination to tease out these complex interminglings -- between the poles of transformation and contextualization is interpretation. In the absence of other "complementing" documents, we need to attend to what the photograph itself can tell us -- and perhaps even more so in the presence of such documents: perhaps it is the photographs that should guide how we interpret them. In the marvelous photograph that Jeremy shows us, is that a First World War uniform the father is wearing? Which regiment? Do format and process and edge trimming of the photograph itself allow us to date it to the war period? A "positive milestone" but also much worry and anxiety. The richness of an entire album, even when anonymous, will usually reveal to the attentive spectator, in the interstices between happy garden parties and graduations, plenty of real loss and regret among the "mythology."

  The Collected Visions website attests to this ambivalent complexity in the photographic encounter -- on the part of both makers and spectators. Patrick, "age 20," compiles a small history and ethnography of post-mortem and funerary photography from the archive. He comments on it with great insight and has sensitively recognized a series of jovial group poses as situated at a visitation or wake. The punctum of this collection is the inclusion of a seemingly unrelated photograph of people relaxing on benches on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade -- somehow, it fits:

  http://cvisions.nyu.edu/gallery/essays19/deathvoid.html

  Chris responds to a lovely, Christmas-time family photo by noting the absence of a generation and projects himself readily into the anguish of an orphaned son -- yes, a Christmas letter, but one with plenty of evocative substance:

  http://cvisions.nyu.edu/gallery/essays19/myfamily.html

  In the cool, bright-but-diffuse-light of photographic day, my monster is everywhere. Take, for instance, the complex spacial and temporal contextualization (and ongoing re-contextualization) of the concise but poignantly loquacious archive of "celebratory" photographs in a contemporary crypt in Montreal's Notre-Dame Cemetery -- these are milestones that are hard and trip us up and yet do celebrate (so many real things):

  http://picasaweb.google.com/aurele.parisien/NotreDameCemetery2007?authkey=aVK3r40btJg#5262504688798654402

  As well as the scope of family photography, I think we need to both enlarge and take more seriously the notions of context -- and, while we're at it, also our notions of who is constantly using photographs in transformative ways. 

  Aurèle Parisien
  Doctoral Student
  Concordia University

  On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Judith Colwell <ucarchiv at nb.sympatico.ca> wrote:

    The photos that we have in a church archvies, amid personal papers, are
    often taken to back up a report or to put a face on a church -- hence
    alumninum souvenir plates  and postcards showing the image of the minister
    and of the church exterior.  In some circles these would be art forms --
    after all the engraving on the aluminum or tin took some skill.  Then the
    question arises asking whether the church was as stern as the minister, or
    was the minister pushing an image that he thought the church wanted.

    As to pictures of funerals, etc. -- depends on the geographic area in
    question.  I have some photos of people laid out in their caskets which
    appear to be part of a culture.  And I vividly recall, from back in the late
    1950's a schoolmate with her album of photos of her mother in casket and the
    funeral.  Creepy to me, but ....

    Judith Colwell

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Archives" <archives at trinity.utoronto.ca>
    To: <Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu>

    Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 3:07 PM
    Subject: [Personal_archives] personal archives

    Hello all,

    Reading the articles I have been struck by the universality of the
    'snapshot' experience, how we all know the rules of picture-taking and
    viewing. First we know that although the picture captures a real moment,
    it is also a projection of an idealized life. Secondly, we know that
    much is hidden - hence the sadness that Barthes refers to and which I
    would argue goes beyond the realization that the subject may be dead.

    Chambers refers to the feminine character of snapshot taking and album
    making, and points out that despite this female perspective there are no
    pictures of housework. Taking this one step further, there are also no
    pictures of screaming infants, two-year-olds having a tantrum, sullen
    teen-agers screaming "I hate you!". There are no pictures of sick-beds
    or funerals. The family album or photo collection presents a world
    without pain. Since most of us have personal experience with the
    phenomenon of family albums, we instinctively do not buy into this, and
    realize that the mythology created is unrealistic and to some extent,
    banal. Could the family album be seen as the visual equivalent of the
    Christmas letter?

    In an archival context, we find the pictures complemented and completed
    by other elements in a fonds: a file of condolence cards, doctor's
    bills, diaries recording private anguish, letters containing an
    outpouring of emotion. And they are certainly useful, as Catherine
    points out, for identification purposes.

    Martha asks the fundamental question: "is everyday photographic
    experience transferrable to art?" I'd argue that it is and that the
    artist has the same mandate as the archivist. The historic photograph on
    its own is nearly meaningless, and thus it requires either
    transformation (by an artist) or contextualization (by an archivist) to
    make it 'real'. It's function during the lifetime of its subjects, and
    perhaps for a generation after, is to follow a path that has been
    tacitly approved by its viewing public. After that, it's fair game for us!

    Thanks, Catherine, Martha et al. for making this happen.

    Sylvia

    ----- Original Message ----
    From: Alison Nordstrom <anordstrom at geh.org>
    To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
    Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 9:40:51 AM
    Subject: [Personal_archives] (re-sent) first thoughts of the morning

    I'm curious about who's lurking here. I suspect we have archivists,
    curators and students who may do any number of things in the future.
    Strikes me that we might have very different notions and working
    definitions of "family photograph." Can we share?

    I tend to say various things like "a photograph used in the family as a
    metaphor for that family, an ideological device that defines family, a
    statement both internally directed and externally directed that
    manifests an ideal, a record of a family."

    How do these past uses cling to a photograph ( or group of photographs)
    as it/they moves away from original use?
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  -- 
  Aurèle Parisien
  4868 Hutchison Street
  Montreal, Quebec
  H2V 4A3

  Tel . : 514-273-3274
  Cell: 514-774-6133

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