Responding to the archive
19th of June 2019
Please refer to Alan Sekula’s ‘Reading an Archive: Photography between Labour and Capital’ In Evans, J. & Hall, S (ed.) (1999) Visual Culture: The Reader, London: Sage which you received with Contextual Studies.
See more on this WeAreOCA blogpost: http://www.weareoca.com/photography/Taryn-Simon-and-the-archive/
Sekula states that his aims to looking into the relationship between economic life and photographic culture. Archives are important, and their forms are numerous. Archives can be personal or public, their ownership varies too. For photography, the owner of the archive and the actual taker of the picture are not usually the same person or institute. “Archives, then, constitute a territory of images; the unity of an archive is first and foremost that imposed by ownership” (Sekula, p. 182). Meaning and context are important to photographs, an Images meaning is formed due to its text, it’s format, and its presentations. These all contribute to a fuller picture. According to Sekula, “photographic archives suspend meaning and use, the archive meaning exists in a state that is both residual and potential” (Sekula, p. 184). Archives can contradict themselves. This can be through science and art. A dualism exists in photography, which has been around from its birth. These archives preserve the relationship between power and knowledge. “Photography is an art. Photography is a science. Photography is both an art and a science” (Sekula, p. 190).
Taryn Simon created a project called The Innocents, which documented innocents people who were convicted of an alleged crime. Simon photographed them at the locations where the crime were supposed to of taken place. This projects challenges photography’s ability to show reality. Photography can count as evidence. But photography doesn’t always show the truth. The result is a thought-provoking emotion piece of work.
Photographic archives are important and generally vast. For example the New York Public Library has over 1.2 million images, in various formats in their archives. Nowadays the internet is a never-ending archive of information and images. It is easy to access and hence people are more involved now, “and now we have the internet and camera phones and everyone is a curator” (Sharon, cited in OCA).
Artists
Nicky Bird is an artist who investigates the archive. Bird combines archival material with mostly landscapes which have hidden histories. Her aim is to show the personal and social history and connections of these archival items. In her project Wanted-New Custodians, Bird brought hundreds of old family images from eBay. She also took note of the sellers item descriptions and included these in her work. During 2014 and 2015, Bird collaborated with three other female artists who were based in Scotland to created a project together. They were Alicia Bruce, Caroline Douglas and Sylwia Kowalczyk.
Her project, Travelling the Archive, is the one I am most interested in. She was commissioned by Atlas Arts to created a project of the Isle of Skye. She combined her modern day images with Joan Wilcock’s images. Wilcock was a tourist who visited the area between 1959 and 1973, there are over 400 original Kodachrome slides. The resulting images are fascinating. They provide a glimpse into the past whilst remaining in the present. I really like them, they not only give a view in the islands history but also the social atmosphere. You get to see the people who were around, and it is fascinating,
There are many artists who turn to the archive for inspiration, one such is Erik Kessels. Kessels created an installation entitled, 24 hrs in Photos, he printed every image that was published on Flickr in one day. The result was rooms filled with piles and piles of pictures. Kessels has also had several other projects in which he looks to the archives, for example In Almost Every way I turn, in which he collects images where the image is obscured by says finger or is out of focus, and in Album Beauty, he investigates the disappearance of family albums.
Joachim Schmid is an artist I have looked into before, as his work has been an inspiration on several previous assignments. He once collected any discarded images from the streets or in flea markets and created several projects with what he had found. He doesn’t see himself as a photographer but rather a “professional looker” (Schmid, cited in Casper). He now uses the internet, “For the first time in the history of photography we can study the real-time production of snapshot making – globally!” (Schmid, cited in Casper). His projects are very thought provoking, especially the ones where he uses the internet to access the images. It just shows how much we upload all the time.
Bibliography
Bird, N. About. At: https://www.nickybird.com/about/ (Accessed on 12th of June 2019).
Bird, N. (2014-2015). Not finished Article. At: https://nickybird.com/projects/not-finished-article/ (Accessed on 12th of June 2019).
Bird, N. (2015-2016). Travelling the Archive. At: https://www.nickybird.com/projects/travelling-the-archive-2015-2016/ (Accessed on 12th of June 2019).
Bird, N. (2018). Wanted-New Custodians. At: https://nickybird.com/projects/wanted-new-custodians-for-family-photographs/ (Accessed on 12th of June 2019).
Casper, J. Celebrating Photographic Garbage. At: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/Joachim-schmid-celebrating-Photographic-garbage/ (Accessed on 12th of June 2019).
OCA. (2013). Taryn Simon and the Archive. At: https://www.weareoca.com/subject/photography/Taryn-simon-and-the-archive/ (Accessed on 12th of June 2019).
Sekula, A. (2007). ‘Reading an archive: photography between labour and capital’. In: Evans & Hall (ed.) Visual Culture: A Reader. London: Sage Publications Ltd. pp. 181-192.
Unknown author. (2017). ‘Photobook: The many Lives of Erik Kessels’ In: British Journal of Photography [Online]. At: http://www.bjp-Online.com/20117/05/Kessels-lives/ (Accessed on 12th of June 2019).
Georgina's Body of Work 