Responding to the Archive

Reading and Archive: Photography between Labour and Capitalism, Alan Seluka

  In Alan Seluka's essay he uses an archive of photographs  made by a small town photographer in Cape Breton between the years 1948 and 1968.  The photographer, Leslie Shedden, ran a photography business and made a living by photographing the local community and also taking publicity material for the local coal mining company.  When he sold his business to another, younger photographer, in 1977 he also sold all of his negatives which form the basis for the archive.  Seluka discusses the different ways in which this archive could be made public.  He argues that it could be done taxonomically, presumable, under different headings such as the coal mine, other local business and private customers.  It could also be looked at purely chronologically.  Apart from the logistical issues with publishing the work Seluka also suggests that it has to be considered whether the images are to be regarded as an historical document or should they be looked at purely artistically; is Shedden the next new discovery?  He argues that one of the problems with using the photographs to portray the history of the area is the fact that there may have been a hidden agenda for taking the photographs.

This is an interesting essay and were one to come across such an archive, it would make a fascinating project.  Perhaps on a smaller scale 'ordinary' family archives could be used in a similar way.

Liz Wells in Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity refers to another use of archive photographs when discussing the work of John Huddleston in Killing Ground (2002) when he used his own contemporary colour photographs made at American civil war battle sites and juxtaposes them with archive materials.  Wells says that the archive images include studio portraits of those newly enlisted for family and friends and they testify to fear of not returning.  She goes on to argue that this montage tactic is effective poetically as well as for historical detail. (Wells,L. 2011 Kindle location 1527)
I have recently visited the Royal Photographic Society's exhibition Drawn by Light at the National Media Museum Bradford. The exhibition is another example of the use of an archive.  I don't know how the RPS store and catalogue their images but they were extracted from their archive  to tell a particular story.  They were spread over two galleries, although this was most likely due to space constraints.  Gallery one was in two sections:  Continuity and Change and A Period of Optimism and Progress.  Continuity and Change showed photographs from different genres and periods displayed alongside each other, creating dialogues which reveal both continuity and change in vision over nearly 200 years. In A Period of Optimism and Progress a replica of an early RPS exhibition has been set up to illustrate the importance of exhibitions to the society.  The work in Gallery two is entitled Personal Vision where pairs of groups of photographs by individual photographers are displayed alongside each other.  These juxtapositions show how an individual's work has evolved over time. (Harding, 2015)

There are, then, other ways of using archive photographs.

Harding, C. (2015) Drawn by Light: The RPS Collection Bradford: National Media Museum
Wells, L. (2011) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity Kindle London/New York: I.B.Tauris