Digital Archives

My work has recently acquired two new photographic printers. As the printer heads need to be used every week to keep them from getting jammed, we were all told that we could get some prints from our collection printed for our office if we knew which ones we wanted. With this incentive, I took myself to the LAC homepage to find some interesting photographs. While there, I reflected upon a theme that we had discussed during the photography class - Archival Encounters. In particular, I reflected upon how the LAC's digital archive of photographs, and the colonial legacy, shaped the way that I encountered that archive.

On the LAC website, there is an option to search through the photographs where you need to select one or several key words. As I was doing this, I really came to understand that I would have to conform to the keywords pre-selected by an archivist who would have assigned keywords to photographs. I was unsure of what these keywords were, and initial attempts to find images of war posters did not yield the expected results. I initially tried searching for what I considered the images to be, "war posters" which only came back with 1 result.

A second attempt, "war poster" without an 's' took me to a photograph with the caption "MIKAN 3396789: Two Canadian soldiers reading a War Bond poster in a ruined village in their lines. December, 1917." Upon seeing this, I realized that I might have been using the wrong term in my search, so I switched the term to "war bonds" which brought up a larger amount of relevant results. In the end, I decided on the following image to be printed: MIKAN 3668563: Our Daddy is Fighting, Buy War Loan Bonds and Help Him Win the War.

Although I selected a few other images that I wanted printed: MIKAN3387419: Tobogganing at the Chateau Laurier,MIKAN 3386153: Girls' Hockey Team, and MIKAN 3192911:

Byward Market in my searching I found myself getting constantly frustrated while searching for keyword terms that I felt were appropriate only to be faced with finding limited results, even when I knew a picture existed. As well, I realized that I had to frame my search terms in particular ways to be able to find images the way that the archivist had categorized them. Often, I would turn to very basic and fundamental key words when I wanted to find a large amount of relevant results, for example, the blanket term hockey which came back with 276 images. Even then, I was unsure if there remained images that I was missing due to my keywords.

This experience is very relevant to the James Opp piece, the Colonial Legacies of the Digital Archive because it brought to the surface how important the archivist's role is in future searches of the digital archive. In the process of digitization, the archivist assigns keywords that must be replicated exactly by the researcher if they want to locate that image. The experience also highlighted to me the fact that the archive is not the 'neutral, impartial observer' it is often made out to be. In order to 'unlock' the digital archive, one must work within the framework that has been created by the institution, something that may require the researcher to put their own ways of thinking aside or else be faced with the dreaded red sentence: No documents containing your search terms were found.

Family photo albums - context is everything

I found the readings this week particularly compelling, since they are asking us to re-evaluate the way that we think about the seemingly private domain of the family photograph album. I decided to use this blog post to further reflect upon some of the readings in particular that touch upon the same theme, one of the context of experiencing an album. Deborah Chambers and Kirsten Emiko McAllister discuss how the album has a particular function within the context of the familial and private sphere, that colours the way in which the album is analyzed. By altering that context of the private when an image is seen from an archive or museum, these family albums are torn from the social context that made them meaningful. Moreover, this new context of viewing changes the types of stories that come out of the albums. This was also apparent from the workshop that we did during class. I also drew upon Martha Langford’s piece when thinking about how a researcher might experience my family album without the benefit of familiarity to the subject.

My pictures that I chose for this blog post are extracts from my own family album that I brought to class today. While going through the album with my mother and sister, I was coming at this album from a familiar context - I had seen many of this pictures before but still felt compelled to listen to my mom, telling me the same stories, reaffirming what I already knew about them. However, this time was different than in the past because I was reflecting upon this week’s readings. As Chambers writes, family albums are often devoid of any writing to provide names, dates and other contextual information (as mine is), which Chambers suggests that these albums function within an oral framework – the album serves as a jumping off point where, as Chambers argues, women take on the role of filling the story behind the photos through storytelling.

Taking this into account, I reflected upon my personal experience interacting with one of my own family albums, in my mom’s home – a private and domestic space. When I was looking at my family album, I felt that the photos in it provided a cohesive narrative, although perhaps not linear – all of the people and places depicted within the frame were of importance to me, and I understood who the people were, and what was the significance behind the changing locations of the pictures as my family moved from Uganda to Karachi, Kitchner and finally a few seemingly random recent pictures in Ottawa. When I looked at my family album, I was really able to understand the album holistically, as an entity in its own right. More importantly, I had my mother who was able to provide context, insight and extrapolations from the pictures. With my mother’s oral testimony, the photos were able to function as a whole to provide a narrative of my family’s history, that fit within a larger story about Indians living in Uganda and their expulsion in 1972.

This personal experience differs drastically from how one might experience the same family album when the context of viewing is altered, to that of an archive, or museum. The workshop that we did in class provided me with a glimpse of how a researcher might experience it, much in the way that McAllister experienced the images of Japanese families in internment camps, or the way that Langford tries to piece together an unfamiliar album. When the class looked at my family album from a pseudo-research perspective, they were unable to locate the pictures or situate them in time beyond a fairly large window. Furthermore, in this context, I found that the pictures became more individual stories, grouped together in clusters, rather than as part of a cohesive whole. This experience was similar to that of McAllister and Langford, who attempted to do close readings of the albums. With McAllister in particular, due to the images being stored without a physical album, it was difficult to analyze the images within the family context. Instead, as her article demonstrates, they were used to understand larger trends taking place within the Japanese community during this time period. As for Langford, although the pictures are stored in an album, without much contextual information, it is difficult to piece together the narrative of the whole album. However, in her case the physical album is able to provide some boundaries for thinking about the pictures. In an archive, my album would likely be disassembled, resulting in making the pictures even more individual pictures as opposed to pictures to be understood within their larger framework within the album. Instead of reflecting the personal story of my family as they made their way from Uganda to Canada, researchers would likely only look at the pictures as they fit into their particular topic of study, if they could even locate them in time and place.I felt that this week allowed me to gain a better appreciation for the context under which images are viewed deeply affect the way those albums can be understood.

Quote from Susan Sontag

A while ago we were asked to read Susan Sontag's On Photography and take a look at the quotes listed in the back of the book. I picked the following quote to reflect upon:

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug a camera. - Lewis Hine

The reason that I chose this quote in particular has to do with the fact that I led the seminar discussion last week where we were discussing documentary impulses and the place of the photo-essay. This form of photography relies heavily on the written word to accompany photographs, so I felt that this juxtaposed with how Lewis Hine articulated in his quote. From Hine's quote, it seems as though he feels that photographic images are able to speak in a way that words cannot articulate.

I did a quick google search for some of Lewis Hine's work, in order to see how he employs language with his photographs, and stumbled upon the following link which contains Lewis' work along with original captions made by Lewis.

The caption that Lewis used for this particular photograph reads: October 1911. Lowell, Mass. Standing: Michael Keefe, 32 Marion St., been at work in No. 1 mule room, Merrimac [Textile] Mill, eight months. Apparently 13 years old. John Risheck, 391 Adams St.; Cornelius Hurley, 298 Adams St., been at work in No. 1 mule room in Merrimac Mill for six months. About 13 or 14 probably. Sitting: John Neary, 211 Lakeview Ave.; smallest is Robert Magee, 270 Suffolk St. Apparently 12 years old. Been working in Mule Room No. 1, Merrimac Mill, one year. Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine

After reading the caption for the image, I wonder how Hine would feel about the value of the photo-essay, and if he felt that his work fell into this genre. From the above caption, I believe that his work fits in quite well with the nature of documentary photography, as his aim with his photographs was to bring awareness to child labour, a practice that he felt quite strongly against. It seems to be quite in contrast to his quote, but it leads me to wonder if he would feel the same way. Perhaps he would argue that, without the photograph, he would not be  able to tell the story of child workers in a compelling way. From this quote, I feel that Hine would argue that although the words may add to our understanding of the picture, it is the picture that comes first before the text. This is in contrast to our readings about the photo-essay which felt that the image and the text were equal contributors to our final understanding of the image.

Clowns having a bad day?

I found this image on the Library and Archives facebook page the other day with the description reading only "What Have We Here - Tell us what you think this image is about. Stay tuned! We'll reveal the caption in a few days."

This image really got me thinking about two of the articles that we read in particular: Roland Barthes "The Photographic Message," and James Opp's "Picturing Communism: Yousuf Karsh, Canadair, and Cold War Advertising." While it may not seem at the outset that these two articles have much in common, it was really two key messages in the articles that I was thinking about in my viewing of this particular image.

As I had mentioned in class, Barthes wrote something that intrigued me in his discussion of text as it relates to images. He writes that "the text constitutes a parasitic message design to connote the image, to quicken it with one or more second-order signifieds. In other words... the image no longer illustrates the words; it is now the words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image"

When I first came across this image of clowns, it was Barthes' words that I was reflecting on as I analyzed what I was looking at. When I discovered this image, the first thing that I did was to click the image on facebook in order to find the description of the image. I was looking for some words to tell me explicitly what it was that I was looking at: a date, location, or a reason why this image was significant. Essentially, I was looking for some textual descriptors to tell me what I was seeing. Without these textual indicators, I was reluctant to rely on my visual assumptions of what I was seeing. As Barthes implies, I (as a viewer) am not looking at the image first in order to clarify the accompanying text. Rather, I am looking for textual clues to clarify what my eyes are seeing.

This leads into Opp's piece where I was struck by his analysis on the role of text in anti-communist advertisements. Opp writes that "[p]aradoxically, the more concrete the images of communism became, the longer the textual explanation had to be to contain the possible meanings that could be "read" into the photograph. Rather than making the nature of the threat more visually self-evident, photographs seemed to make it less so." Although the image of clowns is not about anti-communist advertising, the sentiment is applicable in that it implies that a photograph without textual accompaniment can be quite ambiguous.

Thus, when I looked at this image, without any textual cues to guide my viewing of the image what I saw was what I assumed was a circus troupe of some sort. I noticed that none of the clowns seem to be smiling, and while I could not date the picture, I saw some clues that, given the proper knowledge, might help someone to attach a date. I noticed that one of the clowns are aboriginal in stereotypical dress, only two women, and a black man. I also noticed a man dressed as a soldier that was holding a gun and that many of the clowns are holding instruments, which leads me to believe that they had some type of marching band. Other than this, I found myself really unsure of what it was that I was seeing.

Both Barthes and Opp drew my attention to issues surrounding the use of textual information with photographic images, and this really brought to my attention how this text really can influence the way that images are read by their audiences, myself included.

And by the way, after this image had been posted for a few days, LAC posted a link to the description of the image. Title: Clown Band. Date: 1914-1919. Place of Creation: No place, unknown, or undetermined. Subject Heading: Sports & Amusements - Musical. Does this change how the viewer "reads" the image? That is for another blog post.