RESPONDING TO THE ARCHIVE
Reading an archive: Allan Sekula
At a time when we are inundated with people taking photographs it has become increasingly commonplace to look back at photographs that would otherwise be lost to history. Thinking about photographs and creating stories, re-contextualising them for a contemporary audience, are important considerations for practitioners working in this genre.
Please refer to Sekula, A. (1999) ‘ Reading an Archive: Photography between Labour and Capital ‘ In: Evans, J.H. (ed.) Visual culture: The Reader. London: SAGE. pp.181–192. (Boothroyd, 2020:30)
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This essay Sekula uses the example of an archive of Mining photographs in the Cape Breton region between 1948 and 1968 made by a commercial photographer Leslie Shedden; these were for the coal company and the coal miners. Sekula says that his aim is to understand the relationship between photographic culture and economic life, “How does photography serve to legitimise and normalise existing power relationships?…how is social memory and historical memory preserved, transformed, restricted and obliterated by photograph?” (Sekula, 1999, p 182).
He explores what photographic archives are: Commercial, corporate, government, museum, historical, collectors for instance. All of which are the property of individuals and defined by their ownership which he calls a “territory of images”. He points out that unusually photograph are often in archives that are not owned or controlled by the author. This means that their meanings may be reinterpreted. He is right to point out that whilst photographs used to be thought as absolute truths “meaning is always directed by layout, captions, text, site and mode of presentation” (Sekula, 1999:194). So, archives are never neutral, and rely on institutions for their authority, and though it is today accepted that the truth in an image is an interpretation, sitting in an archive influences their reading.
Sekula also considers the effect of an archive if we simply treat photographs as artworks. He concludes that then the archive becomes an inventory of aesthetic achievement, but then concludes that to consider the collector as an artist themselves is a romantic indulgence.
Photography is both an art and science, though a subjective experience and not as objective as science. Returning towards the end of his essay to the archive of mining images, he points out that this is a mixture of official pictures, private pictures, and personal pictures which are not mutually exclusive categories. This of course may not be so in other archives.
When viewing an archive readers need to be well aware, just as they should be in curated exhibitions, that the meanings and purposes of the photographs may be supplanted by the change of context caused by how they have been collected/arranged. Meaning in photography is most affected by context, and as Sekula points out the archive can never be neutral. Furthermore, I would suggest that if a photographer is to use and archive for their work you then have the possibility of a further mutation of meaning.
References:
Boothroyd, S (2020) Photography 3: Body of work coursebook. Open College of the Arts. Barnsley.
Sekula, A. (1999) ‘ Reading an Archive: Photography between Labour and Capital ‘ In: Evans, J.H. (ed.) Visual culture: The Reader. London: SAGE. pp.181–192.
NIKI SOUTH 