#reflective text

Chosen text:

‘The Post-Archival Constellation: The Archive under the Technical Conditions of Computational Media’, p103-125, Berry D.M. in Memory in Motion: Archives, Technology and the Social, Eds. Blom I., Lundemo T. and RØssaak E. Amsterdam University Press (2017).

DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1jd94f0.8

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1jd94f0.8

The text The Post-Archival Constellation: The Archive under the Technical Conditions of Computational Media by David M. Berry is an explanation of the differences between digital archives and physical ones and their functions in an era where the digital is taking over the analogue. The process of digitalisation becomes a threat to physical libraries, museums and galleries, and also to private archives such as family photo albums. Berry tries to analyse the similarities and differences between these two forms of archives and also what kind of impact digitalisation may have on social memory and the concept of the archive itself. Barry points out that digital archives are not physical materials and they can be reshaped and compressed without breaking, they can be manipulated, and they do not need to exist within the organised structures and systems of traditional archives. The new way of archiving is supposed to be more efficient and accessible but, with such a vast amount of information, the researcher faces an overwhelming and endless archive rather than a specifically curated archive in an institution such as a library or museum. However I think Barry’s text is limited in its comparison of institutionally created analogue archives to either what are often individual digital archives of the personal. And indeed more generalist archives that are curated by algorithms rather than the subjectivity of the archivist.

My project Miss P. Jones, for the module Beyond The Frame, is based on a found analogue archive. The Post-Archival Constellation became an inspiration for me to work on this box from a junkmarket containing private memoirs and to preserve individual memories with an aim to connect them to social memory. Even though the Miss P. Jones project is made up of many photographs it is a cameraless project, as I did not take any photographs. From the beginning of the project I decided to work using someone else’s archives and individual memories to create a narrative. However the aesthetic of the presentation was partially based on various social media platforms. Private moments, letters, and photographs exhibited on ‘Pinterest style’ analogue panels. The display was created to manifest the digital era, the layout was copied from social media structure, however I did the research on artists and photographers who worked on analogue archives. The idea of mixed media on panels was taken from Gerhard Richter’s ongoing Atlas project. My found photographs and documents from a junk market were not ‘de-skilled’ from their function after the production as, for instance, the images in Larry Sultan and Mike Mendel’s photobook Evidence. I wanted to revitalise these private archives, and give them a second opportunity to see daylight and not to be forgotten. Two very good examples of not ‘de-skilling’ visual images are the photo books: 1968: The Fire of Ideas by Marcelo Brodsky and Floh created by Tacita Dean. Both project were created with analogue archives and gave them a second life years after the event.

The Miss P. Jones project is a commentary on digitalisation; the documents and images have not been scanned and changed into pdf or jpg format. I did not base my work on sources from the internet, like Thomas Ruff for instance in his photobook JPEGS. Instead of scanned materials I used originals to create a more authentic image of Miss P. Jones and her life. If I had have used scanned materials in my project then, in my opinion, it would not have been a correct choice. The originality and the feeling of the passing of time would disappear. My decision not to use digital archives was made in response to Barry’s article in which he says that computerised archives change

“the framework of social and individual memory … it becomes manifest in the techniques and practises used in social reproduction such as teaching, learning, and specific literacies as well as in the problems of access that arise once memory is stored and transmitted in non-human readable forms. Could it be that the computational transformation in the structure and use of archives may act as a canary in the coalmine for wider changes in knowledge in society more generally?” (p.105).

My body of work could represents many women who worked for the British army in various different places during the Second World War. Their lives, through collected photos, letters, newspaper clippings, or little notes on envelopes create a certain image of a society and their place within it. This society is a memory, and memory is recognition, and recognition is identity.

I was not the photographer of the final body of work, however I was still surrounded by a large amount of photographs and many documents. I would rather say that I was more a curator and editor of the project than a photographer. I felt a huge obligation to treat the private archives of Miss P. Jones with the utmost respect and to show her social and family life from nearly eighty years ago. As an editor I had the opportunity to choose what will go on three panels, and in which order, with the purpose of creating a narrative story within them. My aim was to preserve the originals and to communicate with the viewer through the story of Miss P. Jones. The purpose of the communication in this project was to oppose the goal of digital database, the aim was to emotionally and intellectually connect the viewer to the displayed subject and also allow the viewer’s memory recall their own past.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blom, Ina. “Introduction: Rethinking Social Memory: Archives, Technology, and the Social.” Memory in Motion: Archives, Technology and the Social, edited by Ina Blom et al., Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2017, pp. 11–38. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1jd94f0.4.

Berry, David M. “The Post-Archival Constellation: The Archive under the Technical Conditions of Computational Media.” Memory in Motion: Archives, Technology and the Social, edited by Ina Blom et al., Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2017, pp. 103–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1jd94f0.8.

Vision and Technology 5IMAG002W Reflective Text Template In this text, you will reflect on some of the ways that the ideas taught on this module have informed the work you have produced for Beyond the Frame. For this text you will choose one* text from the Vision and Technology module reading that has a particular relevance to your own photographic practice. *You’re also free to choose a text that is not on any of the module reading lists, but please check with Eugenie, Neil, or Teemu first to make sure that it’s appropriate Make sure you read your chosen text carefully and take lots of notes so that you have a good understanding of what the text is about and what it means to you. Please ensure you use the template below as a guide. TEXT Small History of Photography

By Walter Benjamin (1931) “Or one flips to the image of Dauthendey, the photographer, father of the poet, from the time of his engagement to that woman whom he found lying, one day, with slit wrists, in the bedroom of his house in Moscow, shortly after the birth of her sixth child. Here one sees her standing by him; he appears to clasp her, but her gaze goes past him, tightly riveted to an inauspicious distance. Were one to sink into such an an image for long enough, one would recognise how much here too, the extremes meet: the most precise technology can lend a magical value to its productions, such as a painted picture can never again possess for us. Despite all the skill of the photographer and all the good planning in the pose of his model, the viewer feels irresistibly compelled to seek out the tiniest spark of concurrence, a here and now, in such an image, with which actuality has seared, so to speak, the characters in the image. We are compelled to find the inconspicuous place in which, in the essence of that moment which passed long ago, the future nestles still today, so eloquently that we looking back are able to discover it. It is indeed a different nature that speaks to the camera then that which speaks to the eye; different above all in the sense that a space saturated by a person who is conscious is superseded by one saturated unconsciously. While it may now be quite usual that, for example, someone might account for a person’s gait, even if only roughly, that person would certainly know nothing of the posture in the fraction of a second when the person ‘takes a stride’. Photography, with it’s technical aids - freeze-framing, image enlargement - make this accessible. One learns of this optical unconscious only through photography, just as the instinctual unconscious is discovered in psychoanalysis”. Walter, B., On Photography. Reaktion Books. This box should include a full, properly formatted reference to your chosen text SUMMARY OF YOUR CHOSEN TEXT Walter Benjamin, in his Little History of Photography, written in 1931, studies this photograph of Karl Dauthendey and his fiancée, shortly before she commits Use this box to write a short summary of your chosen text. Which ideas in the text have the closest relevance to your own practice? You don’t have to summarise the entire text here, just the specific ideas that are relevant to your own photographic work. Length: approximately 250 words suicide. According to Benjamin there is an emotional veil which is almost imperceptible to rational perception. Benjamin was fascinated by the contingency of photography; that future event or circumstance which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty. Benjamin saw the photograph as not only stopping time but also able to project the future out of the past. It is here that I am reminded of the ‘punctum’ which Roland Bathes later talks about. Benjamin’s definition of the optical unconscious seems to have been sparked initially by technological experimentation. The camera allows us an insight into moments that would be otherwise be imperceptible to the powers of human vision. This insight into alternate image worlds is where we first discover the optical unconscious. Sigmund Freud began using photographic processes as metaphors for his work as early as 1900. It is in Freud’s work that I sought inspiration for my photographic project, The Beast In The Nursery. It is the relationship between unconscious memories to conscious perceptions, which Freud likes to that of a negative and a photographic print. My photographic practice is closely linked to psychology and photo therapy. My most recent project has been inspired by Benjamin, Barthes and Freud. Using a Hasselblad and slide film has allowed me sink deeply into my image which has deepened my understanding of of the optical unconscious. Shawn, S., 2017. Photography And The Optical Unconscious. Duke University Press,. Use the sections below to reflect on the way that the ideas in your chosen text have relevance to your own photographic practice. You don’t have to fill out all of the sections below – just the ones that you feel are most relevant to your practice. The total combined word count of the sections below must add up to approximately 750 words. The point of this assignment is NOT to use the text to do a ‘reading’ or ‘analysis’ of your images in terms of their content – it’s meant to help you think about the way that your work is created, and the way that viewers encounter it. Content of your images is obviously important, and will probably need to be mentioned at some point, but it’s not the main focus of this assignment. Also remember that what you write in these sections must be directly linked to your chosen text – don’t just ‘free associate’. You don’t necessarily need to write in full academic style, but do write in complete sentences – no bullet points or disjointed notes please CAMERA What kind of camera(s) do you use to shoot your work (large format? Phone? Pinhole camera? Webcam? 35mm?) How this affect the way you photograph and the sort of images you produce? For the constructed photography project I used a Hasselblad camera, with a polaroid back to check the lighting, and a film back for the final image. Getting to know a new camera and a studio setup meant the process was very slow. It felt like patience was important. I was determined to capture a moment of ‘truth’ and knew that I could only do this by keeping my model distracted from the process, I did this by engaging him in conversation which would lead him into long periods of talking about things that interested him. As I took my 12 exposures of slide film I watched as the flash startled him and his flow of consciousness evaporated, he became conscious again. I felt I worked hard at returning him to a state of unconsciousness and as he became animated by his thoughts and ideas I tried to find a moment that Walter Benjamin might call a spark of concurrence; the fact of two or more events or circumstances happening or existing at the same time. I see that as the photograph being taken, and my subject talking to himself. In terms of technology I was forced to slow down and get to know my subject. I scanned the slide film and spent many hours meditatively removing tiny hairs and dust marks, by which time I felt I knew the picture intimately, it is hard to know whether I infused the picture with meaning or if meaning was there. Shooting on film requires a much more conscious and deliberate practice, which seems to translate into images with more depth of expression. I wonder if this translates into the image, or if this is part of my experience of taking the photograph.