Having categorized the images using several obvious (and less obvious) keywords, I found myself returning to some fundamental questions: why does this archive exist? What impulse or motivation accounts for the inclusion of these specific hundred images?
After last class, I found myself thinking also about the concept of the fonds, the supposedly organic unit of archival organization that preserves groupings of material according to the individuals/organizations from which the materials originate. As Vid noted in class, the municipal archives created a fonds in his name when he donated a series of photographs of Toronto’s City Hall, apparently because, in the archives’ view, the photos are best understood in the context of his artistic practice, and would be deprived of this context if they were broken up thematically and added to pre-existing files. The fonds is an interesting concept, because it has a way of foregrounding the individual responsible for a section of the archive, with the implication that it is a window into a life. I first felt this sense of biographical intimacy last winter, while looking for archival footage of mounted police in the Archives of Ontario; rather than simply finding anonymous film of horses and riders, I came across a series of 8-mm films, depicting the personal travels of a local communist politician (one of which happened to feature a police horse). But the five-second transit of the police horse across the frame seemed inconsequential compared to the rest of the material in this fonds: watching VHS tape after VHS tape, I became fascinated with the man whose (evidently somewhat subversive) life was richly documented in kodachrome. The researcher, originally intrigued by a an academic theme or subject, finds that he cannot help but ask of the fonds: whose life does this represent? Therein lies some of the mystery of an archive.
So, I have been thinking it would be interesting to address both the “why” of the archive as well as the “who” question (imposed by the fonds structure), rather than simply to organize the photos in a coherent way. But let’s set aside, for a moment, the possibility (likelihood?) that the “100 Images” archive was compiled strictly for the purposes of this assignment, and temporarily ignore our (admittedly partial) understanding of the compiler’s intellectual interests and concerns.
I have contemplated inventing a fictional situation that led to the existence of this body of images, and then presenting the archive according to a speculative system of categorization, one that actively seeks to know and understand the benefactor of this fonds. And perhaps the mode of presentation could be a slide-show (or to lend the project an air of inflexible institutional authority, a film) that presents the “known facts” about the archive in voiceover or intertitles, and then proceeds to speculate on the meaning and proper categorization of the archive. The film would conclude by inviting outside researchers to visit the archive and examine its materials, with the caveats that they must submit to all the kafkaesque access obstacles set forth by the institutional bureaucracy. This last point is key: it emphasizes the prisonlike air of impenetrability and authority, as described by Eric Ketelaar, that so often characterizes archives. (Take, for example, the way archives periodically showcase their prized materials by assembling them in glass display cases. The glass cases, which allow the archivist to interpret the materials in a particular order — effectively producing a narrative — ironically must be seen to limit, rather than expand, researcher access to the material. After all, you can’t touch things behind glass, and pulling up a desk to a display case for the purpose of extended study would likely be discouraged).
I am still thinking of a premise that would explain the existence of this archive, these 100 images. I suggested to some classmates that maybe the images were discovered in a box after a devastating archive fire or other catastrophe, and the filmmaker-archivist has only this odd, partial archive to comprehend its maker — like some alien life-form trying to learn something about humanity from the songs and inscriptions floating through space on the Voyager spacecraft. Graham noted that a fictional film composed of still photos with an underlying post-apocalyptic premise is somewhat reminiscent of Chris Marker’s La Jetée; it will be interesting to explore the implications of this further.
My only reservation about this project is that it strives for a lot, perhaps too much: to invent a fictional raison-d’etre for the archive, to develop an alternative (non-obvious) system of categorization, and to make a statement on the institutional authority separating archives from the public. Each of these components could produce a project unto itself. Feedback is welcome and appreciated.
