Abstract
My thesis explores the family album as an indivisible object within a museum’s collection. Family albums hold both private and public importance for their ability to share collective memories and are valuable resources for scholars and the general public. To realize the inherent value of albums, I argue that we need to treat them as singular objects. Most institutions – such as museums, libraries or archives – treat family albums merely as a group of individual images. In this thesis, I propose an alternative approach: viewing and digitizing the albums as whole objects that are inseparable, lest we distort the narrative shaped in the album. The digitization process advances three services: first, digitization increases access to the album; second, digitization often enables the public to see and understand the album as a whole, maintaining the vision that the album’s maker sought to construct; third, digitization helps preserve the albums. My thesis investigates best practices for family album digitization so that the public can see albums as whole objects. A case study will focus on the Evans family collection from the FamCam at the ROM (accession numbers: 2018.24.1-21), a family collection which comes from a Canadian family that lived in China from 1888, for nearly a 100 years. Twenty-one family albums comprise the collection. The collection portrays the lives of a Western family in China, and provides insight into a century of photography and history. My thesis discusses the methodology, tools, and specific techniques for digitization, while highlighting the complexity of family albums. Though this digitization process may differ from the typical protocols for artifacts, the uniqueness of family albums necessitates genre-specific procedures. My thesis contributes to the emerging literature on family photography in public institutions, and develops an original method for preserving and archiving them digitally.
Highlights
My thesis explores the family album as an indivisible object within a museum’s collection
In Doing Family Photography (2016), Gillian Rose discusses the album as an object, writing that the real importance of an image comes from its context, which includes the album structure and the album’s path into the public arena
I will examine how those four institutions manage family photography donations by evaluating their practices under four criteria: accessibility, ownership, privacy, and cross-references. Museums are redefining their protocols for accessioning family photography – and family albums in particular – which are newly recognized as dual purpose objects that hold both personal significance and historical or artistic significance
Summary
“The Album as a private collection, whether social, anthropological, historical, museological, or biographical, domesticates a vast and unpredictable universe, setting its pleasures and terrors into a pattern of knowledge and experience inextricably linked with the self. A lack of scholarship points to a lack of awareness surrounding the rich histories contained within family albums Scholars such as Martha Langford and Tina Campt, who did study the genre, emphasized family photography’s historic and anthropological values.. The FCN’s records are distinct from typical museum records – the FCN’s family albums are usually amateur works made for private needs rather than public display Through this unique photography, the FCN seeks to understand the family, community, and nation. The Evans family collection exemplifies the importance and value of family photography to the public, since the collection portrays 100 consecutive years of one family’s experiences as a Western family in 19th and 20th century China Without these albums, scholars and the public would be deprived of their invaluable documentation and perspectives of this countrhy and time period
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