In search of lost time

Abstract

Personal impressions of working in photographic archives are presented here from the viewpoint of the researcher in photography, specifically one who has used these stores of material in several countries. The writer´s many years of experience permits an assessment of the evolution undergone by institutions that house these materials. After noting the beginnings of studies in photographic history and the first periodical publications in this area, the analysis focuses on how materials are organized from the user´s point of view. The early definition of photographic archives rested in organizations´ interest in constructing their own histories, and therefore the archives were organized by local topics or sites. Photography was considered as auxiliary to history. On the other hand, the historian of photography has other needs in the study of photography from an artistic, biographic, or technical angle. Some of the world´s great museum-quality collections are treated in this way -less subjectively- and several cases are described in which the author participated in their assessment and organization based on photographers, facts, or contexts that fell under the heading "Spain", although not always involving works by Spaniards, strictly speaking. The author also describes the experience of consulting photographic archives prior to and in the early years of democracy in Spain; later on, a surge of concern emerged in Spain for both public and private photographic collections. Finally, technical considerations such as the access to, treatment and conservation of archives are touched upon from the viewpoint of firsthand experience with institutional archives.