On Thursday 21 October, professor Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans presented a contribution to the Conference Bringing Down the 'Archive Fever.' Opening and Collaborating on Photography Archives and Collections:
Community-based photographic archives and potential histories of the Cold War in Eastern Europe
Virtually all archives held in the former communist countries pose a continuous challenge to research. Whether it is because some documents are missing, destroyed or counterfeited, or, on the contrary, because certain ideologically approved contents are overabundantly present, these archives constantly generate controversies and critiques. The photographic archives are subject to similar ambiguities and revisions, while they also face specific dilemmas. Historical photographs inhabit the uncertain zone between document and art, cultural heritage and visual debris. Therefore, the history of photographic archives mirrors the changes in the position of photography with respect to art, heritage, history and the public sphere.
This contribution aims to assess the ways in which community-based archives can uncover or actively forge knowledge of fraught Cold War histories. The main subject of the analysis will be Karta Center Foundation Photographic Archive in Poland and Fortepan archive in Hungary. Both archival initiatives aim to build independent, bottom-up, freely accessible collections of historically significant photographs. They also advance community-based collecting, processing and attribution practices of the acquired photographs. Yet both inevitably set a number of rules on how photographs are acquired, selected, inventoried, and made accessible.
Looking closer at selected photographic collections dating from the 1950s, I will consider these two different approaches to archiving photographs in the light of Ariella Azoulay’s notion of potential history. Through this analysis, I will investigate the ways in which the conflicted narratives of the 1950s in Eastern Europe can be rewritten and reassessed by the potentializing operations of the community-based archives.
Practical information:
20-22 October 2021
Urania, E.Kvaternik Square 3/3, Zagreb, Croatia
The conference is part of the project The Cycle: European Training in Photographic Legacy Management (2020-2022) co-financed by the Creative Europa Programme of the European Union and is organized by The Institute of Art History at the University of Zagreb.
Photo credits: Fortepan/Zajti Ferenc