“Photographica. The archival life of images, ca. 1930-1970” PhD project

My dissertation project treats the labor practices of knowledge organization in the field of the visual – that is, the labor, bureaucracy, and paperwork performed by people concerned with the everyday challenges and their epistemological consequences (including the exchanges between mere technical issues and broader theoretical discussions) of pictures management.

This involves not only those professionals who were responsible for the curation and custody of institutional repositories of visual materials – the archivists, librarians, and the like –, but also other personalities whose approach to and use of such materials reflect a praxis in pictures searching and managing.

I argue that the way images have been processed as documents, their history as information carriers, is representative of the place attributed to creativity and subjective interpretation within the realm of knowledge creation, circulation and conservation.