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The Idea of Album

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Suspended Conversations
This chapter is in the book Suspended Conversations
THE IDEA OF ALBUMt y p i c a la n da t y p i c a lA brief encounter with an anonymous album stirs a combina-tion of feelings that is not very propitious for scholarly research: a balmy sense of delight and recognition met by the strong, countervailing winds of individual encryption that chill our relationship with the past. The infusion of memory that the compilation represents becomes a tease when the evi-dence fails to accrue, when the data cannot be read. Turning the pages of the McCord Museum’s album m p 035/92 can be just such an experience; the palpable engagement of the par-ticipants is infectious, but the pleasure can only go so far before “the doors of Memory” clang shut. Walk a dog down a darkening street on a late fall afternoon, when the living-room lamps have been lit, but the inhabitants have forgotten to pull the shades, and you will have a similar “snapshot” experience of other lives, a flash of intimacy that only lasts to the end of the block. You are an outsider looking in, and the arrange-ments of these lives are only faintly legible, measurable against the standards of your neighborhood; the inhabitants may be judged more or less typical, but they are not known. Most essays on photographic albums accept these conditions as a given, and many album works of art are born from the heat of the flash and the latent images of suggestion.
© McGill-Queen's University Press

THE IDEA OF ALBUMt y p i c a la n da t y p i c a lA brief encounter with an anonymous album stirs a combina-tion of feelings that is not very propitious for scholarly research: a balmy sense of delight and recognition met by the strong, countervailing winds of individual encryption that chill our relationship with the past. The infusion of memory that the compilation represents becomes a tease when the evi-dence fails to accrue, when the data cannot be read. Turning the pages of the McCord Museum’s album m p 035/92 can be just such an experience; the palpable engagement of the par-ticipants is infectious, but the pleasure can only go so far before “the doors of Memory” clang shut. Walk a dog down a darkening street on a late fall afternoon, when the living-room lamps have been lit, but the inhabitants have forgotten to pull the shades, and you will have a similar “snapshot” experience of other lives, a flash of intimacy that only lasts to the end of the block. You are an outsider looking in, and the arrange-ments of these lives are only faintly legible, measurable against the standards of your neighborhood; the inhabitants may be judged more or less typical, but they are not known. Most essays on photographic albums accept these conditions as a given, and many album works of art are born from the heat of the flash and the latent images of suggestion.
© McGill-Queen's University Press

Chapters in this book

  1. Front Matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Preface: Hellohellohello vii
  4. Acknowledgments ix
  5. Preface to the Second Edition xi
  6. Acknowledgments to the Second Edition xv
  7. Introduction: Show and Tell 3
  8. The Idea of Album 22
  9. The Album as Collection 40
  10. Memoirs and Travelogues 64
  11. The Idea of Family 89
  12. Orality and Photography 122
  13. “Photographs” 1916–1945 158
  14. Conclusion: Remembering to Tell 198
  15. A Note on the Photography Collection of the McCord Museum 202
  16. The Photographic Albums Illustrated in the Text 206
  17. Notes 216
  18. Bibliography 228
  19. Index 238
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9780228003281-006

Chapters in this book

  1. Front Matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Preface: Hellohellohello vii
  4. Acknowledgments ix
  5. Preface to the Second Edition xi
  6. Acknowledgments to the Second Edition xv
  7. Introduction: Show and Tell 3
  8. The Idea of Album 22
  9. The Album as Collection 40
  10. Memoirs and Travelogues 64
  11. The Idea of Family 89
  12. Orality and Photography 122
  13. “Photographs” 1916–1945 158
  14. Conclusion: Remembering to Tell 198
  15. A Note on the Photography Collection of the McCord Museum 202
  16. The Photographic Albums Illustrated in the Text 206
  17. Notes 216
  18. Bibliography 228
  19. Index 238
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