Lost-And-Found Photos: Practices and Perceptions
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses March 2016 Lost-and-found Photos: Practices and Perceptions Todd J. Wemmer University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Digital Humanities Commons, and the Photography Commons Recommended Citation Wemmer, Todd J., "Lost-and-found Photos: Practices and Perceptions" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 605. https://doi.org/10.7275/7941035.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/605 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lost-and-found Photos: Practices and Perceptions A Dissertation Presented by TODD J WEMMER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2016 Department of Communication © Copyright by Todd J Wemmer 2016 All Rights Reserved Lost-and-Found Photos: Practices and Perceptions A Dissertation Presented By TODD J WEMMER Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________________________ Carolyn Anderson, Chair _________________________________________________ Emily West, Member _________________________________________________ Jackie Urla, Member __________________________________________ Erica Scharrer, Department Head Department of Communication DEDICATION For my father, Jerry J Wemmer, who taught me how to use a camera and to be a collector. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my advisor, Carolyn Anderson, for endless support throughout the process of creating this dissertation. She patiently read and fixed many clunky drafts, and always told me to “keep rolling.” I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Jackie Urla and Emily West, for their helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks are also due to my friend and colleague Amy Damico who read even the earliest, messiest drafts and always offered encouragement and feedback. I’d also like to thank Shawn Fisher for help with editing and formatting the final manuscript. I want to thank my employer Endicott College, which funded the many conference trips I made to present portions of this dissertation, through which I discovered this project’s true voice. I also extend gratitude to the Endicott School of Communication, specifically Dean Laurel Hellerstein, who never bugged me about when I was going to finish. I wish to express my deep appreciation to those individuals who participated in this project. I especially want thank all the anonymous storytellers who called in to the Skype voicemail with beautiful, emotional stories about their personal photographs, stories which never fail to affect those who encounter them...this researcher especially. A special, heartfelt thank you to my wife Cheri and my children Annabelle and Sam, who did more to support me than I could ever write about here. Also, many thanks to my mom, who patiently let me interview her about photographs on many occasions. v I’d also like to thank my in-laws Robert and Aida Roy who gave their time and expertise with all kinds of things related to this project, whether it was long conversations about family photos or assisting with child care. My grandmother Minnie called in the first voicemail story for this project, and my aunt Joy bought Rufus and Herndon Elliot’s family album at an auction, which brought a dimension and direction to this project which I could not have anticipated, but for which I am profoundly grateful. vi ABSTRACT LOST-AND-FOUND PHOTOS: PRACTICES AND PERCEPTIONS FEBRUARY 2016 TODD J WEMMER, B.A., ATLANTIC UNION COLLEGE M.A., LA SIERRA UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Carolyn Anderson Personal photographs become separated from their original owners in a number of ways, due to time or tragedy, sometimes ending up in strangers’ hands. Dealers, collectors, curators, bloggers, scholars, and families actively seek what are frequently called “orphaned,” “abandoned,” or “found” photos and present them to the public in multiple formats. This dissertation offers an analysis of the practices and perceptions that surround these presentations, and it argues for use of a more inclusive term (“lost-and- found”) to describe personal photos that are connected to both finders and losers. Data were collected in three primary ways: (1) examination of the current contexts in which “lost” photos appear (e.g. books, websites, newspapers), (2) interviews with collectors of “lost” photos, and (3) the project’s website, designed to collect anecdotes from those affected by “lost” photos. Dominating this field of study are the perspectives of those who find personal photographs. The choices photo-finders make regarding the presentation and interpretation of photographs differ in clear ways, enabling me to group their practices within five categories which are evident across all formats examined in this study: vii Museum Curator, Archivist/Preservationist, Essayist/Editor, Reuniter, and Dealer. What unites practitioners across these discrete categories is the act of compiling and displaying “lost” photos within public archives, where new presentations of old photos invite myriad interpretations, conversations, and possibilities. Since the perspectives of those who have lost personal photographs have been largely missing from this field of study, I created tools to capture the viewpoints of photo “losers.” The project’s website, Lostandfoundphotos.org, provided a space in which contributors shared stories of personal photos they had lost, challenging notions of finder- collectors who often see themselves as the sole appreciators of “lost” photos’ true value. Most importantly, this project gave a literal voice to photo-losers through an audio component—a voicemail system which recorded contributors’ stories of lost personal photographs. This aural element offers a new medium for the examination of the visual, and it provides an emotional depth which, it is hoped, may inspire an enlargement of lost-and-found photography practices to accommodate the perspectives of both finders and losers. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER 1. LOST AND FOUND AND LOST AND FOUND Introduction ..................................................................................................1 Lost-and-Found Photographs .......................................................................6 Where Do Lost Photos Go? .......................................................................10 Photos in the Hands of the Finders ................................................11 Photos Out of the Hands of the Losers ..........................................13 Scholars Find Photos......................................................................15 This Scholar Finds Photos: The Project’s Beginnings ...............................24 Visual Culture Landscape ..........................................................................29 Conclusion .................................................................................................31 2. MEMORY, PRACTICE, AND ARCHIVE: PERSONAL PHOTOS IN FLUX Introduction ................................................................................................35 Personal Photos as Social Practice .............................................................38 Personal Photography and Memory ...........................................................44 Digitization of the Personal Photograph ....................................................53 Personal Photographs in the Archive .........................................................61 Conclusion .................................................................................................72 3. “BUT WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?” METHODS FOR DATA COLLECTION Introduction ................................................................................................74 Meeting the Elliots .........................................................................76 Adding Audio: The Project Takes Shape .......................................76 Data Collection ..........................................................................................79 ix Books and Printed Material ...........................................................83 Internet Sources .............................................................................85 Search Engines ...................................................................85 Delicious ............................................................................87 Flickr ..................................................................................89 Narratives and Interviews ..............................................................90 Lostandfoundphotos.org ....................................................92 Skype..................................................................................99