Picturing Archives: The National Photography Collection, Public Archives of Canada, 1975-1986 by Nicole Courrier A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Joint Master’s Program Department of History (Archival Studies) University of Manitoba/University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba Copyright © 2017 by Nicole Courrier ii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Archiving Photographs: From Image to Document and the Creation of the National Photography Collection at the Public Archives of Canada in 1975 ..................... 7 Chapter Two: Making Photographs a Subject of Study .................................................... 30 Chapter Three: The National Photography Collection and an Unfinished Task .............. 59 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 80 Appendix A: Sample Introductory Letter, Questionnaire, and Consent Forms ................ 84 Appendix B: Transcribed Interviews and Answered Questionnaires ............................... 93 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 159 iii Abstract With a countless number of photographs in their care, archives are places where much of our collective memory is preserved. Photographs contribute to this memory as a visual record of our past that questions our present and shapes our future. The invention of photography itself is relatively recent. Thus the enormous volume and significance of written records over the centuries before the invention of photography gave prior shape to archival work and to ideas about archives that lasted long after the advent of photography. This thesis examines the efforts of leading photo-archivists at the Public Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada) to place photographic archives at the heart of archival priorities alongside written records. The main institutional base of these archivists was the National Photography Collection (NPC) of the Public Archives of Canada (PAC) which existed between 1975 and 1986. It is the focus of this thesis. Archivists are knowledge creators. The work they do in selecting and acquiring what shall be in the archives and representing it in research tools, exhibits, and publications shapes the knowledge derived from the records. The work of the NPC made a significant contribution to knowledge by pioneering the study of the history of photography in Canada. The NPC members not only changed the way in which photographs were understood by archivists, but also by scholars in various fields in Canada as well as in other photographic repositories in libraries, museums, and art galleries. These NPC members did so by stressing a contextual approach to the understanding of photographs across time. This thesis examines the ideas about iv photographs and archives of this pioneering group of archivists and its intellectual contributions to the study of the history of photography in Canada. No such study has been done of these archivists despite their considerable impact on archives and study of the history of photography in Canada. This study benefits from responses to an extensive questionnaire by leading members of the NPC. v Acknowledgments I would like to thank my thesis advisor Professor Tom Nesmith for all of your help and wisdom in the completion of this thesis. I admire your endless puns and your dedication to the archival profession. Thank you to Professor Greg Bak for his comments on my thesis and support throughout the program. This thesis would have not been possible without the work of former NPC members. Thank you to Lilly Koltun, Andrew Birrell, Peter Robertson, Andrew Rodger, Joan Schwartz, and Richard Huyda for your devotion to archival photographs, and to Jim Burant, for your devotion to them as well elsewhere in LAC. I would also like to acknowledge all who took the time to share their reflections with me. I had the amazing opportunity to work with photographic archives at the National Records of Scotland for my internship in the Department of History’s Archival Studies MA program under the supervision of Robin Urqhuart and Steffi Metze, and at the Falkirk Archives with Elspeth Reid. Thank you to Shelley Sweeney for her mentorship during and after my employment at the University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections. To my colleagues (past and present) at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation: thank you for the group thesis whining and much needed laughter. A special thank you to my thesis buddy, Jessica Nichol, for all of our attempts at ‘finishing early.’ To all of my friends whom I have not seen for extended periods of time over the past few years, thank you for understanding. However, without you I probably would have graduated earlier. To Parsa, honk. vi Michele and Joe: I apologize. You have heard nothing but historical facts your entire lives, and have been forced on more than one occasion to dress in historical costumes. I love you both. To my parents: without your love and support this thesis, my two degrees, and my constant ventures around the globe would not have been possible. Thank you for letting me eat the food from your fridge. 1 Introduction The invention of photography is relatively recent, as Nicéphore Niépce produced the first heliograph or photographic image in France in 1826.1 However, the importance of images within the history of communication was evident before the Western world became a literate society, and these images are some of humankind’s oldest ‘records.’ With that said, overwhelming reliance on the written record prevailed in archival discourse and theory throughout the nineteenth century and on until the early twentieth century. 2 This is reflected in the absence of discussion of photographs in the first major statements of archival theory produced in the Western world at the turn of the twentieth century. The devotion to the written record in archival theory is apparent in Samuel Muller, Johan Feith and Robert Fruin’s Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives published in 1898, Sir Hilary Jenkinson’s Manual of Archive Administration: Including the Problems of War Archives and Archive Making in 1922, and lastly, T.R Schellenberg’s The Management of Archives in 1965. These manuals provided an intellectual framework for archivists within the Western world for the first half of the twentieth century. Although archives had been acquiring and appraising photographs as well as other visual media for decades, their inclusion in archival theory and practice did not truly begin until the second half of the twentieth century. 1 Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Diane Vogt-O’Connor, “Introduction,” in Photographs: Archival Care and Management, ed. Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Diane Vogt-O’Connor with Helena Zinkham, Brett Carnell and Kit Peterson (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006), 1. 2 John Ridener, From Polders to Postmodernism: A Concise History of Archival Theory (Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, 2009), 19. 2 In her 1977 book On Photography, Susan Sontag states that “to collect photographs is to collect the world.”3 With a countless number of photographs in their care, archives are places where much of our collective memory is preserved. Photographs contribute to this memory as a visual record of our past that questions our present and shapes our future. Thus the enormous volume and significance of written records over the centuries before the invention of photography gave prior shape to archival work and to ideas about archives that lasted long after the advent of photography. This thesis examines the efforts of leading photo-archivists at the Public Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada) to place photographic archives at the heart of archival priorities alongside written records. The main institutional base of these archivists was the National Photography Collection (NPC) of the Public Archives of Canada (PAC) which existed between 1975 and 1986. This thesis focuses on the National Photography Collection (NPC) and its leading members: Peter Robertson, Richard Huyda, Andrew Birrell, Lilly Koltun, Joan Schwartz, and Andrew Rodger. It will also include discussion of archivist Jim Burant’s role, as a leading contributor at LAC to this movement but who was not a formal staff member of the NPC.4 The NPC was created in 1975, and was disbanded in 1986 as it merged with the documentary art archives program to form the Documentary Art and Photography Division at LAC. The thesis focuses on the photo-archival work at LAC mainly during the years the NPC was active (1975-86) and it offers just the beginning of such a study of the NPC, its members, and of photo-archival work at LAC. The thesis will not be limited 3 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Picador, 1977), 174. 4 This study benefits from responses to an extensive questionnaire by Birrell, Burant, Huyda, Koltun and Schwartz. A transcript of their responses is attached to the thesis