While I was scrolling through a set of images on can't-remember-what, this image caught my eye (and continues to intrigue me) -

It's by Patrick Pound and is called Writing in a Library. It was part of a small exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne, "Order and disorder: archives and photography", written about here by photographer Marcus Bunyan. The review raises questions about the kinds of memory held in archives and the role of the institution as custodian (and interpreter). The exhibition, held in 2009, did not mention in the catalogue "the crisis of cultural memory that is now permeating our world ... how are digital technologies altering our re-assemblance of memory, altering photography’s ability inherent ability to record, store and organise visual images?"

Some text that was taken from NGV website (but no longer on the site):

“Archives contain elements of truth and error, order and disorder and are infinitely fascinating. As both collections of records and repositories of data, archives are able to shape history and memory depending on how, when and by whom the materials are accessed. Their vastness allows for multiple readings to be unravelled over time.
" Photography is naturally associated with archives because of its inherent ability to record, store and organise visual images. With this in mind, this exhibition brings together artists drawn largely from the permanent collection of the NGV who explore the idea of archives as complex, living and occasionally mysterious systems of knowledge. Several of the selected artists act as archivists, collecting and ordering their own unique bodies of photographs, while others create disorder by critiquing the ideas and systems of archives.”

The photograms of Penelope Davis are wonderful -

She makes resin casts of the books and puts them directly on the photographic paper - they become "liminal images that hover between what is known and what is imagined". Davis has said: “Most people assume that when they look at a photo that they are looking at the thing photographed – but they are not. They are looking at a photo. Books and photographic images and archives are enigmatic – you can’t be sure of a singular definition or meaning.”


But to get back to Patrick Pound and that intriguing image - he has said "I am an artist working at the categories of things. Whether categorizing thousands of newspaper cuttings in albums by subject, or photographing people taking photographs, I am an artist who reads the world as an endless series of overlapping lists. From a collection of Lost Bird posters culled from the streets to a collection of early postcards of a single street I am copying the world in the form of the index. These works call into play the limits of description and the description of limits. From the collection of 365 unremarkable brown things, to twenty-six pieces of evidence lifted from my street and placed in bags, my work has the look of being made by someone who upon trying to explain the world, and having failed, has been reduced to collecting it."