The Ken. To be destroyed Project Archive

This journal article is based on the Ken. To be destroyed Project Archive.

In 2011, Sara Davidmann inherited a family archive of letters,photographs and papers from her mother, Audrey Davidmann. This archive tells the story of Ken and Hazel, Sara’s uncle and aunt, and how it emerged early on in their marriage, in 1958, that Ken was transgender.

Sara Davidmann and writer and curator Val Williams have created an archive which preserves and describes the process of creating the 'Ken. To be destroyed' book (published in 2016 by Schilt, Amsterdam) and the 'Ken. To be destroyed' exhibition, which was shown at the Schwules Museum in Berlin in 2016. While the exhibition and publication were based on the Davidmann family archive, this new repository illustrates the ways in which Davidmann and Williams, as artist/author and curator/editor respectively, navigated the contents of the archive, wrote narrative and biographical texts and managed relationships with external organizations and individuals.

The archive has been proactively collected and assembled from the beginning of the project. It is envisaged that it will be relevant to researchers/students in curatorship, photography, family archives,