Family Archives Lost and Found

Family Archives Lost and Found.
An Exhibition by LCC MA Photography and PARC.

Featuring works by Millie Burton, Jan Čihák, Claudia Frickemeier, Lydia Goldblatt, Hannah Guy, Elena Inga, Penny Klepuszewska, Wiebke Leister, Jason Manning, Kevin Newark, Sian Pile, Kate Potter.

Exhibition at Eckersley Gallery, LCC with Private View and Gallery Talk, 15 November 2005, 5.00-7.00pm. Responses by Mark Haworth-Booth, Anna Fox, Sophie Howarth, Marjolaine Ryley, Joy Gregory, David Campany, Val Williams and Wiebke Leister.

Exhibition at Communication Space Školská 28, Prague, 3 June - 7 July 2008 with and Opening Seminar on 2 June 2008 with talks by Val Williams, Jan Čihák and Wiebke Leister.

What distinguishes Family Archives from other archives? What is included in them and what is left out? What is their value, what do they look like and how are they kept? What kinds of events do they portray? How do they affect personal and collective memories? Who is the family archivist and who the photographer? What do their images mean to an outsider? What happens when their family archives get reconsidered within a new context? And what do they say about the passage of time?
Well, these are only some of the questions we discussed when embarking on the project ´Family Archives Lost and Found´. In fact, the works shown in this exhibition are all engaging with recent and not so recent family narratives. Some of them constructed, others rewritten. Some done in response to actual family images including names, specific dates or places, others based on family memories dealing with secret or confessional details.
Bound to change over time, the ´archival potential´ of these exhibits is just as open as these works are now disclosed from the past. Allowing us to cross the vulnerable border between Private and Public, they hide as they reveal, giving us keys to places that do not exist any longer or did only ever exist in our minds. They make us think about what was and what could have been instead. They trigger our contemplation – only of course if we are willing to engage with them as reflective mirrors of our own Family Archives.

The exhibition was curated by Dr. Wiebke Leister and Professor Val Williams, of PARC.

The Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) and the MA Photography, both based at London College of Communication, have worked together on this project for several months in 2005. It was PARC's first substantial collaboration with a postgraduate group and, as such, was vital to the development of the Centre. Through working intensively with the students, we developed ideas around both content and curation, culminating in an exhibition and a mini study day, in which students presented their work and responses came from leading members of the London photography world, including Professor Mark Haworth-Booth (University of the Arts London), Sophie Howarth (Tate Modern) and the photographer Anna Fox.

• http://www.skolska28.cz/node/1479