It’s the start of 2024 and everyone is focused on their New Year’s resolutions. Personally, one of mine is to develop new organization habits for my home life. However, I like to think I have pretty decent skills when it comes to the archive. It’s fairly crucial that when working with material, that we come in with clear intention. Starting with a game plan can ensure that the setup is on solid foundation for the eventual continuation of an archive. In a sense, archiving is purely organization, constantly evolving to become a reputable source on a given subject.
My biggest strength is my note taking. I’m constantly writing observations and reminders to myself in my notebooks when I begin documenting. I won’t say I have a photographic memory, but I do tend to remember an object or document’s contents just from seeing a photo of it. This obviously is not the case for many people, and could lead to confusion along the way if another observer were to come along and take over. Much like documenting the artist’s way of thinking, our notes should reflect our own. When working on Belén’s archive, I kept my notes short and sweet, with the documentation being in order of how I photographed the objects. This gesture may seem simple at first, but can be crucial once revisiting to set up the archive.
Image 1 : An example of a group photo of items and my own crude drawing in my notes. Here I've notated and given each object a number while giving a ~liberal~ interpretation of the objects on the table.
One form of documentation that specifically helped me stay organized was drawing diagrams of items in group photos. While crude, these depictions helped me maintain both the order of notation, as well as identifying objects easily. When these photos are eventually stored in our digital archive, I will be able to quickly decipher which is which, and the process will be much smoother because of these earlier steps.
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