The History and Us

For a long time, photo albums were attributed exclusively to the amateur photographer sector and received only a little attention. With growing interest in the material requirements of collecting and archiving, photo albums are now also gaining the attention of museums, archives and specialist magazines. But how can photo albums be archived and how can these individual objects be made accessible? Furthermore, how can these objects be displayed in the first place? After all, an album's pages have to be turned over and its contents sometimes comprise other materials besides photographs, such as newspaper articles, drawings or inscriptions? And why do photo albums become (public) archival objects even though they often contain purely private stories? Starting with the materiality of a photo album and its differentiation from other media, its private or public function and its cultural practice; exploring its possible limits, its forms of media staging and the practices of an artistic use; to questions of its use in archives and presentation in museums, its reprocessing, restoration, and digitization - the photo album raises different modes of use and multifaceted spaces of possibility, which are approached from a scholarly and photo-historical perspective as well as from an artistic and applied perspective, and which focus on gestures of displaying.

The symposium takes place in cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (Section History and Archives) and Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln as part of the program Artist Meets Archive #3 of Internationale Photoszene Köln. It is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Kunststiftung NRW and the City of Cologne. 

Moderators:
Miriam Zlobinski (DGPh, curator) and Lucia Halder (DGPh, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum)

introductory round table Dr. Johanna Gummlich (Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln), Lucia Halder (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum), Dr. Carmen Pérez González (Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst) und Nina Matuszewski (NS-Dokumentationszentrum Köln)

Lectures by: Dr. Friedrich Tietjen (Stiftung Reinbeckhallen Berlin), Judith Riemer (Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen), Dr. Kathrin Yacavone (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen), Helene Roth (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Johanna Bose (akg-images Berlin), Peter Konarzewski (Museum Folkwang Essen)

Begrüßung & Einführung

Gesprächsrunde mit vier Archivleiter*innen und Mitarbeiter:innen

Dr. Carmen Pérez González (Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst)
Michael Albers (Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln) 
Lucia Halder (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum)
Nina Matuszewski (NS-Dokumentationszentrum Köln) 

Die Archive der Alben. Überlegungen zu Sammlungen Privater Fotografie

Dr. Friedrich Tietjen (Stiftung Reinbeckhallen Berlin)

Erinnern, Dokumentieren, Aufbewahren: Auktoriale Selbstinszenierungen im Fotoalbum

Dr. Kathrin Yacavone (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen)

Gestaltungsstrategien in Fotoalben von Künstler:innen im Zeitraum der 1920er und 1930er Jahre

Judith Riemer (Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen)

Experimentieren, Kleben, Archivieren: Album-Praktiken deutschsprachiger Fotograf*innen im Exil in New York der 1940er Jahre

Helene Roth (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Über die Erhaltung und Verwertung von Fotoalben in Archiv und Bildagentur

Johanna Bose (akg-images Berlin)

Konservatorische Herausforderungen bei Fotoalben – Bestandsaufnahme und Erhaltungsmaßnahmen

Peter Konarzewski (Museum Folkwang Essen)