To Archive or Not to Archive: How Do We Know What to Document and What Not to Record?

      Reading about archiving in the words of Derrida was honestly quite confusing and difficult to understand, however, after reading “Photograph Not Taken,” “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines,” and Denis Wood’s writings I feel as if I have a slightly better grasp on what it truly means to archive and how different technologies affect it.

      After reading Erika Larsen’s “Photograph Not Taken” I realized that archiving by taking a photograph truly captures the moment we were in at the time. I use the word we because Erika Larsen describes how she felt just as connected, on the same page, and in the same moment as the people she has photographed; the moment was just as much hers and it was her subjects’. However, she continues to say how different her life becomes after each photograph she takes, sometimes even to the extent that the moment she experienced in the past, no longer relates to her in the present. I think this then connects to the article “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines” because it describes, not only, how archiving captures an event, but how so much is produced from and comes out of what we are archiving. We grow or develop so much from certain events and I think that is some of what Erika Larsen was trying to get across.

      Marlene Manoff continued to describe in her article how the way we transmit or record information alters the way we perceive and understand what was documented. She touches on how now a days it is extremely easy to erase or delete something we archived online, yet written documents are much more difficult to alter. It almost makes us question the legitimacy of archiving, how do we know what is accurate versus what is embellished or simplified?

      Denis Wood also discusses how certain archives are biased, or some cultural groups or certain events are not evenly represented, but that maps provide a certain reality to help us understand more. Altogether these works made me wonder just how accurate what has already been archived truly is. How much is left out? What happens to the missing information?

      It makes me think of the moments that I decided not to photograph something because of how I was feeling, whether it be because I was extremely proud, elated, or just saddened by the moment. No one else will ever understand or know about that moment in my life and it makes me wonder just how much of history is left out because someone was experiencing the same conflicting feeling as to whether or not to document it. The articles also made me think about historians, writers and other archivists, and how they decide what to archive and record and what to leave out? For example, just in this post there is so much more I could write about each article individually but yet I decided to only touch on specific topics, leading to the fact that now no one will know what else I had to say about it. Although it is a small-scale example, it is definitely a concept that takes quite a lot to think about.