From A to Z. Photographs in the Ruhr Museum

Abstract

In this paper, I try to demonstrate how a huge number of photographs and many heterogeneous photographic stocks can become a source for an exhibition concentrating on photographic features and archival orders – in other words for the photographic dispositif in the context of the photo-archive in the Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany. It will not be new knowledge to stress that words play a major role in structuring the subject matter for our exhibition. Words are found as key words, chapter titles, captions, data base categories and last but not least as curatorial categories, they are essential parts of photographs, at least of the photographic dispositif.

Notes

1 “Über den Wert der Fotografie. Wissenschaftliche Kriterien für die Bewahrung von Fotosammlungen.” 23–24 March 2012, www.wertderfotografie.ch

2 The Aarau conference with all the reports about really big and important European photo archives came to the same conclusions on multiplicity. The macro-structure of heterogeneity is mirrored in the idiosyncratic micro-structure of inventories. It turned out that in many cases it is very reasonable to keep the inventories’ old orders instead of transferring them into the archives’ own order. Scientists who want to work with an inventory are asked to learn the given classification. This illustrates the difficulty of classifying all inventories according to the archive's system.

3 The exhibition was made up of part 1 (A-I, 24.10.2011–02.09.2012) and part 2 (K-Z, 01.10.2012–08.09.2013).