Accounting for Time in Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Diaries and Photographs

Abstract

Diaries and photos are technologies that solicit and generate content, and they are places to archive and to keep. The content elicited by a diary is enmeshed with a physical format that emphasises daily or hourly rhythms of life; the content and format co-exist in tension with fleeting temporality and certain mortality. Likewise, the photograph records an impression of a single moment in order to preserve that moment for an unknowable future. This paper shows how the content of diaries and photographs is shaped by a moral obligation to account for time and a temporal orientation to the future. Nineteenth century diaries and photographs are deterministic technologies orienting their users’ actions within the historical context of the industrial revolution. They both promise reparation in anticipation of future losses (adjudged on a numberless balance sheet of life) and demand an active account of personal productivity; in these discursive operations, the diary and photograph may aggravate rather than answer anxieties about time.

Keywords:

• diaries
• photography
• accounting
• time

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] In addition, the centre for rural history at the University of Guelph has an archival collection of business account books, daybooks, ledgers, and journals from the nineteenth century (http://www.uoguelph.ca/ruralhistory/resources/accountBooks.html). The archivists note that these could range from the simplest record of transactions to more fulsome business diaries that covered everything from credits and debits to events on the street in front of the store or accidents in the mill.