Picturing archives: the National Photography Collection, Public Archives of Canada, 1975-1986

Abstract

This thesis examines the efforts of leading National Photography Collection (NPC) archivists at the Public Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada) to place photographic archives at the heart of archival priorities alongside written records. Archivists are knowledge creators. The work they do in selecting and acquiring what shall be in the archives and representing it in research tools, exhibits, and publications shapes the knowledge derived from the records. The NPC members not only changed the way in which photographs were understood by archivists, but also by scholars in various fields in Canada as well as in other photographic repositories. These NPC members did so by stressing a contextual approach to the understanding of photographs across time. This thesis examines the ideas about photographs and archives of this pioneering group of archivists and its intellectual contributions to the study of the history of photography in Canada.