The Photographer's Eye: Archives and the Documentary Photograph

From the earliest cameras holding glass plate negatives to modern digital captures on smart phones and mini cameras, photographers tell stories and document lives and nature.

The intrepid explorers who hiked their cumbersome photographic equipment up mountains and across unexplored territories or who toted their pocket cameras along on trips or special activities, all contributed to our ability to visualize and understand much about previous eras. From fashions and family, to streets and buildings in our settlements and towns, photographers help us see it all.

With luck municipal archives like the City of Edmonton Archives will have series of images taken from time to time of main streets and businesses. Amateur photographers will have captured parades, celebrities, and special events like Royal Visits and anniversaries. Sometimes studio photographers will leave their collections of interesting individual and group portraits to an archive which creates a record of members of a community at a particular time. Today, photographers are capturing and sharing thousands of images of all kinds.

Researchers and Archivists love photographs.The trick is to collect the images which will help explain who we are today to people in the future.

Bibliography

Archives and the Documentary Photograph

The City of Edmonton Archives’ online exhibits typically provide a complete list of the records used in their larger context.

Unusually, this exhibit draws material only from the donations of Chris Bruun. They have been assigned the numbers EA-784 and ET-23. 

Much of his fonds can be seen on our online catalogue.

For an explanation of terms and acronyms, see our Virtual Exhibit Glossary.