Archive of Modern Conflict: “Collected Shadows”

“Collected Shadows” at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art marked the debut of the Archive of Modern Conflict holdings in Canada. Since 2010, David Thomson has been the registered trademark owner of the Archive of Modern Conflict (AMC). The archive itself predates its formal incorporation and was born out of the prescient desire of a group of UK collectors to amass a diverse photographic collection of images depicting unique aspects of war. Today, the purpose and mandate of the archive is the source of much speculation and inquiry; the archive now includes professional works by many well-known figures, as well as thousands of unknown photographers and anonymous vernacular images. Over the years, the AMC has fully established its reputation through its innovative work with vernacular images in particular. “Collected Shadows” provides an opportunity for Canadians to experience some of the Archive of Modern Conflict’s sensibilities through its curator Timothy Prus’s daring exhibition practices.

The two hundred-odd images in this show represent just a fraction of the AMC’s estimated four million. Photographs are installed in clusters and constellations of imagery in no specific curatorial time frame or consistent theme. The press release states, “Through unexpected juxtapositions and associations across time periods, geographies, and techniques, ‘Collected Shadows’ focuses on natural and supernatural themes: earth, fire, air, and water, complemented by divinity, astrology, and flight.” These themes provide ample room to consider the connections between, for example, ’60s-era Russian Aviation and Space Agency moon surface photos, ’60s Marrakech and Guantanamo Bay photos and a fascinating panorama of Kingsland Road, London, made in 2011, as just one cluster challenges us to do. The clusters are visually exciting, reminiscent of the unexpected pleasures of the jumble sale, which speaks loudly of the means of production of the archive itself and so discloses the important source of what we are encountering as an exhibition. This is a significant part of reading the presentation as a whole. However, the work of creating meaning remains a burden not always simple to resolve in this particular exhibition. Although the AMC endeavours to “store, explore, and represent the lost shadows that lens-based technologies have scattered to the wind, inciting the sense of wonder we bring to our engagements with photography,” Prus may have in this instance just left us to wonder.

The trend toward associative presentations of artifacts, as opposed to conventionally research-based exhibitions, is expanding and the AMC is at the forefront of this tendency. These investigations go as far back as perhaps American conceptual artist Fred Wilson’s installation “Mining the Museum” of 1992. It has been thanks to these, and other groundbreaking shows, that we can experience a space cut loose from historical dogma and the official canon, and it is a relief. Although the AMC is not the first to experiment with associative methods of archival inquiry and display, they appear to be using the tactic well. The highly inventive and creative use of vernacular, material culture has been explored by the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles most famously, and can now be found in a plethora of experimental exhibition and project spaces worldwide. These captivating pro-jects eschew traditional historical research methodology in favour of a (Freudian) “free associative method.” These exhibitions, and “Collected Shadows” especially, draw upon the individual viewer’s unconscious (and conscious) ability to freely associate meaning from diverse visual stimulus. This approach also seems to partake of the new possibilities opened up by crowd sourcing, Internet connectivity and sharing, social networking and imagery tagging. However, just as with any Internet search, it matters a great deal how you define your search and, more so, how you present your findings. I think the associative method here is too broadly cast, and this is unfortunate since so many of the AMC’s productions were more precise. The method seems to work best when it has an official history to which it proposes an alternative. With “Collected Shadows,” what could be the alternative history to something so broad as “earth, fire, air and water, divinity, astrology, and flight,” we have to ask?

Some of the AMC’s most successful projects are their remarkable books. Steidl has just published Scrapbook (2009) by Timothy Prus and Donovan Wylie, which collated material from scrapbooks produced on both sides of the religious divide in the conflict in Northern Ireland. Similarly, the AMC Archive Press’s most provocative book, Nein, Onkel: Snapshots From Another Front 1938–1945 (2007) presented the visual wealth of alternative history that had been discovered in the unofficial repository of the private photo album. As the AMC Press website states, Nein, Onkel contained previously unpublished snapshots “portraying the fun-loving, sexually incongruous and work-shy elements of the German military machine, challenging the accepted view of evil men in jackboots.” These books explore a focused, social construct and their vernacular images add to, and often dispell, our habituated ideas of these familiar situations. Some of these descriptors: “fun-loving,” “incongruous” and “work-shy” begin to lead us into an appreciation of the new method of investigation and engagement that the AMC actively promotes. We are invited to attend to images by not particularly attending to them. Shallow, rather than deep meanings are privileged. This speculative imperative can be seen as utopian and progressive in its aim. We should keep in mind, however, that it may be a response to the current constraints of visual arts in the wider social field, a constraint that downloads the responsibilities for creativity and meaning to us as viewers—DIY everything. ❚

“Archive of Modern Conflict: Collected Shadows” was co-presented by MOCCA, Toronto, and the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival from May 2 to June 2, 2013.

Kelly Wood is a photographer, practising artist and an Associate Professor at Western University in London, Ontario.