The photo album as a media object has evolved substantially since its conception, in terms of aesthetics, audience, and distribution. The aesthetics of the photo album started as hand painted and embossed works of art, portraying the value of the photographs themselves, and conveying their rarity and elitist qualities. As the physical photo album modernised, it kept these elements of curation as well as its function as a status symbol – an object that could evidence a family’s history. It’s a powerful narrative object. I explore my own family history through photo albums, exploring their narrative, materiality, construction and curation. Flipping through pages of photos of long forgotten family-friends, memories I was too young to remember, and my family’s life before I was born. Moreover, I will explore my personal digital photo albums, visually investigating the power of both duplicate photos as well as their rhythmic and chronological presentation. The digital photo albums can compress years and years onto a single page, condensing thousands of memories onto pixels on a screen, where one would flip through thousands of pages of photos to even attempt to achieve a comparable timespan.

I’m interested in exploring this paradox within digital photo albums where despite the photos themselves being highly personal objects, through their standardized digital curation they almost become in-personal. Maybe this is due to our constant exposure to personal images on social media where we’ve become slightly desensitized to the value of an image. I’ll be focusing on the Photo Album as a media object. Distribution is inherently embedded into the photo album, as one of the primary purposes of the album is to be shared with varying audiences, from very private gatherings to public social media posts. The photo album is a portable art gallery, sometimes personally curated, sometimes automatically sorted into videos, selfies, locations, or years. It can be personal, as was the one shown in the video, documenting a family’s private and public life over 20 years, never to have been replicated before. It is an investigation into the power to distribute a photo album, which is an interplay between the nostalgic and tactile qualities of a physical photo album, with the hyper detailed building up of a linear narrative of the digital photo albums, among many other qualities.

The digital photo-album has developed over time. Once there were slides one would insert into a projector to show family and friends, a meeting place between digital and analogue methodologies to share an array of personal experiences. With the first smartphones came the chance for everyone to have a portable, digital photo album in their pockets. Alongside that came the concept of digital photobooks, a digitized photo-album template where one could print booklets of digital photos in attempt to mimic their physical predecessor. There’s a continuous urge to capture the tactile experiences associated with the physical photo album.

My research methodology will centralise around deconstructing both my personal digital and physical photo albums, discerning their varying methods of distribution, and how that manifests aesthetically, and materially. Through high quality scanning, I’m able to investigate the minute material qualities of these photo albums, from the dust on the sleeves, to the wrinkles on the vinyl covered, to the staining on the photos. The non-focal features such as the spaces between photos, the background patterns, the binding, and even the smells will also play an important role. With the digital photo albums, the investigation becomes one more of systematic sorting, duplication, algorithm, and – in some senses – a lack of distinctive personality, despite the photos being incredibly personal. These two media objects, with ultimately similar purposes, vary immensely in their distribution and user experience.

My father, who passed many years ago, voices over my exploration of media and family, noting on his experiences of the passage of time, life, and youth, and looking towards the future. A fitting contrast to the nostalgic and reminiscent exploration presented on screen, coming together to deliver a personal experience of the family photo album as a media object, and the powers that lie in the dust on the pages and crinkles in the covers.