What is a photo album?

A photo album is a book/ series in which an individual has collected images for through years in order to create a memory. They are usually displayed in a book form and images A5 size i usually displayed.

For my independent study, i will be looking into my own family photo albums as a type of archive. I will share my experiences of looking through the albums to see if they work the same way as a private archive works. As an extra, i will also look through my personal photo album of my friends to see if they give the same effect.

Image of my family photo album…

While looking through the family album, it was clear that the images were kept in case type pages in order to prevent fingerprints on the images, this gave a feel of importance as it made the images seem precious. It was also seen that all images were printed out as visual copies. Each page contained one image on each size which was a A5 shape. This allows us to be able to see the photo without being distracted by other ones, and again adding to the feel of importance. Looking at images from when i will little didn’t bring back any memories as i was too little to remember my image being taken. However, when looking at images of my little brother when he was a toddler brought back memories for me which i forgot existed, showing that images do in fact bring back memories.

To extend looking into photo albums i also analysed my mother while she was looking through the same photo album as i was and her reaction was a lot more personal as she is the one who had made the photo album while me and my brother were growing up. The images allowed her to look back on the past and remind her of all the memories which she made for me, herself and other family members.

Example images..

Due to my mum getting a lot more feelings while looking back on the album she made herself, i also decided to do the same thing a look through the photo album i made for myself which includes both family and friends.

I found that my photo album more of a casual feel to it because of the A4 sized images which allowed for 5 images to be displayed per page. The images were also in clear cases to prevent finger prints. Looking back at the memories allowed me to be visually reminded of elements in my teenage life as well as giving me memories which i can share with my friends due to the images rejigging my memory.

Pages from my album

In conclusion, i found that the way personal albums work compared to archives are very different and a lot more casual. As archived images are kept in cold rooms where you have to wear gloves to touch the images, it showed that the clear cases and personal images which we have at home are a lot more family friendly as they are allowed to be touched without gloves and don’t need a daily temperature check. However, this experiment also allowed me to realize that archives are all around us and they will always be a way of keeping images and it doesn’t matter how much technology is introduced. It has also been proved that they are both the same type of archive.