Archives are used to store peoples memories and preserve them so that the past is not forgotten. Archival organisations preserve archives and pieces of history for the public to use and look at the past.Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization’s lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization. And also its a place where people can go to gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, and other primary sources. they also keep records of many forms including correspondence, diaries , financial and legal documents, photographs and film.  Most state governments, schools, businesses, libraries, and historical societies maintain archives. people also use archives in their everyday lives to create and store information about their personal and business activities and archivists identify and preserve these documents if they are of lasting value. In reality photographs are not objective and they are highly influenced by the perspective of the photographer so it makes people sometimes question whether the photograph is true or not? while the real question should be what does a specific photograph do? Because it can effectively represent an  interaction with human memory and culture even if it contains biases or misrepresentation.

Due to Jersey being located between England and France it has a broad and rich photographic history. The local Societe Jersiaise photographic archive alone includes over 80,000 historical images dating back to mid 1900s.

Data archiving is the process of moving data that is no longer actively used to a separate storage device for long-term retention. Archive data consists of older data that remains important to the organization or must be retained for future reference or regulatory compliance reasons.

Archives are made also for normal people with access to phones or media to store day to day memories like photos or videos so these will never be forgotten, also theyre used for advertising, news, documentary, fine art, identity and anthropology. And one of their biggest abilities is providing visual history,  knowledge and power.

To help me explore archives i asked my own parents to look up old photographs, documentaries or anything that can make up an archive of my past. My grandmother told me that she keeps an archive of my life in Jersey and it was a folder containing everything from my first ever vehicle to photographs of my travels around the island. I liked the archive because in years to come i can look back at the archive and remember how i used to live. And this is why archives interest me. The only problem with these kinds of archives is that they can be damaged or lost because it is just a folder with paper after all. So that’s where virtual archives come in handy as an online archive cannot be lost s easily except if of course you forget the password for some reason…or the data itself is held by an unco-operative body.

So there is no specific answer to whose archive is it as for example i am the creator of this blog post so to me i think this archive with the images in them belong to me but in the same time all my blog posts are under the control of a “gatekeeper” which is the company or source that runs the website so they might consider my blog posts as theirs so their is no real answer to the question in the end.