1. The work draws on my experience as a researcher (artist and writer) who also works inside the archive. This brings knowledge and understanding of archival systems, which are applied to different image collections, including those made by artist-photographers. 2. The work takes a fresh approach to archives: it not concerned with what is archived, but how photographic material is placed with an archival structure, and how an administrative text can represent an image. 3. The work is positively interdisciplinary, drawing on archival science, photo theory, media archaeology, art, network culture and conceptual writing. This alternative study of archive and photography brings many types of image assemblages into view, always in relation to the regulated systems operating within the institutional milieu. The archive catalogue is presented as a critical tool for mapping image time, and the language of image description is seen as having a life, a worth and an aesthetic value of its own. Functioning at the intersection of text and image, the book combines media culture, archival techniques, and contemporary discourse on art and conceptual writing.
Industry Reviews
"Auch die Auswahl von Birkins Fallbeispielen ist durchweg ueberzeugend und innovativ. [...] Zahlreiche Beispiele aus der bildenden Kunst aber auch der Populaerkultur (Mad Men, James Bond usw.) betten das doch recht trockene Thema der Katalogbeschriftungen in einen breiteren Kontext."
- Sophie Mayr (Wien), MEDIENwissenschaft 03-04 (2021)
"Archive, Photography and the Language of Administration is a substantial read. Bringing up information, theories, and references in significant density, it supplements and updates previous knowledge on both archives and its theories, hardly omitting any important detail in capturing the entire theme landscape. As such, it would be a valuable source for archivists of all kinds, but even more - it would be a great handbook for studies in the domain."
- Ana Peraica, Leonardo Reviews, September 2021
"Archive, Photography and the Language of Administration offers a series of provocative snapshots that demonstrate how the seemingly clerical work of classifying images-through their formal arrangement, their archival description or their adornment with technical metadata-is an inherently productive and creative means of translating between image and text and code."
- Shannon Mattern, The New School
"Jane Birkin guides streams of thought through the ubiquitous archiving of post-digital culture. She unveils a liquid archive whose practices constantly remodel and reshape the malleable materials we hold over from the past, haunted by the interplay of languages, images and objects. Lucid and comprehensive, with new insights on every page, it not only reformulates again the thriving field of archive studies, but observes the currents that shape a whole, emergent cultural ecology."
- Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne
