AUDREY LEBLANC // What are analog photo libraries archives of?

WHAT ARE ANALOG PHOTO LIBRARIES ARCHIVES OF?

Mapping the western visual culture

AUDREY LEBLANC

This talk examines contemporary archival sources of photojournalism and the organization of these photographic archives of press companies in the 1960’s-1990’s – time of analogue photography. The term "photo morgue" is used in newspapers to indicate their archive of photos. It mirrors what is known in photography agencies as the "photo library", at the other end of the press image circulation chain. They are an important working tool for the staff. But what were these photo archives used for and how did they work?  The materiality (prints, slides) and the documents used to organize them helps to answer. Furthermore, those documents (indexes, keywords, inventories...) outcome of the work of lesser-known professions – librarians, researchers, picture editor, archivist…. Mainly women, they have been ignored by an history of photojournalism, hierarchical and largely constructed by men on the photographers and agency managers, who were also men. They help to understand the collections as they are accessible today. This focus highlights ‘the epistemological dimension of the bureaucratic terms and methods used in this management’, as Diana Kamin (2023) explains: everyday work with images is fertile ground for theorizing about photography and visual culture.

By examining the materiality of the slide library used in art history classes (which evokes kinesic memories), Susan Dobson shows that it imposes and asserts itself as an archive. By photographing it, she became aware of the narrative constructed by these sets and the canons they convey. This case study from another field (art rather than the history of photojournalism) helps to think about the way in which the libraries have transmitted the narrative of the twentieth century by the Western culture.

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Audrey Leblanc is a historian of photography, research associate at the EHESS (Paris). She is currently researcher for the collaborative project Photo-Fribourg (Switzerland, 2023-27) and Fellow at the Harry Ransom Center (USA, 2025). She has curated two exhibitions on press photography and edited the catalogues (French National Library (BnF), 2018). Her research explores the cultural history of image producers from the 1960s to the 1980s, through an archival perspective.