reading robin kelsey's archive style across the archival divide

Reading Robin Kelsey’s Archive StyleAcross the Archival Divide

Joan M. Schwartz

The word “archive” now has intellectual cache in the academic world,but its currency has little to do with the “real world of archives” as Journalof Archival Organization readers understand it from a professional orinstitutional perspective. Rather, it is the metaphorical archive of Frenchphilosophers, their followers and interlocutors, who employ the conceptof “the archive” as something produced by the nineteenth-century “driveto extract from the world a complete and corresponding record of itself(Kelsey 2007, p. 9).” That archive is not grounded in a concern for theorganic nature of records production, preservation, and use. Quoting Der-rida and citing Foucault, Robin Kelsey, too, sees “the archive” not as “aninstitution or set of institutions but rather a system enabling and controllingthe production of knowledge (p. 9).” While his Archive Style: Photographsand Illustrations for U.S. Surveys, 1850–1890 is, thus, not about the “realworld of archives,” to dismiss—as theoretically driven or professionallyirrelevant—Kelsey’s elaboration of the practices of visual representationthat created the archival record of nineteenth-century surveys of theAmerican West would be a grave mistake. This reading of Archive Stylestraddles the “archival divide” separating academic and institutional,theoretical and professional understandings of “the archive” and the “realworld of archives.”1

Joan M. Schwartz, PhD, is Associate Professor/Queen’s National Scholar inthe Department of Art at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.

Address correspondence to: Joan M. Schwartz, Queen’s National ScholarDepartment of Art, Ontario Hall 318C, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario,Canada K7L 3N6 (E-mail: [email protected]).

Journal of Archival Organization, Vol. 6(3), 2008Available online at http://www.haworthpress.comC© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.

doi: 10.1080/15332740802421923 201

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We can think of Archive Style as a book about government docu-ments that happen to be visual materials. Even if it is not written froman archival perspective, does not cite the archival literature, and is nottargeted at archivists, it has much to say to archivists willing to ac-commodate academic understandings of “the archive” and brook art his-torical posturing. Inspired by “certain pockets of recalcitrant ingenuityin the survey archive” (p. 193), Kelsey makes the critical point that“the archives have been more generative of new forms of pictorial in-telligence than most scholars have recognized” (p. 193). And archivistswill certainly appreciate his aim to reconnect “remarkable pictures tothe texts, processes, social units, and political struggles in which theywere once embedded” (p. 4). Taken as a whole, Kelsey’s book demon-strates the important role of visual materials in the course of govern-ment business, in this instance specifically the United States’ surveys of1850–1890. In its combination of solid and extensive research in archivalsources, especially on graphic materials and government records, ArchiveStyle offers an opportunity to extract important lessons not only forarchival theory and practice but also for professional self-reflection andidentity.

Archive Style begins with clarification of “riddles andpremises”—definitions of both “archive” and “style” and an admis-sion that “the title of the book . . . asks for trouble” (p. 8). Interestingly,Kelsey claims that “among scholars, either archive or style standing alonecan attract controversy, and for many readers, the two terms togetherwill seem oxymoronic” (p. 8), implying, I presume, that these conceptsoccupy separate, mutually exclusive spheres. What is important, however,is Kelsey’s effort to excavate the way in which “Style served generationsof art historians as a way of . . . freeing certain particulars of form fromany traffic in interest” (p. 12). Kelsey acknowledges that historians ofphotography—and here I might add archivists—“may be wary of bringingthe word to bear on archival pictures, suspecting that it signals yet moreforced assimilation of pragmatic material into the traditional categoriesof art” (p. 12). But this is not Kelsey’s aim, and his discussion of themodernist appropriation of survey photographs into the art historicalcanon and the modern/postmodern debate over their place in the galleryclarifies his use of “style” as an analytical lens and sets up the argumentsthat follow.

Kelsey launches into Archive Style armed with four interlocking hy-potheses, the first two of which are couched in remarkably familiar archivalterms. Archivists engaged in nurturing postcolonial and postmodern

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understandings of our professional responsibilities—for diversity and theinclusion of the marginalized voices of society—will nod in agreementwith the following passage:

We may be accustomed to thinking of archival pictures as straight-forward records, but in the archive, the representation of straightfor-wardness has never been straightforward. The very definition of anaccurate pictorial record, and the effort to demonstrate the epistemo-logical and practical advances that it affords, has entailed rhetoric.The producers of archives have, in other words, claimed and defendedthe completeness, authenticity, and reliability of their holdings. Thereason for this is not merely that some degree of self-presentationamong social entities is unavoidable but also that archives, especiallypublicly funded ones, rely on political support for their maintenanceand growth. Throughout the modern period, those responsible forassembling and maintaining federal archives have subtly promotedtheir collections to legislators, other officials of high rank, leadersof industry, and the general public. They have asserted the benefitsof archival neutrality and scientific care in a manner that is hardlyneutral (p. 5).

Claiming that “archives have operated under expectations of self-effacement” (p. 5), Kelsey sets up his thesis about the rise of “archivestyles” and the “ingenuity” behind their creation. Even if we are not con-cerned with style, archivists must ponder his point that the rhetoric ofarchival neutrality and self-effacement derives not only from within thearchive but from “the politics inherent in the state’s making a record ofits own actions and holdings” (p. 5). With implications for a variety ofarchival contexts, from appeals to resource allocators to virtual exhibitionson the Web, Kelsey’s argument merits close scrutiny:

By constructing archives, the state represents itself to its leaders, ri-vals, and constituents. The archives of U.S. government are filled withdocuments concerning its programs, procedures, funds, agencies, andlands. Although officials supporting or administering these archiveshave routinely proclaimed a desire for accurate and objective infor-mation, the federal government has just as routinely (if less openly)demanded to be shown in the best possible light. The self-promotionof national archives has thus been inseparable from their tendency toglorify and reassure the state of which they are a part (p. 5).


For someone working outside the realm of the literature, institutions, andconcerns of the archival profession, Kelsey seems remarkably prescient.On his way to establishing his main focus on approaches to the productionof pictures, he touches on such key issues as the presumed objectivityof archives, and professional and institutional invisibility. Narrowing hisfocus from archives to archival images, Kelsey then presents the centralpremise of Archive Style, arguing, “Nowhere have the effects of theseinclinations surfaced more compellingly than in pictures” (p. 5).

Whether displayed at permanent or rotating exhibitions adjacent torepositories, in brochures or reports, or as part of entreaties for publicparticipation (such as FBI “wanted” posters), pictures have playeda central role in the appeal of archives. The treatment of archivalpictures as sober public records, as objective findings responsiblycollected for the citizenry and its representatives, is precisely thepoint. Making pictures that speak to the neutrality of archives and itsbenefits, to the profitable knowledge that processes of measurement,recording, and cataloguing can secure, and doing so in a manner thatreassures the government that the objective facts are on its side, hascalled for ingenuity. The aim of this book is not merely to puncturemodern myths of disinterestedness or objectivity; in other contexts,this task has been performed expertly. The focus is rather on howand why the insistence on scientific exactitude, perspicacity, anddetachment historically coalesced at particular moments into specificapproaches to producing pictures (pp. 5–6).

Archive Style seeks to demonstrate that the instrumentality of pictures iscrucial to a new understanding of government surveys. While this willpique the curiosity of art historians, it should also be a clarion call toarchivists. For archivists, Kelsey’s real contribution is not in his notion of“archive style” but rather in his exegesis of “pictorial intelligence,” not inhis effort to reconcile modernist pictorial qualities and Romantic landscapetradition, but in his attempt to explore the federal bureaucracy as an engineof social and cultural production. Where Kelsey is intent on explainingthe look of survey pictures, archivists would do well to consider how theirlook not only reflected the contexts of their creation, but also embodiedtheir function and influenced the work they performed. Archive Style, withits emphasis on the contexts of record creation, circulation, and viewing,has much to say to archivists responsible for the care of visual materialsand government records.


The book unfolds in three chapters, devoted respectively to the work ofnaturalist and surveyor Arthur M. Schott on the 1856 United States–MexicoBoundary Survey, to photographs produced by Timothy H. O’Sullivanover a number of years in the American West, and to the record createdby Charles Clifford Jones of the Charleston earthquake of 1886. Kelseyconcludes with a chapter titled “Archive Style,” which proceeds from thepremise that “the historical circumstances of survey production fosterednew pictorial approaches” (p. 191). In it, he claims that “makers of surveypictures had to satisfy vague and contradictory bureaucratic needs, adaptold habits to new tasks, and address viewers with disparate expectations,including some who doubted the pictures’ value and legitimacy as publicrecords” (p. 191). How appropriate then to review the book for an audiencewhich, 150 years later, still includes many who doubt the legitimacy, ques-tion the authority, or simply ignore the power of visual images as archivalrecords.

Kelsey displays impeccable archival research and clearly understandsvisual images in functional terms, demonstrating their rhetorical powerby returning them to the documentary universe, political circumstances,and social circles in which they were circulated and viewed and in whichthey were invested with and subsequently generated meaning(s). Thus,while Kelsey attempts to give art historical legitimacy to landscape viewsexecuted in 1856 by Schott, juxtaposing his views with works by Cas-par David Friedrich, Frederic Edwin Church, and Thomas Cole, he alsoemphasizes their documentary and material contexts: those of their originas ink drawings, of their circulation as steel engravings to Congress, oftheir dissemination in print form in Major William Emory’s Report onthe United States and Mexico Boundary Survey, and of their viewing bygovernment officials and prominent institutions and individuals. Kelsey’sclaim, that “Schott’s adherence to Romantic approaches to representationat times harmonized with his appointed task” (p. 46) underscores the pointthat the look of survey images was governed by the larger project in whichthey participated, the work they were created to assist, and the functionsthey were asked to perform.

In foregrounding the role of visual materials in the course of govern-ment business, Archive Style clearly dispels lingering notions that visualmaterials are mere illustrations, ancillary rather than integral to the archivalrecord. Archivists would do well to read between the lines and glean fromhis book the lesson for the “real world of archives” that the look of a doc-ument and its materiality—choice of support, presentational form, signsof authority—clearly contribute to its ability to perform the function for


which it was created and, as such, warrant close attention and careful de-scription. As well, Kelsey’s admitted “compulsion to return to letters andtreasury vouchers” (p. 12) in his search for the meaning of survey imagesshould also remind archivists that their primary professional responsibilityin the preservation of evidential value extends beyond textual records andthat visual materials, too, were invested with and generated meaning(s)that must be perceived, protected, and preserved.

Archivists will find that Archive Style shifts between lyrically descriptiveand densely theoretical. At times “clever” at the expense of clear, Kelsey’sbook is targeted at a particular segment of the academy and employs lan-guage that is sometimes difficult to decipher and may confound many withprofessional responsibility for the very materials that the book seeks toelucidate. Archivists will also be confused by Kelsey’s use of the adjective“archival” and will have to remember to “switch gears” to appreciate its usein the metaphorical sense of seeking comprehensive knowledge. For exam-ple, he introduces the notion of “a nineteenth-century fantasy of archivalambition” (p. 17) suggesting it manifested itself most clearly in an essaytitled “The Stereograph and the Stereoscope” published by Oliver WendellHolmes in The Atlantic Monthly in 1859.2 As Kelsey explains, Holmesproposed the idea of “a comprehensive archive of stereographs” (p. 17).But Holmes, himself, did not talk about an “archive”; rather, he proposeda “comprehensive and systematic stereographic library [emphasis mine]”where one could call up a stereoscopic view as one would “a book at anycommon library” (p. 17). Here, Kelsey, like others whose concern for “thearchive” originates outside the profession, makes no distinction betweenarchive and library even though such distinctions are indicative of inten-tions, laden with manifestations of power, and suggestive of professionalpractice, all of which govern the contents of institutional holdings andshape their received meanings.

While Kelsey claims to be offering a “new model for understandingthe historical significance of archival materials,” (p. 8) he does so with-out citations to, and therefore presumably knowledge of, the writings ofprofessional archivists. The only foray into the “archival literature” is areference to Thomas Osborne’s essay “The Ordinariness of the Archive,”3

which Kelsey uses to argue “the archive is both a source of documen-tary authority and a place of passage where historians test their mettle”(p. 11). But Osborne is not an archivist; rather, he is a sociologist, andthe collection in which his essay appears contains the academic musingsof professors of sociology, history, anthropology, English, French, Italian,


and classics who, at times, conflate the institutions, functions, and activitiesof the information trinity: archives, libraries, and museums.

Kelsey’s aim to create a new model for understanding survey pho-tographs is, admittedly, situated within the discourse of the art museum andthe academic field of art history, and in that discursive realm he has scouredsources and amassed an impressive bibliography that archivists would dowell to consult. However, this does not wholly excuse the omissions al-ready noted. Those seeking new approaches to the photograph cannotignore models of analysis which currently exist “in dizzying number”4 incognate disciplines. But, by extension, neither can the majority of archivistsremain content with a professionally circumscribed literature, too “busy”to engage theory and oblivious to the academic winds of change blowingin their direction. Indeed, archivists need to read Kelsey for the very reasonthat visual images, and photographs in particular, transgress disciplinaryscrutiny, and we need to glean insights wherever they can be found, forin so doing we can only enrich the knowledge, appraisal, description, andpreservation of photographs within the “real world of archives.”

But Kelsey’s argument is also archivally nuanced. He claims that, har-nessed to the aims of the United States Geological Survey, Jones’ “pic-torial strategy” was clearly suited to the task he was asked to perform.Approaching Jones’s work with curatorial sensibilities, Kelsey discoverswhat archivists have always taken for granted and never labelled—thatsurvey photographs do not necessarily conform to, nor fit within, the con-tinuum of pictorial convention and that they must be understood in thefullness of the function for which they were created and the documentarycontext in which they circulated. This is not to diminish Kelsey’s brilliantformal analysis of Jones’s views, an analysis that should expand our waysof understanding and discussing visual records.

If the archival profession, its literature, and its practices have escapedthe scholarly radar screen of Kelsey and others, what is noteworthy aboutArchive Style is the very idea that a traditionally trained art historianwould seriously engage the survey work of Schott, O’Sullivan, and Jones.Kelsey’s meticulous contextualization of these bodies of U.S. survey im-agery is a stellar example of the interdisciplinary positioning of studies ofhistorical photographs. Whether or not one agrees with his close reading,or his positing of an “archive style,” it is difficult to dismiss the largerlesson that visual images must be understood as integral, not ancillary ortautological, in the appraisal, preservation, and description of governmentrecords. Unknowingly, Kelsey argues for a distinctly archival approachto understanding photographs as active participants in an information


economy. But archivists, too, must understand that photographs do things,and that we must think of them as active, not passive, created for reasons,to communicate messages, and when circulated to specific audiences,to produce effects. While appropriating U.S. survey pictures into arthistorical discourse, Kelsey’s analysis presents a thorough exploration ofthe purpose, function, power, and impact of visual images produced bygovernment agencies. His discussion of survey mapping, while lacking theinsights of the late Brian Harley’s5 writings, offers to archivists responsiblefor cartographic records parallel insights into the evidentiary relationshipsbetween text and image, maps and pictures, records and reality.

Archive Style may have far-reaching consequences for the preservationof survey pictures, as well as other bodies of documentary art and photog-raphy. The elevation of the documentary to the aesthetic, the move from thearchive to the art museum invariably entails a loss of original context and aseparation of form and function. While Kelsey’s work attempts to link formto function through the coining of a new style—“archive style”—in the arthistorical lexicon, the implications of this reappropriation are significant.The ahistorical practice of disbinding albums and framing selected printsfor museum display is not new and will continue regardless of the legitima-tion of archival materials as aesthetic objects through vocabulary additionsthat recognize new art historical concerns for “vernacular photographs”(Geoffrey Batchen) or “archive style” (Robin Kelsey). However, this lin-guistic sleight-of-hand, which shifts disciplinary attention and market in-terest to archival materials, may place under increasing threat the effortsof archives to maintain the integrity, not just of albums but also of fonds.

At the same time, if Kelsey’s concern for the larger documentary uni-verse is heeded by dealers, curators, and archivists, albums not currentlyin archives may have a greater chance of surviving intact in museumsand galleries, and those already held by archives may be accorded betterintellectual access. With the recognition that survey pictures performedideological work and that the recovery of their meaning requires an under-standing of both the circumstances of their creation and the documentaryuniverse in which they were circulated and viewed, old habits of con-sidering the individual image either as a work of art or ancillary to textmay finally be replaced by a new appreciation of “pictorial intelligence.”Such an appreciation may combat the sort of aesthetic cherry-picking thathas led to the dismemberment of many valuable albums, and the conse-quent destruction of their visual narratives, by market forces and formalistpractices on the one hand, and by a Schellenbergian disregard for theevidential value of pictures on the other. At least we can hope so.


There are two clear lessons for the archival profession in Archive Style;both involve making the invisible visible. Kelsey’s overall premise res-onates with recent consideration of photographs as “working objects intheir own time.”6 Extrapolating from Kelsey’s case studies in the useof survey illustrations by government, the larger lesson is that photog-raphy has had a profound effect on our strategies of seeing, engaging,and understanding the world. As a consequence, photographs need to bebrought more fully into archival theory and practice. Indeed, all visualmaterials need to be assigned greater importance on the archivist’s radarscreen.

Equally, archival history, theory, and practice need to achieve a presenceon the academic’s radar screen. Kelsey, like so many others writing about“the archive,” fails to realize that archivists themselves have a criticalpractice and a professional literature that privileges authorial intention,historical circumstance, functional origins, and documentary linkages. Mypoint, here, is not so much to criticize his oversight as to question ourown scholarly invisibility. The power of the archive, the “sly rhetoric ofmaps,” and the instrumentality of photographs have been the subject ofcritical scholarship on the pages of archival journals, but efforts to reachaudiences beyond the profession have been few. Despite its considerablemerits as a work of art history, Archive Style is yet another symptom of theprofessional-institutional/academic-disciplinary archival divide. Bridgingthe gap is a two-way proposition, one which archivists cannot afford toignore and from which they stand to benefit.

NOTES

1. Robin Kelsey, Archive Style: Photographs & Illustrations for U.S. Surveys,1850–1890. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2007. xii,273 pp, 89 ill., $49.95. ISBN 978-0-520-24935-6. Page references to Robin Kelsey’sArchive Style are given in brackets throughout this essay. My thinking on the “archivaldivide” has benefited from spirited exchanges with Terry Cook, Nancy Bartlett, JoannaSassoon, and Anne Salsich, and I thank them here for their intellectual generosity. Fora critique of recent perspectives on “the archive” from outside the profession, seeJoan M. Schwartz, “ ‘Having New Eyes’: Spaces of Archives, Landscapes of Power,”Archivaria 61 (Spring 2006): 1–25.

2. Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,” The AtlanticMonthly 3 (June 1859): 738–748. Holmes’s essay is reprinted in Beaumont Newhall(Ed.), Photography: Essays and Images. Illustrated Readings in the History of Pho-tography (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1980): 53–61.


3. Thomas Osborne, “The Ordinariness of the Archive,” History of the HumanSciences 12, no. 2 (May 1999): 51–64. His essay appears in the second of two specialissues devoted to The Archive.

4. Neil Harris, Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes inModern America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990): 317.

5. See, for example, J. B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, Paul Laxton (Ed.)(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

6. Michel Frizot, “Introduction: The Age of Light,” in Michel Frizot (Ed.), A NewHistory of Photography (Koln: Konemann, 1998), 12.

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