During our visit to the Special Collections in Young Library, my group was assigned to a box that contained massive collections of photographs, from an entire album to individual photographs and some postcards written by different people who seems to have had close relationships with George P. Johnson. As we were exploring through the photographs (negatives), we noticed that the majority of photographs included people. Unfortunately, we were not able to identify anyone from the photos because there were hardly any details or descriptions of them. We were only able to make a presumption that those people were either Johnson’s families, friends or other related people. “But why did he choose to keep it that way?” I kept asking this question to myself and as we were closing the box, I came up with an answer to the question, “Maybe he wanted to keep all the memories to himself, he wanted to keep the photographs in such way so that no one but only himself can go back and connect to them”, or maybe he loved open-ended stories (as a filmmaker himself) and wanted the people who look at his photographs to develop their own interpretations, whether it is good or bad. Overall, it was such a fascinating experience to actually handle such valuable and delicate items with my bare hand, which by the way made me feel guilty to even leave my fingerprint on them.
The activity that we did last week at the Special Collections, I believe, deeply ties with the idea of material and materiality from this week’s reading by JeeHee Hong. “For Kant, materie was to be distinguished from substance, or the permanent in experience, since it only refers to the distinctive nature of the object’s appearances. Bearing surface value, its physicality was less emphasized than its symbolic meaning, and considered ‘secondary’ or ‘superficial’.”(Hong) If the term “material” represents a physical being, “materiality” differs with “material” in a way that it focuses on the value and the meaning of that physical being, which makes a perfect definition. If the idea of materiality didn’t not exist, we wouldn’t have museums, arts, and other objects that are not purposeful without its materiality. That being said, I want to stress my point which is: I’m not trying to say that only the materiality is important but the very existence of the materials because materiality wouldn’t have existed without the materials. In other words, they are closely interrelated with one another and that is where I believe the true beauty and meaningfulness come from.
I appreciate your what you wrote about the inherent value of materiality, because it is what allows us to analyze and explicate the meaning and significance behind the artifacts found in George P. Johnson’s collection, and beyond. Similar to other areas of cultural exploration, such as in literature, the physical works themselves have value, but it is when we describe the significance and the meanings behind the words that we find a more rich experience; I believe materiality represents a similar function for physical artifacts.
Great analysis on the interconnectivity of “material” and “materiality.” I also enjoyed your hypotheses as to why there were no comments about who was in the photographs you found. Maybe another box contains a list or index that will provide that information? Hopefully we’ll be able to learn more about the photographs by the end of the class!