Appraisal and description of photography in Israeli archives in the light of archive’s post-modern paradigm / Karin Eliyahu

The current study explores the appraisal and description of photography in Israeli archives in the light of paradigmatic changes in archival theory. The review of the field's literature focuses on current attitudes towards the appraisal and description of photography in archives. There has been significant criticism of the custodial, history-centric attitude of photography archivists. Alternative attitudes to the current trends, influenced by postmodern thinking, place an emphasis on the context of record creation instead of on the record itself. Moreover, the postmodern approach provides archivists with a more active role in constructing collective memory, in addition to preserving evidence. In addition, some methods that attempt to deal with the complexity of the photographic record, such as the new diplomatics for photography, have been referred to in the literature review. This study traces the perception of photography as an archival record, the treatment approach to photographic records in practice, and attitudes towards postmodern theories. The research was conducted in 2015 with the participation of nine senior Israeli archivists. A qualitative method was used, including semi-structured interviews and content analysis of descriptive records of photography in the same archives. Transcripts from the interviews were formulated into 17 content analytical units, while the descriptive records were expressed as 16 units. The units were then reduced to four main themes: the perception of archivist identity as a neutral mediator and the photographic record as historical evidence; the approach to the photographic record as a textimage; the approach to the photographic record as special material; and the attitude towards postmodern paradigm – the photographic record as narrow evidence that applies to a wide audience.