collection of memories

(from weheartit.com)

To me, an archive is, quite simply, a collection of memories. There are many different types of archives, categorized by the location in which these memories are kept. It can be a diary, a photo album, a memory box...it can simply be the mind.

I've always been terrible at collecting and storing memories. I'm not one of those people who write faithfully in their blog to chronicle their quotidian events. I've tried, sometimes with moderate success. Every day in 8th grade I'd write in my calendar interesting things that happened on a certain date: "Sat next to (insert latest crush here) at the basketball game :) Had stew for dinner. Gross." I've also tried, and failed. In high school, for an art project, I made a memory box, and put a lot of mementos from the beginning of senior year in it. But I left that memory box in the studio--my attempts to contain time actually made time fly away from me.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. One usually thinks of 'archives' in the grandiose historical sense, as in, the National Archives, et cetera et cetera. That kind of archiving takes a lot of research and a lot of discipline. Discipline is something that I am lacking in. So, for this project, I decided to start small. I decided to archive one day: Wednesday, to be precise.

I archived Wednesday in two ways, which I think makes the collection of memories more comprehensive and complete. I purchased a disposable camera and snapped away throughout the day, capturing interesting sights on my way to campus, chronicling the way the sky looked at a certain point in the day, etc. There are limitations to photographs, however. The quality of the camera. The absence of smells, sounds, movement. But a visual representation is often better than just words themselves. For that reason, I added captions to my photographs (PostSecret style) to help me remember why I took that photo in the first place.

These photos are not a complete archive, though. I'm not sure an archive can be called an archive until the memories are in a place of their own. That being said, my second method of archiving Wednesday provides just that for the memories. I taped food wrappers, receipts, flyers I picked up on the streets, as well as my daily crossword puzzle attempt (which was an epic fail by the way) to the Wednesday, September 9 2009 box in my planner.

It was difficult to remember to keep my receipts, and I definitely got some strange looks while using the disposable camera (apparently it's an ancient relic), but at the same time I was more observant of my surroundings. This project will definitely help me remember almost every detail of 09-09-09.

(Inspired by a speech I had to write for my Photography and the Visual Archive class. The assignment? "Show me what you think an archive is.")