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The voices of images: photographs and collective provenance

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Iyra Buenrostro at University of the Philippines System
Iyra Buenrostro
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Abstract and Figures

This paper presents how the concept of provenance is expanded and reconceptualized from being an organizing principle to an interpreting community that describes, contextualizes, and breathes life into photographs. As social objects, photographs warrant a nonlinear, collective provenance because of their intrinsic ability to transcend time and space while bringing various entities to come together, form a community and relationships, and reflexively exercise memory work and meaning-making. Collective provenance includes various individuals who are not necessarily in the same locale or setting, but are united through a shared identity, a common past, and an imagined future in relation to the phenomenon portrayed and documented by the photographs. This study, which is based on my PhD project on archival photographs during the martial law years in the Philippines in the 1970s–80s, draws on Chris Hurley’s parallel provenance, Tom Nesmith’s societal provenance, and Jeanette Bastian’s co-creatorship of records. I use the case of one photograph taken during the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that ended the dictatorial rule of the Marcos, Sr. regime in the Philippines. Through oral history interviews enabled by photo-elicitation, the collective provenance interacted with the photograph, interpreted both the photograph and the event depicted, and positioned themselves in the wider and more dominant narrative of EDSA.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Archival Science (2024) 24:697–715
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-024-09456-8
ORIGINAL PAPER
The voices ofimages: photographs andcollective
provenance
IyraS.Buenrostro‑Cabbab1
Accepted: 7 August 2024 / Published online: 3 September 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024
Abstract
This paper presents how the concept of provenance is expanded and reconceptual-
ized from being an organizing principle to an interpreting community that describes,
contextualizes, and breathes life into photographs. As social objects, photographs
warrant a nonlinear, collective provenance because of their intrinsic ability to tran-
scend time and space while bringing various entities to come together, form a com-
munity and relationships, and reflexively exercise memory work and meaning-mak-
ing. Collective provenance includes various individuals who are not necessarily in
the same locale or setting, but are united through a shared identity, a common past,
and an imagined future in relation to the phenomenon portrayed and documented
by the photographs. This study, which is based on my PhD project on archival pho-
tographs during the martial law years in the Philippines in the 1970s–80s, draws
on Chris Hurley’s parallel provenance, Tom Nesmith’s societal provenance, and
Jeanette Bastian’s co-creatorship of records. I use the case of one photograph taken
during the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that ended the dictatorial rule of
the Marcos, Sr. regime in the Philippines. Through oral history interviews enabled
by photo-elicitation, the collective provenance interacted with the photograph, inter-
preted both the photograph and the event depicted, and positioned themselves in the
wider and more dominant narrative of EDSA.
Keywords EDSA People Power Revolution· Photographs· Photo-elicitation·
Memories· Provenance· Archival description
* Iyra S. Buenrostro-Cabbab
iyra@slis.upd.edu.ph
1 School ofLibrary andInformation Studies, University ofthePhilippines Diliman, QuezonCity,
Philippines
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
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