Speaking to archives

Over the past months I’ve been having conversations with artist friends whose work engages directly with archives and research.

Ingrid Pollard’s photography is an ongoing conversation with archives. In her series Valentine Days (1891-2017) she ‘talks’ to photographs from the Caribbean Photo Archive, notably a selection of photos commissioned by the British government and produced by the Scottish printing and photography business, Valentine and Sons. The photos, all taken in Jamaica in 1891 and intended to show off its natural and human resources in order to encourage investment into the island, depict various scenes: a functioning harbour with a sailboat arriving to dock at spacious wide jetties and warehouses in the background; a pastoral scene with dense and rich tropical vegetation on either side of a calm river upon which a man and woman stand on a solid raft gently punting; two young black girls, on the wide front steps of a ‘great’ house with their baskets and straw hats; the road approaching a village surrounded by lush vegetation, with solid houses on either side of the road and barefooted villagers with baskets on their heads looking at the camera.

I imagine that the original photographs would have been in black and white. Ingrid brings these photos to life through the labour intensive and meticulous process of hand tinting. Suddenly, the human bodies in these photos taken 52 years after emancipation are imbued with life, contours, patterns in their clothing, expressions on their faces, individual lives each with agency in archive photos that would otherwise relegate them to voiceless labour for hire.

Her series Demo Frieze / No Cover-up presents a succession of variously toned black and white photos of protests from the 1980s and 1990s. Some of the photographs are Ingrid’s and others are archival, particularly from the Glasgow Women’s Library archive. There are scenes of demos against racism, police brutality; demos supporting LGBT rights, feminism and international human rights struggles. The frieze flows like a river suggesting the continued resonance, vitality and interconnection of these protests.

What strikes me about these photographs is the way the past appears so vividly alive and present. The past opening doors to curiosity and questions about the people in these photographs as much as a feeling of familiarity and recognition of the landscapes. In recognising myself in these landscapes, I want to know more about my region, what it looked like at the end of the 19th century and wonder how much of that dense lush vegetation remains. What also strikes me, is that Ingrid’s perspective, the colour that she has brought to these archival photos make me look at them in a way that is certainly different to how I might have seen the originals. Their aliveness under Ingrid’s hand confers the solidity of a family photo album, the reassurance that traces of us from way back remain present.

This pulsating life is what I found in the archives of the Caribbean Artists Movement at the George Padmore Institute. A deliberate decision by artists from Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados based in London in the 1960s, to come together to share their reflections of their new lives and those left back home. A deliberate choice by John La Rose, Andrew Salkey and Edward Brathwaite to ensure that Caribbean artists, writers, poets, musicians, dancers, playwrights, filmmakers and more, could see each other; be brought to the attention of the British public; participate in the cultural life of their new home; and that their work could be appreciated and valued. The Caribbean Artists Movement recognised the impact and the value of Caribbean Art and its artists to reflect us in our humanity. This is the archive that I wish to bring to life through music, song and narration. A means of speaking to the past today, an homage to those who created that bedrock of irrefutable evidence of our lives, a reminder of those traces cleared by others and in whose wake we too beat paths for the future.

Dominique Le Gendre, November 2024.

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