ABSTRACT
Both in common sense and in traditional archival science, archives have been understood as places consecrated to the preservation of the memory of the past. In the case of photographic archives, the paradigm of archival neutrality is taken to the extreme by its combination with the paradigm of photographic objectivity: photographs documenting objects of study in the humanities – as, for instance, in the history of art – have been regarded as authentic visual records, pure evidence that archivists make available to scholars. So, what are scissors and a paper cutter doing in a photographic archive?
In a sort of guided tour through the holdings and practices of the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, this chapter aims to highlight the contradictions inherent in the notion of archival and photographic objectivity. An analysis of the multiple cutting practices that constitute the creative work carried out on a daily basis in a photographic archive emphasises the role of archivists as fundamental actors producing, and not only preserving, photographic documents. The latter, beyond their visual content, are to be considered material objects that exist in time and space, in social and cultural contexts, of which one is the ecosystem of the archive.
In this investigation that bridges theory and practice, cutting will emerge as an integral part of the (material) transformation of photographs into scientific evidence. Moreover, the term ‘cut’ intended in a broader, multiplicitous, sometimes metaphorical sense will help to explain practices of knowledge production as well as systems of value in photographic archives.
