Question 3. Yuyanapaq: Think about the conversion of an archive, with 1,700 photographs into an exhibit with a specific narrative. How is the production of the archive affected? Roland Barthes will tell us that photography is a message without a code (all photographs “speak,” but its codes are established before and after the photograph, they are not the photograph itself or are not in the photographs themselves). How then, are we to read the codes of these photographs? What is the role of the exhibit in making the photographs speak?
Converting a large archive into an exhibit is certainly challenging because you cannot possibly include every image. So how do you decide which images make it into the exhibition? Are some images more important or more powerful than others? In a way, “shrinking” an archive to produce a well-executed exhibit helps one decode a photograph. This is because most exhibits either have a certain theme or are divided into different sections, each section having a specific theme. This enables a photograph to automatically gain meaning since it is much easier to understand an image when it is juxtaposed with other images that are of a similar theme and/or meaning. As such, exhibits may be selective in regards to which photographs are represented, however, they also give the chosen photographs a voice.