Figure 1. Documentation of archiving. Jerry Berman’s
Letters to Meyer and Sonia Fortes, by permission of
their granddaughter, Alison Marshall. Image:
Sara Nesteruk, 2021.
Today I have spent with Alison Marshall. This is
day 2 of digitisation for Jerry Berman’s letters.
Jerry wrote these letters to Alison’s grandparents,
Meyer and Sonia Fortes. In his letters Jerry documents
conditions during Holodomor. Work on this project
includes three methods of digitisation. All
materials I have scanned with Alison for high and
low resolution digital archiving. As time ran out
this evening I tried photographing these materials.
In a fifteen minute window some glorious sunlight
through my living room fell to create fantastic
shots of these letters. Figure 1 shows iphone
quality versions of this part of my practice
with Alison. These phone images are much lighter
light, details and complete collection appear in
these documentations. Contents and forms, graphic
ephemera, details and Jerry’s subject matters.
Alison has written about her grandfather’s letters.
These appear in an article online (Marshall, 2020).
Alison in her article makes a comparison between
deaths during Covid-19 and during Holodomor. This is
my first time to consider this relationship. Both
feature unimaginable death, incomprehensible
amounts of people dying.
Archives represent materials is different ways and
use different approaches. University of Reading and
LUX are working on a collaborative project to document
materials and films by filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin
(Bartliff, 2021). In this project metadata is
extracted from archives to give a complete overview
of Dwoskin’s digital collections. These diagrams
create a visual representation or a map of
these materials rather than deep comparisons or
analysis between individual elements within
this collection. This is an overview of a project.
Maps are also possible for Jerry Berman’s letters.
For example to give examples of his movements
and timelines.
References:
Marshall, A. (2020). Testimonies of Horror: the Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33 [Online]. History of Yesterday. Available from: <https://historyofyesterday.com/testimonies-of-horror-the-ukrainian-famine-of-1932-33-bc496f706565> [Accessed 15th June 2021].
Bartliff, Z. (2021). Dwoskin Project Blog #20: Dwoskin’s Drives [Online]. LUX. Available from: <https://lux.org.uk/writing/dwoskin-project-blog-20-dwoskins-drives> [Accessed 15th June 2021].
