Postal Art Collective- The Art Department.....1955 family album- First interventions

Ok, so the intervention into sketchbook as site project begins.....the sketchbook is a 1955 family photo album (date inside cover), with missing photos. the photos presented in triangular corner mounts are of everyday family activities, eg bath time, in the garden...and with such events as christmas dinner and present unwrapping, and a few odd entries such as a budgie drinking from a glass of water on the dining table, a hand holding a pile of nails, a magazine stuck in the letter box. as the images cannot be brought to life in first person and have it could be said, been de-personalised, i.e. cannot be contextualised through someone who has a connection to the album, I decided that at first i didn't want to invent stories or meanings. maybe in subsequent interventions I will, but that i wanted to start by in part parallel their removal from context in a contemporary and impersonal way through looking at opportunities in an online gallery such as flickr. so..... I started typing in what i saw in the photos and these are the before and after results.....

So here's the first 'mark/intervention in the postal sketchbook project. I moved the third photo from left of budgie drinking from here;



to what was a blank double page spread here;

and from typing in 'budgie drinking' on flickr, found the inserted image in the photo below;


I considered many ideas about how to insert/change/personalise, and whether to give any context within the intervention about where it came from, eg writing web address on the back, but decided to leave it entirely open to ideas, and apart form shrinking to fit when printing it out on an inkjet printer, no image manipulation took place. This raises an interesting dialogue I hope for the artist who receives the sketchbook. Maybe they will consider: did I the artist, take the photo, why is there such a naff caption,(BOTTOMS UP!!) how does it read in amongst the other images, eg era, technology,what we take and record photos of.



Here's the second intervention- before;



And after.....


the original idea was to bring my own practice into the work- my cat crazed MA show, as there is a cat on the front on the magazine being posted, but decided to keep this intervention purely about photography...at least for the moment....

so...as i post off this sketchbook to artist E. Brass, i am wondering what will come of the album , will the artist that receives it feel it is ok or inappropriate to physically manipulate the images, will they worry it is my personal album, will it resemble its current self at all, how will they add their mark/intervention.. if they completely destroyed or manipulated the photos how would i feel? we all have albums like these, is it really that impersonal? how does it feel intervening in what is actually a historical document.......hmmmm..... intriguing....i will receive the sketchbook back by February 25th so will post the photos of the outcome then. incidentally, it felt extremely important to document its journey through photographing it, i hope this process will give me something for my own work and i need to be able to 'let go' of the photographs in between, my moment with them as was has passed...and what will become of them will become.......... ;)

Is this the ultimate the moment of photography has passed, its' becoming something else, potentially entirely?