Nadège Desmedt at the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (AOA), British Museum

In the summer of 2018, Nadège Desmedt's CHIP placement took place at the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (AOA), British Museum. 

“Working with a collection of photographs made by anthropologist Dorota Starzecka during her tour of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands (Oceania) in 1976 was a major part of my placement with AOA. The task of organizing and ordering her collection so that it can be included on the museum database is part of the new recognition being given to pictorial material by the British Museum. This close encounter with primary sources and ethnographic material was an excellent opportunity for me to study the changing relation the museum has to its photographic collection; and the changing status and role of photographs in the institution and how they are used in relation to the audience. Pictorial collections are particularly interesting in my view because they seem to constitute a new challenge, but also open up a fresh path in both Museum Studies and Anthropology. Photographs raise questions both about the curatorial role the anthropologist and photographer can take, and about the power the museum has over the status of its collections through the narratives it develops and confers upon them.

Digitalization of photographic collections holds both risks (in terms of accuracy) and possibilities for cross-cultural and inter-cultural communication as archives can be and are re-appropriated by different stakeholders. I am curious to know whether and how digitalization of the AOA Starzecka photographic collection will affect communities the communities she visited in Oceania. 

Participating practically in the daily life of AOA allowed me to discover and investigate a very new perspective on what until then had been theoretical knowledge from the literature.”