Through a comparison of the literature produced by general archival theorists with that published by photographic archivists, it becomes clear that archival principles are not routinely applied to records in photographic form. Since reflecting knowledge about records creators and circumstances of creation is a basic archival responsibility, this thesis will begin with a discussion of a variety of past and present purposes of photographers in general. The ways in which both purposes and methods can influence photographic information will also be studied. The obligation of photographic archivists to examine records and creators in terms of administrative (including legal), scholarly and other user values will then be examined. The thesis will conclude with a survey of the literature produced by North American photographic archivists to determine whether their responsibilities are fully recognized. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Until recent years, archivists have been reluctant to consider photographs as being archival in nature. The evidential value possessed by some photographs was ignored and archivists also failed to see where the informational value of a photographic image could be enhanced when viewed within the context in which it was created. Instead, archivists preferred to arrange and describe photographs as discrete items. For assistance in this endeavor, archivists turned to members of the library profession. Librarians, for their part, found that photographs were not amenable to standard bibliographic formats or classification schemes devised for printed monographs. The result was the creation by members of both the library and archival professions of numerous and often idiosyncratic methods for the physical and intellectual control of photographs. The volume of photographic images acquired by libraries and archival repositories now makes it virtually impossible to continue dealing with photographs as discrete items. The research needs and methodologies of users have also changed; photographs are increasingly being sought as historical documents in their own right and not just as illustrations to accompany the written word. In response to these two factors, librarians began organizing and describing photographs as "lots" and archivists moved slowly toward the arrangement and description of photographs as archival fonds. This evolution, far from complete with regard to photographs, resembles an earlier evolution affecting the arrangement and description of textual archives, particularly manuscripts. Today archivists in many Western countries are seeking to establish standard formats in the description of archival materials. This goal has become particularly urgent in the face of computer technology and the desire to form automated archival networks. It remains to be seen whether the final standards adopted in Canada, for instance, will encompass photographs or whether photographs will retain a "special" status. Without question, photographs have and will continue to present members of the library and archival professions with problems In arrangement and description. This is demonstrated in the body of this thesis through a survey of the professional literature and through field work undertaken in six libraries and archival repositories in the Vancouver area and in Victoria, British Columbia. However, the existence of problems should not mean that the approach to photographic archives should be any different, in essence, from the approach and principles applied to textual archives. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

If one can come out as queer, how does one come out as queer in the Chinese context? More importantly, how exactly does one come out as “Chinese,” especially given the increasingly complex construction and remaking of “Chineseness” across the Taiwan Strait? Building on Hongwei Bao’s concept of the “queer comrade” as an analytical framework that acknowledges the temporal coevality of its circulation across postsocialist China and Taiwan, this comparative study of Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace and Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman explores archives of Chineseness and queerness in a transnational context. At the same time, through examining representations of cruising, traditional opera form, tables, kitchens, and food -- I argue that queer identities are not only about private sexual practices, but also about new family formations, political tensions, and intercultural exchanges. I take cues from archival studies to see them as alternative archival practices and subjectivities which channel new pathways to reimagine Queer Sinophone futurities. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The web has evolved to be the primary carrier of human knowledge during the information age. The ephemeral nature of much web content makes web knowledge preservation vital in preserving human knowledge and memories. Web archives are created to preserve the current web and make it available for future reuse. A growing number of web archive initia- tives are actively engaging in web archiving activities. Web archiving standards like WARC, for formatted storage, have been established to standardize the preservation of web archive data. In addition to its preservation purpose, web archive data is also used as a source for research and for lost information recovery. However, the reuse of web archive data is inherently challenging because of the scale of data size and requirements of big data tools to serve and analyze web archive data efficiently. In this research, we propose to build web archive infrastructure that can support efficient and scalable web archive reuse with big data formats like Parquet, enabling more efficient quantitative data analysis and browsing services. Upon the Hadoop big data processing platform with components like Apache Spark and HBase, we propose to replace the WARC (web archive) data format with a columnar data format Parquet to facilitate more efficient reuse. Such a columnar data format can provide the same features as WARC for long-term preservation. In addition, the columnar data format introduces the potential for better com- putational efficiency and data reuse flexibility. The experiments show that this proposed design can significantly improve quantitative data analysis tasks for common web archive data usage. This design can also serve web archive data for a web browsing service. Unlike the conventional web hosting design for large data, this design primarily works on top of the raw large data in file systems to provide a hybrid environment around web archive reuse. In addition to the standard web archive data, we also integrate Twitter data into our design as part of web archive resources. Twitter is a prominent source of data for researchers in a vari- ety of fields and an integral element of the web's history. However, Twitter data is typically collected through non-standardized tools for different collections. We aggregate the Twitter data from different sources and integrate it into the suggested design for reuse. We are able to greatly increase the processing performance of workloads around social media data by overcoming the data loading bottleneck with a web-archive-like Parquet data format. / Doctor of Philosophy / The web has evolved to be the primary carrier of human knowledge during the information age. The ephemeral nature of much web content makes web knowledge preservation vital in preserving human knowledge and memories. Web archives are created to preserve the current web and make it available for future reuse. In addition to its preservation purpose, web archive data is also used as a source for research and for lost information discovery. However, the reuse of web archive data is inherently challenging because of the scale of data size and requirements of big data tools to serve and analyze web archive data efficiently. In this research, we propose to build a web archive big data processing infrastructure that can support efficient and scalable web archive reuse like quantitative data analysis and browsing services. We adopt industry frameworks and tools to establish a platform that can provide high-performance computation for web archive initiatives and users. We propose to convert the standard web archive data file format to a columnar data format for efficient future reuse. Our experiments show that our proposed design can significantly improve quantitative data analysis tasks for common web archive data usage. Our design can also serve an efficient web browsing service without adopting a sophisticated web hosting architecture. In addition to the standard web archive data, we also integrate Twitter data into our design as a unique web archive resource. Twitter is a prominent source of data for researchers in a variety of fields and an integral element of the web's history. We aggregate the Twitter data from different sources and integrate it into the suggested design for reuse. We are able to greatly increase the processing performance of workloads around social media data by overcoming the data loading bottleneck with a web-archive-like Parquet data format.

Between the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of Film and Photography design thesis explores issues of architecture at a scale of cultural significance. This thesis is the architectural manifestation of a museum as a research institution, separate from, yet contributing to an educational mission. It is inspired by the thin line between the two worlds, the public museum and the unseen, though often larger, private archive. In this thesis, a home for a treasury of artifacts was designed, so that they might be experienced, and for their intrinsic value. This design thesis explores the role of context, scale, and geometry in a building for the National Mall, as well as the critical requirements and specialized program of a museum. The orthogonal and radial geometry of the city are echoed in the plan. The building program, as well as the physical opportunities of the site, led to the form of the building. The simultaneous cycles of the artifact, the visitor, and the worker, and how they related to the role and amount of natural light also contributed to the form. The thesis is also developed based on the relationship between an object or a film, and a viewer. / Master of Architecture

Many scholars today are incorporating Indigenous perspectives into their work. Historians, however, are lagging behind through their heavy reliance on colonial archives to present the histories of Indigenous peoples. Most have ignored Indigenous peoples' own histories of colonialism. Using British Columbia as a case-study, this thesis argues for the inclusion and validation of a range of Indigenous historical expressions within the BC historical archive. Its larger goal is to encourage the deconstruction of professional historical practice and, at a broader level, encourage a more flexible definition of history. / Graduate

Ce document constitue l'aboutissement d'une recherche effectuée en cotutelle avec l'Université d'Udine et l'Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, dans le cadre des respectives écoles doctorales des Études Audiovisuelles et des Arts du Spectacle. Le point central de cette recherche repose sur la création et l'analyse des archives Yves Kovacs, constituées au sein de la Cinémathèque française, avec une attention particulière sur l'activité de critique et cinéphile, entre les années Cinquante et Soixante, de celui qui est responsable de cette collection. A travers ces archives, nous avons cherché à approfondir la question de l'auteur, qui structure la réflexion d'une certaine partie de la critique française des années Cinquante, période de formation cinéphile pour Kovacs. Cette thèse se présente donc comme l'aboutissement, d'une part, d'un travail d'archivage au sens strict (traitement physique et intellectuel d'un fonds, du recensement jusqu'à la mise à disposition) et, d'autre part, d'une étude sur Yves Kovacs à l'époque de sa jeunesse cinéphile, partagée entre la critique spécialisée et les premières collaborations sur les plateaux de cinéma et de télévision. De cette façon, l'analyse d'un fonds d'archives se déplace au niveau du contexte d'origine, de l'étude de celui qui l'a constitué et enfin des raisons même qui nous ont emmené à nous y intéresser. Tout cela suivant l'idée selon laquelle un fonds d'archives n'est pas seulement le lieu où trouver des documents et des information, mais représente aussi, par son existence même, un symptôme de différentes pratiques, idées et besoins d'une époque. / This document consists of the culmination of research carried out under the co-supervision of the University of Udine and the University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, in accordance with the respective doctoral schools of Audiovisual Studies. The focal point of this research lays in the creation and analysis of the archives of Yves Kovacs. These developed at the Cinémathèque française, paying particular attention to the critique and cinéphilie between the fifties and the sixties and of the individual responsible for this collection. Through theses archives, we have sought to deepen the question of the auteur, which structures the thinking process of a certain part of the French critique of the fifties, this being a cinéphile formation phase for Kovacs. This thesis presents itself as the culmination, on one side, of an archiving effort in the strict sense of the word (physical and intellectual handling of the archive, from the inventory to the disposition of the archive), and on the other side, a study about Yves Kovacs at the time of his cinéphile youth, shared between the specialized critique and the first collaborations on film and TV sets. In this way, the analysis of an archive moves to the level of the context of the origin, of the study of the man that constituted it and ultimately, for the same reasons that lead us to be interested in it. All of this in line with the idea that an archive is not only the place to find documents and information, but also a representation, in its very existence, a manifestation of different practices, ideas and needs of an era.

abstract: This thesis explores the ways two contemporary artists engage the archive to challenge ideas calcified through visual culture. Steven Yazzie and Lorna Simpson respond to constructions of history through art making strategies and practices. Yazzie's photogravure Tsosido Sweep Dancer (2009) presents a carefully constructed image of a ceremony drawing on symbols of Indianness to provoke a critical dialogue that questions the role of the American Indian stereotype in the United States imaginary. Simpson's Counting (1991) is a multilayered work that juxtaposes text and image to address the capriciousness of memory, power and other issues found at the intersection of race and gender. These photography-based works draw on the histories of ethnographic and criminal photography to deconstruct the same knowledge that photography helped to construct. Throughout the thesis I examine the relationship of the photographic archive to colonial histories by considering whose history is represented through photography. These thoughtful and challenging artworks contribute to a growing body of work that proposes new narratives drawing on embodied knowledge and experience to create a counter-archive. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2011

Étude de la notion documentaire et artistique dans l’oeuvre des Becher. Évolution de leurs élèves, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer vers une photographie picturale et abstraite. Influence de la peinture, liée à l’enseignement de Gerhard Richter. La photo comme source d’information pour créer des images picturales chez Ruff et Richter. Utilisation du travail numérique pour s’orienter vers desimages picturales et abstraites chez Ruff et Gursky. Dimension sociologique du rapport photographie/peinture dans l’oeuvre de Thomas Struth, travail sur notre façon d’être dans le monde. Entre documentation et abstraction également, le travail de Candida Höfer sur l’espace vital, sur la structure de l’objet, évolution vers le détail, l’abstraction. Abstraction, experimentation, tendance de l’archive, axes essentiels en photographie / Study of documentary and artistic notion in the work of the Becher. Evolution of of their students, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Strth, Candida Höfer towards a picturial and abstract photography. Pictorial influence, linked with Gerhard Richter’s teaching. Photography as source of information to create pictorial pictures by Ruff and Richter. Use of digital work by Ruff and Gursky to go towards picturealand abstract pictures. Sociological aspect in the link photography/painting in Struth’s work, on our way to exist in the world. Between documentation and abstraction too, the photographic work of Candida Höfer on vital space. Evolution on the structure of the object, on the detail, towards abstraction. Abstraction, experimentation, archival tendance, essential directions in photography

On a qualifié de « migration des images » le déplacement des images en mouvement depuis les salles de projection jusque dans les salles des musées. Cette « migration » a d’abord constitué le socle initial de ce travail, en fixant les pourtours de son contexte : les images en mouvement, le musée et ses collections, leur dialogue depuis le milieu des années 1990. Délaissant ce sens premier de l’expression, cette étude met au travail son sens figuré : l’idée de migration convie une économie, un système d’échanges, de circulation, un type d’activité propre aux images en mouvement qui élargit ce contexte de départ. La force de ces images se loge dans un geste de décentrement. Leur mobilité les empêche d’accéder à un statut ou à une position dominante. Une résistance à la saisie globale accompagne ces images qui préfèrent les interstices, l’entre-deux, les failles, voire une certaine forme de clandestinité : elles échappent aux normes. Le décentrement qualifiera ici une méthode d’analyse, le choix d’un corpus qui va des années 1970 à nos jours, et la construction générale de cette recherche. Il permet de mesurer des distances, de saisir les sinuosités, les accidents, qui ponctuent l’histoire des images en mouvement. Point de départ : ce travail s’arrime au décentrement historique constitué par la rupture d’avec le discours moderniste dans les années 1970. Les œuvres contemporaines réunies héritent de cette éviction et la discutent. Les trois chapitres, thématiques, commentent ce décentrement qui bouscule les principes muséaux incarnés par l’institution du white cube. L’archive, le document et le jeu : trois façons de contourner les réflexes de l’essentialisme. Fondé sur des études d’œuvres, qui sont autant d’études de cas, accueillant sur un plan qui se veut tabulaire les images, les textes et les films, ce travail rend compte du savoir, étoilé et ramifié, que dispensent, de façon si singulière, les images en mouvement. / The dislocation of images in motion from screening rooms to museum rooms has been addressed in terms of a « migration of images ». This « migration » was the initial foundation of the present work, determining its perimeter: images in motion, the museum and its collections, the dialogue between them from the mid-1990s onwards. Leaving behind the literal meaning of the expression, this study explores its fi gurative senses: the notion of « migration » calls for an economy, a system of exchange and circulation, an activity specific to images in motion that broadens its initial context. The power of images in motion relies upon a gesture of decentering. Th eir mobility prevents them from reaching a dominant position or attaining an important status. Th ese images resist to global analysis, preferring the interstices, the in-between, the faults, and what resembles to a form of underground activity instead. In other words, they resist the standards. Th e notion of « decentering » describes here three different dimensions: an analytical method, the constitution of a corpus ranging from the 1970s to the present-day, and the general conception of this research. Th e concept allows for the measuring of distances, the grasping of certain infl exions, or accidents, which rhythm the history of images in motion. Our starting point is the historical « decentering » illustrated by the break with modernist discourse in the 1970s. Th e contemporary works that we discuss inherit this eviction and comment on it. Our three thematic chapters comment this shift that challenges the museological principles embodied by the whitecube. Th e archive, the document and staging : three ways of circumventing the refl exes of essentialism. Based upon the close study of works, conceived as case-studies, accommodating for images, texts and films within a tabular plan, this work accounts for the singular knowledge provided by images in motion.