Re:Archive
Students from the Bachelor's Programme in Photography have explored the relationship between archives and photography by interpreting and renegotiating historical narratives in collaboration with the Swedish National Archive in Gothenburg and GPS400. The exhibition at the Humanities University Library presents works that highlight the possibilities and limitations of archives through photographic methods.
Students from the Bachelor’s Programme in Photography at HDK-Valand, in collaboration with the Swedish National Archive in Gothenburg and GPS400: Centre for Collaborative Visual Research, have explored how archives can be understood through photography. Using specific archival material—recently digitized and preserved by the National Archives and GPS400—they have questioned, interpreted, and renegotiated the narratives contained within the archives.
The exhibition presents works that move between documentary and conceptual approaches, where students use photographic methods to reveal the possibilities and limitations of archives. How does photography influence the archive’s function as a custodian of history? How can photography both uncover and obscure stories? What structures determine what is preserved and what is forgotten?
By working with material from the National Archives, the students have created new visual narratives in which photography becomes an active agent within the ecology of the archive. The result is a reflection on how history is written and which perspectives are brought to the forefront.
The works are exhibited in the gallery space at the Humanities University Library.
