Jill Kambs

Recovering the Archive is a digitally designed artist’s book that synthesizes photographic archival work with a collaboratively written text. The process of making this work began almost two years ago when I started archiving a number of items my father had collected and saved during his lifetime. Digging through piles of letters, ticket stubs, and receipts, this investigation took me back in time to my father’s life as a young man: hitchhiking from Denver to L.A., flunking out of Navy ROTC, capsizing his crew boat, falling in love with my mother. They are the kind of things that remind you that your parents had lives before you. Uncovering these things was both illuminating and perplexing. I still had more questions. Confronted with the inadequacy of these mute objects, I turned to my immediate family for answers. In an effort to puzzle and piece together the stories behind these objects, I presented each of my family members with an identical catalogue of the archive and a permanent marker. I asked each of them to individually respond in writing to the documented ephemera. What memories did they conjure? What questions did they raise? This began the process of recovering the archive though restoring our memories. The final hardbound text is an edited compilation of images and our responses. Recovering the Archive reflects our collective memory, presented with all its gaps and contradictions, doubts and imperfections. Despite the permanence of any archive, our memories are still fleeting and ever changing.

Special thanks to Heather Wetzel for her box design.