of family albums and crowd sourced identitiies

I first started collecting photographs  more than 35 years ago. Most of my 'collection' is  photographs from family albums. Albums that were discarded - sold, in fact to the  'kabaria' . They were photographs of people without names or names long forgotten. The idea of a neat and ordered  family archive just did not seem to be part of the 'tradition' in this part of the world'.

But then, neither was the idea of  museums as preservers of the past. Past that is used in the present for  culturally controlling the future.

There is a big debate waiting to happen here. A debate about preservation  and the politics behind it.

In a culture that sees the  pyre as the  purifier of the body -from carbon to carbon,  and thinks of  rebirth  as  a necessary recycling of the eternal soul, the idea of preserving the past so carefully is alien, to say the least.

Is it better to let go of the past ? Cool it , in fact.

" Thanda karna' is in fact, a ritual for so much of our holy objects. Idols were not preserved in museums. They were 'cooled off' in water immersion ceremonies. New ones were created again and again . Rebirth was the norm. It kept alive  so much that is now 'preserved' in mortuary like museums.

  The dead past now tells tales that are forming the basis of so many identity wars.

To let go . To cool off. To allow for  rebirth   To  be reborn  without the cultural  burden of  the past.  The past that is being so politicised that  it is becoming dangerous to  our very existence.

 Forget about memories of it. Foget about the preserving and archiving of it.



I remember as a teenager being filled with an aching envy at seeing my white friends' family albums: photographs of grandparents' wedding days, grandfathers in military uniforms, scenes of parents as small children. My friends took these things for granted but I was acutely aware of the impact of not having such images. I did not, at the time, recognise the irony of my predicament. I was born in Pakistan, a country only 24 years older than I was: Indians had 5,000 years of history to draw on, Pakistanis had fewer than five decades. We, the children of Pakistani immigrants, were doubly adrift – torn from a country that had itself been torn from another country. Faced with the richness of my friends' histories, I was stung by my own poverty.


My dilemma is not unique – it is the typical experience of many second-generation British Asians – and it is a problem that a recently launched website called whosthedaadi.com is hoping to address. The idea behind it is that British Asian families can learn more about their ancestors through crowd-sourced information: people are encouraged to upload old family photographs complete with any details to help build family trees. It is a great idea and I hope it is successful.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/oct/06/sarfraz-manzoor-empty-family-album

                                       Modernity and the making of ME ME ME ME