(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
Accessing visual resources online is a mediated experience shaped by search engine and image sharing algorithms, or via the individual agendas of closed, curated collections. Using my own Plotlands Archive as a case study, this paper outlines an alternative strategy for creating a user-generated, searchable online image archive. Without the clandestine algorithms of popular image hosting and sharing environments, the free and open-source Piwigo is an accessible and code-free way to create a visual archive. The Plotlands Archive website presents a searchable database of photographs of unconventional houses and chalets and their vernacular construction methods originally built during the interwar period and those which have since been adapted and modified. The archive is a celebration of resourcefulness, recording unique materials and designs largely unseen within urban housing developments. The database provides searchable keyword access to houses by location, material and construction type – each returning a unique, screen-based typology.
Tim Daly teaches at the University of Chester and has a research interest in the ‘thingness’ of photography and the materiality of the photographic print. His artist’s books explore touch and disruptive sequencing using unconventional formats such as the dossier, envelope, folio or archive box. Daly’s projects present alternative social histories using observational photography and visual humour. Since 1990, Daly has worked on a cluster of long-term architectural themes of social housing, the Plotland movement, former asylum complexes and do-it-yourself culture especially renovation and modification. Tim has exhibited his work widely, including at The Photographers’ Gallery, London and at the NGBK in Berlin and in 2017, Tim established Fugitive Press.