Shelf Life (2009 - 2010)

Initially, the idea for Shelf Life developed out of a fascination with institutional spaces. I wanted to explore knowledge by photographing places of information storage. Knowledge – what we know, and information – how we know it, are the two factors that help society progress. When we uncover new information, we can make new connections and that leads to new knowledge. As I researched related topics and began photographing, I realised that these institutions presented many contradictions to this process and these became the focus of my work.

All of the places are limited physically resulting in highly curated collections. For every book, file, or object included, thousands must be excluded. Certain spaces such as the eTalk video archive are completely inaccessible to the public. Others such as the Great Library, the Mira Godard Study Centre, and the Ontario Jewish archives are only accessible to a small part of the population. Other issues such as retrieval, organization, and availability are also inhibiting. In most cases it appears that these spaces exist for the purpose of preservation rather than to act as a resource – the original goal of such institutions.

“We need to decide whether we wish to protect books or let people read them,” writes Umberto Eco in his 1981 essay De Bibliotheca. “I’m not saying that we need to let people read them without protecting them, but neither should we protect them without letting people read them.” For the first time it is technologically possible to have universal access to all knowledge due to new media. Organizations such as the Internet Archive are working towards this by scanning, and making available for free, out of copyright books. With Shelf Life, I am not arguing against traditional knowledge media – it is always best to have original sources. However, to solve the problems of tomorrow and enable us to achieve the highest level of critical thinking, everything must be recorded and accessible to everyone. We as a society must make sure we do not artificially impose therestrictions of old media, onto the new.