Abstract

In this chapter, I will take up the question of media archaeology as a mode of collecting, and the collection as a media archaeological object. I will ask whether media archaeology, in its materialist attitude, emancipates the object, as Ernst and Benjamin suggest, or whether it verges towards a mere connoisseurship in its fetishisation of outmoded processes and technologies. I will do this by examining the case of the recently rediscovered Chicago street photographer, Vivian Maier. I will interrogate the media archaelogical habits of Maier (a hoarder of newspapers as well as film, and many other objects), as well as those of the guardian of the largest part of her archive, John Maloof, whose own media archaeological passions are much in evidence in his film Finding Vivian Maier (2013).

Keywords: Collecting, Walter Benjamin, Vivian Maier, Hoarders

‘I never counted actually. I don't have a full catalogue, but it's a few, some thousands of items. I think the sad part would be, you know, one day to have to sell it all in an auction because that would mean that all these pieces would travel in different ways and you would lose track of many of them. If you let these things pass by, there's a risk that they disappear from the history, if they are unique documents and things that tell this part of the story. So that's why I’ve been trying my best to […] store these things and store them properly.’ Erkki Huhtamo, 2013

‘the person who collects is taking up the struggle against dispersion’

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 1999, p.211