One Photo At A Time

Personal archiving can seem like an overwhelming feat. Faced with mountains of photos and memories, how do you organize and make sense of it all? As co-stewards of healthy, thriving communities we have a responsibility to document and preserve the past as foundation for building bright, strong futures.

We worked with archivist and historian Sierra King of Build Your Archive to host One Photo At A Time: a community memory work lab that begins with the first steps of photo documentation and teaches the basics and principles of organizing and archiving photos and artifacts.

What is memory work?

It’s the process of engaging with the past from both a historical and ethical standpoint. Memory work is holding both seen and unseen — the context and the subtext.

It’s listening to an elder talk about the community’s past. Your grandmother’s collection of old obituaries and the family history each holds. Your cousin’s collection of reunion t-shirts that fill in the blanks of gatherings you weren’t present for. Memory work is the practice of remembering.