Thesis (M.A.)--University of Rochester and George Eastman Museum, Photographic Preservation and Collections Management, 2020.
In 2015, the George Eastman Museum (GEM) acquired the records of the Mother Jones
International Fund for Documentary Photography (MJIFDP), a project dedicated to
funding long-term documentary projects from around the world, along with records
created by the FiftyCrows Foundation (FCF). Originally a project of Mother Jones
magazine, MJIFDP management shifted to the Fifty Crows Foundation until 2012, when
operations ceased. While the MJIFDP’s photographs were transferred to GEM’s
Department of Photography, the slides, promotional materials, and administrative files
remained unprocessed in the museum’s archive. For this Master’s project I processed
these records, created a finding aid to facilitate access, and wrote a critical analysis of the
fund’s impact on, and placement within, a history of documentary photography and
technological innovation in the field. The archive offers insight into significant millennial
shifts in applications of, and attitudes about, photojournalism. From analog to digital
practice, print to online publications, and notions about who gets to photograph and
where, the materials reveal an important era of documentary photography