The concepts of zeitgeist and nostalgia are the most motivating aspects

An interview with Kata Martincsák, project leader of the Jelenarchívum (Archive of the Present), by eidolon journal.

Jelenarchívum was launched as part of the MaDok programme at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. What institutional motivations led the museum to initiate a project that brings together analogue and digital vernacular photographs in a digital space, as a continuation of Fortepan?

- One of the most important relationships of the Museum of Ethnography with vernacular photography is the ethnographic, anthropological interest, and within this, fieldwork is given a special role. If you look at the museum's collection of photographs, you will find a lot of everyday photographs related to fieldwork. In many cases, the kind of fieldwork that the MaDok programme conducts can be complemented by everyday photography, and a social museum like the Ethnographic Museum can really benefit from that. The MaDok programme focuses on the preservation of contemporary artefacts and the museum documentation of the present. Obviously, when you go out into the field as a museologist and interview people or take photographs, you are engaging in an ethnographic approach. We have a number of exhibitions that include everyday photographs or highlight the narrative storytelling of the owners of these photographs in some aspect, including our permanent exhibition that opened last year. The Museum of Ethnography saw an opportunity in this: this archive will be a research base for ethnographers as well as for those who want to do ethnography, visual culture, or other archive-related research as PhD students during their university studies. The current archive is obviously not exclusively for the academic community, so if artists or visitors active in other fields wish to use it, they will be able to do so with the permission of the institution. We are working on thematic campaigns, and it will take several years to see where the current archive is going.

Read the full interview on eidolon journal