Paper Short Abstract:

The paper examines the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary and multimodal research, using the example of a project investigating curatorial strategies towards vernacular photography held in public museum collections.

Paper Abstract:

The paper examines the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary and multimodal research, using the example of a project investigating curatorial strategies towards vernacular photography held in public museum collections, understanding curatorial practices broadly - not only in the context of exhibition development but also in terms of curating a collection and the overall museum program.

The author conducts research on vernacular photography, departing from the examination of the image itself and instead analyzing the ways it is exhibited, the places of its collection, the narratives of those describing and cataloging it, and the methods of its valuation in professional discourses. This requires combining methods developed in the fields of humanities and social studies and navigating the borders of disciplines such as art history, visual culture studies, museology, cultural studies, and anthropology. The free integration of methods and the currently promoted interdisciplinary research offer significant opportunities but also pose a range of theoretical and practical challenges.

The paper will focus on the author's experiences in methodological balancing between image and text, archive/collection and exhibition, official documents and institutional practices, as well as global discourse and local context.