A Journey Into My Archive - Episode 1
Christopher Morris
I’ve been in the business of photography for forty years, and during that time most of my work - before I switched to digital in 2003 - has been stored in an analog archive.
Now I have twenty filing cabinets and thirty storage containers filled with past work, much of which I haven’t even seen. Having been in the field all this time I haven’t had time to take stock. One of the few good consequences of the pandemic year has been that I could turn my attention to my archive and start to explore what is in my office.
Howard Chapnick gave me a job at Black Star Photo Agency in 1981, and I was with them until becoming one of the founding members of VII Agency in 2001. A lot of the work in my cabinets was developed and edited by people at Black Star after I shipped the film and after Time Magazine, where I’ve been a contract photographer since 1990, made their selection. I’m poking around these “A selects” because I’m thinking about doing a book on my conflict photography. While much of that work is known there is also a lot of undiscovered material. However, those A selects don’t include the transparencies in the storage containers that have only ever been previously seen by whoever developed the film. I have not edited any of that material until now, and I’m interested to see what is those boxes.
In this series of weekly videos I am going to take you with me on a journey into my archive - to see what I have, and, as I scan a selection, tell you about how the work was made and give you some of the stories behind the images.
Let’s start with this first look at my office and how I am doing the scanning.
Christopher Morris was born in California in 1958 and began his career as a documentary conflict photographer working almost exclusively for TIME Magazine, where he has been on contract since 1990. He has been credited with redefining political coverage in America during his years working at the White House for TIME Magazine from 2000 to 2009. While working as a photojournalist, Morris expanded his work into the fashion world. Morris is a founding member of VII Photo.
This video series is made possible by support from Fujifilm, our partner PhotoWings, and The VII Foundation.
More episodes:
A Journey Into My Archive - Episode 2
A Journey Into My Archive - Episode 3
A Journey Into My Archive - Episode 4