Neighborhood bars used to leave a hallowed space for a bulletin board crammed with photographs of wild-eyed, smiling patrons. The pictures were fuzzy, out of focus, and full of red eyes-probably taken by someone fuzzy, out of focus, and red-eyed-but charming nonetheless, intriguing to me in a way that had nothing to do with my connection to the bar or the people. The purpose of the bulletin boards was to commemorate some event in the ongoing life of the bar, as any community, from a family to a sports team to an entire city, might do. Oddly enough, within the short history of photography, this particular tradition seems to be disappearing. Perhaps the loss of such a community tradition reflects our dispersion, which has become the hallmark of urbanity.

As we disperse, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood or city to city after jobs and relationships, documenting our lives becomes crucial to the survival of our memories. Most of us come out of a history of picture-taking families, as all the shoeboxes full of old photos in drawers can attest. Well, someone wants to get his hands on those photographs. His name is Paul Druecke, a Milwaukee artist whose curious idea for a project has turned into a project with a life of its own, much larger than himself, brimming with infinite possibilities.

The project is called A Social Event Archive, which aptly describes its purpose. The Archive collects photographs of social occasions submitted by anyone who cares to. There are no visible restrictions: the photos can be from anyone, anywhere, picturing anything; any take on what a social occasion is and what it means.

Seeing the collected photos is underwhelming in a glorious way. All the individual pictures, taken with specific intent and a probable familiarity between the taker and takees, begin to blend into each other in a great panorama of the minutest facets of human history. Yet they also illustrate our differences, our aloneness, the sheer numbers of us. One event that perhaps meant the world to one person might mean nothing to you or I, or at least look like just another situation we've seen a million times.

For most respondents, submitting a photograph is a bit like that modern message-in-bottle: writing a personal message on a dollar bill and sending it out into the world to meet its fate. What could a sender hope for as a result of such an act-that ultimately the gesture will come back in some way? That some connection will be made across the sea of humanity, whether each end of the communication ever knows each other?

Submitting a photograph is itself a curious act, both ego-driven and egoless. A photograph is, at its most basic, a means of stating one's existence for others to see; it is an epitaph of a sort, not dissimilar to the idea that taking a picture of someone is akin to stealing their soul. Yet to submit to the Archive throws the fact of our existence into a giant vat, the soupy admixture of all the events of all the other people, potentially everyone in the present, future, and whomever in the past had their picture taken. Yes, throw the little bit of our soul into the soup and we might feel like we do standing outside on a starry night, wondering at the billions and billions of potential existences out there, and at the minuteness of our own.

Vice President Al Gore had an idea that, though brilliant, will do nothing to get him elected president in 2000. He proposed a satellite that would hover above the earth, beaming a constant live picture of our blue-green planet back to us. Such a picture would help us realize our unity, and the preciousness of our existence amidst the black void of space. In an important way, and though grounded on a human scale, Druecke's project isn't much different from Gore's satellite. By bringing together the small tokens of our lives, Druecke helps us appreciate a balance between our personal space and our existence as social creatures, from the scale of the immediate to the the girth of all humanity.

While Al Gore's satellite would show us a picture of our entirety all at once, A Social Event Archive can potentially do the same, and with a democratic flourish that we can more easily relate to. Besides, if Gore wants to get elected, he will still have to get out there and "press the flesh" as they say, meeting the people one-to-one, attending countless community barbeques, roasts, and toasts out there amidst the constellation of this most social of animals.

Nicholas Frank -1998
Director, Hermetic Gallery
Essay from the Exhibition Brochure
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and the Milwaukee Enterprise Center