Preserving ‘Myself’: The Contextualization and Reproduction The Ida Gorbaty Album at the McCord Stewart Museum

<p dir="ltr">Preserving “Myself”: the Contextualization and Reproduction of the Ida Gorbaty Album at the McCord Stewart Museum, Sara Fleiszig, Masters of Arts, 2023, Film and Photography Preservation, and Collections Management, Toronto Metropolitan University. </p><p dir="ltr">The Ida Gorbaty “Myself” album held at the McCord Stewart Museum, is a scrapbook-style photographic album that contains 75 gelatin silver prints, representing Jewish life in Montreal during 1946. The album was created by Ida Gorbaty when she was 14 years old. </p><p dir="ltr">The purpose of housing photographic albums is to protect the photographic images encased inside, yet this housing can also facilitate an act of contextualization and accessibility. What would happen if the housing structure of an album hindered the object's original function? Since photographic albums are increasingly popular in institutions, archives, and collections as research tools, it is crucial to determine how the housing of the album can protect the photographic imagery inside, while also permitting interpretation of the object. This thesis focuses on the stabilization and contextualization of the Ida Gorbaty ‘Myself’ photographic album. Digitization and reproduction creation are recommended to achieve the goals of preserving the original objects, physicality, and simulating the album's visual and oral experience.</p>