Reviewing the Department of Manpower and Immigration collection: a case study on item-level descriptions of immigrants in government archives, MRP

This MRP explores the need for item-level descriptions for a collection of twelve photographs of Yugoslavian immigrants held in the Department of Manpower and Immigration Collection, government documents section, Library and Archives Canada. Drawing on archival theory and the history of governmental photography in Canada, it argues that such descriptions help to properly contextualize the photographs as performative, visual records of immigrants and thus help situate photography’s role in Canadian immigrant history. Exploring the history of the collection to which the images belong, the MRP shows how images produced to promote successful immigrant integration into post-War Canada, can be understood as a more historically nuanced and valuable collection. Focusing on power relationships formed during accession practices within archival spaces, it also addresses the unintentional information provided by the prints and how it has been ignored during record creation to describe the departmental function of the photographs.