Archives bear witness and deepen our understanding of visual history. Protecting them is vital.
Photographers often face a similar dilemma: how to preserve their archives from physical destruction or loss over time due to technological advances and limited resources. This challenge is one faced by contributing photographer to The VII Foundation, Christopher Morris, as he navigates the logistics and legacy associated with his own extensive archive.
In this event, we speak with Christopher alongside Kira Pollack, former Director of Photography at TIME and Creative Director at Vanity Fair. They discuss their collaborative approach, exploring new technologies to preserve these vital archives and the visual histories they contain. This is at the core of Pollack’s research, highlighted in her Washington Post article, ‘Photos are Disappearing, One Archive at a Time. As a 2025 Walter Shorenstein Media & Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Kira examines how AI-driven tools can deepen our understanding of visual history, support authorship and legacy, and provide new solutions for image analysis and discovery.
