Len Chatwin’s (1913-2000) Flowers. F264-S1-f20-27.

By Georgia Twiss, Reference Historian

The third week of November marks Archives Awareness Week in British Columbia. The week is meant to raise public awareness for archives and archival records in communities across the province. This year’s theme is “Driving Diversity” which asks us to participate in activities that support diversity in our organizations to foster a vibrant, responsive, and engaged archival community.

In July of this year, an exhibit of mountain flower photography by Len Chatwin was mounted in the MONOVA Community Space. The set of nine flower photos illustrate Chatwin’s keen fascination with the flora and fauna of Western Canada, something that was shared by many of his fellow British Columbia Mountaineering Club and Alpine Club of Canada members. These images are striking in their artistic style, while also serving as documentation for different types of alpine flowers growing across the region in the mid-20th century. However, while we as archivists are trained in how to protect and preserve these images, we are not botanists, and therefore struggled to identify what flowers were the subjects of the photographs. 

In archival practice when something cannot be described, “unidentified” becomes the placeholder. Therefore, the description for each of these photographs prior to the exhibit was simply “unidentified flower”. The use of “unidentified”, while practical, precludes specificity and takes away from potentially important context and content of the image. For example, if we know the name of the specific flower, then perhaps we can figure out where the photo was taken or what time of year it was taken. Perhaps that flower has been threatened by climate change and no longer grows in the same place the original photograph was taken, or perhaps it is not a native flower to Western Canada. 

Community feedback supporting identification of the flowers within each photograph.

To properly name these flowers, MONOVA Archives staff came up with the idea to ask for help from our community. By showcasing the images in the MONOVA Community Space, in tandem with the Found in the Mountains exhibit, we hoped to draw upon the knowledge of the diverse group of people who come through the museum doors everyday: gardeners, mountaineers, scientists, outdoors people, and even…maybe a botanist? We asked these people to help identify the flowers in the photos (in English and other languages), to tell us where they might grow, what colour they might be, and if they have any special uses. In just a few weeks, we received identification for all nine flowers shown! The project, though small in size and scope, serves as an important reminder for archives like ours to draw upon the diverse knowledge of our communities  in order to provide authentic and fully realized histories for people to access.

To learn more about the Chatwin family fonds, you can read our post about the collection from last year’s Archives Awareness Week.

Photographs from the Len Chatwin Collection