A comprehensive archive documenting the professional photographic career of Philip Bergerson. Predominantly, the career-long project that lead to the publications "Shards of America" and "American Artifacts".
In 1989, Bergerson was inspired to seek out public spaces or things offering "a personal expression of someone's life experience" in Canada. Expanding the project to include the United States, he spent the next 20 years crisscrossing and exploring much of rural and urban North America. Bergerson's approach aims to "merge the roles of documentary photographer and cultural commentator". Frequently devoid of people, the project series captures a range of urban and rural streetscapes, particularly derelict and/or ironic store window displays, signage, abandoned spaces, and graffiti. In an interview with TIME magazine regarding Shards of America, Bergerson stated that he felt like the "collector of shards" and that he "aim[ed] to bring those shards together to create a vessel that holds the totality of what [he] is perceiving" as a representation of America. Including themes of family, social, religious, and community values, as well as consumerism, censorship, simmering violence, perseverance, patriotism, and recurring fantasies of the idyllic home and a gentler past.
The negatives and contact sheets have been numbered by Philip Bergerson. The numbers correlate between the film and contacts and increase chronologically. The contact sheets are preceded by notes detailing information for the frames that follow. The only exceptions to the arrangement are those projects shot prior to Bergerson developing his arrangement strategy. Those negatives impacted were photographed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Bergerson assigned then "XP" numbers retroactively. The grid negatives are oversized, arranged by grid title rather than a number, with ordered negative strips, and do not have corresponding contact sheets aside from the final grid.
