The TOMIKO Archive
The TOMIKO Archive is an amateur photography collection started by visual artist Patrizia Bach in 2001. Bach finds photographs on streets and flea markets; she also receives them from a »secret deliverer.« The project’s aim is an emotional one: to save life histories that have been so carelessly thrown away. For this blog, she randomly chooses one photo per day as she takes inventor of the last delivery of photographs.
The Archive
The TOMIKO Archive contains exclusively amateur photographs that I have collected since 2001 with an inventory I established in 2006. Currently, the archive holds about 500,000 pictures, mainly from twentieth-century Germany. I collect these photographs on the streets, from flea markets, and I receive some through a »secret deliverer.« My aim in doing so comes from a very emotional instinct: to preserve life histories that are so carelessly thrown away. That’s why the convoluted thought is so important to me. There