L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L JJ4JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L Visiting an archive is a great way to engage with research carried out by other photographers. Personal archives belonging to photographers, collectors, writers or curators, tend to be private with access restricted to specialist researchers. Museum archives tend to be more available to public scrutiny, usually through special exhibitions. Access to museum archives outside of exhibitions is usually by appointment only, but you do not always have to justify entry with a bona fide research proposal. For example, students and researchers alike are able to make appointments to look at prints in London's Victoria and Albert Museum photographic print archive ­ it is a truly fascinating experience to spend time in such a place. Personal archives The photographer's archive, appropriately stored, provides a lifelong source of references and potential material for interpretation, evaluation and understanding. The photographer who meticulously creates such a resource is not only creating a rich mine of information for themselves, they are also building a library of information for other researchers, curators and writers interested in their work and the particular period in which they made it. Such archives can be valuable even after as little as five or ten years from their inception. Studying the thinking, inspiration and development process behind a particular photographer's work affects our understanding of how and why their projects or series have been made. 150 Photographers' archives