The Art of Scrapbooking

Feature image: Brigid Berlin, Our Guests, 1968-72 via AnOther Magazine

Scrapbooking is an art form that most are familiar with, whether it be discovering clippings your parents saved from your childhood or the viral “Junk Journal.” As such, scrapbooking is an unbound art form. There are no rules. There are no genre guidelines. One simply takes time to document memories and artifacts of daily life. 

Scrapbooking’s roots lie in the 17th-century commonplace book. These books were ways to record tidbits of knowledge and inspiration for artists, writers, and everyday people. Commonplace books were typically organized under subject headings and contained proverbs, quotes, letters, poems, prayers, and recipes. Commonplacing was a practice that was encouraged and taught to college students. It is even still encouraged by professors of literature and creative writing today. 

In the 18th century, friendship and confession albums allowed young girls for artists, writers, and everyday people to record tidbits of knowledge and inspiration. Commonplace books were typically organized under subject headings and contained proverbs, quotes, letters, poems, prayers, and recipes. Commonplace books were to share their literary knowledge and document their personal history. Women around the turn of the century used scrapbooks to construct and represent their everyday lives. These books included ephemera and memorabilia such as invitations, tickets, and small trinkets. These books were equally as functional as they were decorative. 

The invention of photography dramatically changed the landscape of scrapbooking. Before the 1860s, photographs were rarely shared and distributed. However, with the popularity of the carte de viste photograph, photo albums began to rise in popularity. 

In the 1980s, the traditional hobby of scrapbooking became a booming industry, thanks to the work of Marielen Wadley Christensen. Christensen began designing pages for her family photo albums. She assembled over 50 binders of scrapbooks, eventually publishing a how-to booklet and opening a store for scrapbook supplies. 

Although for most of history, scrapbooking was a practical way to record memories and pass time, many artists in the postwar period created, kept, and shared scrapbooks, engaging in the endless possibilities of the art form. 

German artist Isa Genzken is renowned for her assemblage works and her exploration of found objects, incorporating scrapbooking elements in her work. Her pieces combine everyday materials with unexpected juxtapositions to create a dialogue between the ephemeral and the permanent. For example, in her three-volume scrapbook, I Love New York, Crazy City, Genzken utilized various souvenirs from her NYC trip in 1995 and various photos of Midtown’s architecture, maps, hotel bills, nightclub flyers, and concert tickets. The volumes are taped together with electrical tape. In the practice of layering personal artifacts, Genzken captures New York in all of its glory. Significant to her work in this series is the relationship between public and private spaces and the contrast between artistic autonomy and collective experience. 

Audrey Amiss was a British artist whose art was discovered and recognized after she died in 2013. She was not well-known as a painter and had spent long periods of her life in psychiatric hospitals. However, her archive provides a glimpse into the life of a woman who was preoccupied with collecting and recording. 

Amiss created hundreds of sketches and paintings over her lifetime, describing her work as “a visual diary.” She documented every day of her life in scrapbooks, frequently including clippings, sketches, handwritten notes, and wrappers. She was constantly engaging with her surroundings. Amiss documented the last day of her life by doing what she did every day: pasting food packages into a scrapbook and recording the things she noticed. At the end of her life, she had filled over 1000 books. Her work reflects a scrapbooker’s dedication to preserving the ordinary with rich, painterly depth. 

In 2014, her archive was donated to the Wellcome Collection. 854 volumes of sketchbooks from the 1950s to July 2013 are archived, as well as record books, photo albums, and scrapbooks. Amiss’s legacy sparks conversations about how we make sense of the papers left behind after someone dies and the discourse surrounding the unfortunate commonality that many artists die before reaching fame. 

Brigid Berlin was the daughter of well-known socialites in New York City. She grew up surrounded by the city’s most influential people. In the 1960s, Berlin met Andy Warhol, who became one of his closest friends and an essential figure in his factory. 

Berlin was most known for documenting the scenes of Warhol’s Factory in Polaroids and scrapbooks, creating a raw and candid portrayal of her life. She experimented with many different mediums and styles to capture the chaos of the Warhol era. 

Among her scrapbooks include her “Cock Book,” which contains phallic sketches by several influential figures of the time. Richard Prince bought the 3 volume book for 175,000 dollars, including drawings from Jane Fonda, Larry Rivers, and Leonard Cohen. “Our Guests” is another fascinating volume by Berlin, used to document and record the people she met during that period of her life. 

At some point, we have all made a scrapbook. They are a vital way to keep track of memories. When looking at artists' scrapbooks, one experiences a voyeuristic and personal interaction with art, offering new ways to engage with the world. Scrapbooking, therefore, is a complex hobby. It is an essential aspect of history and art. It stands as a testament to the power of memory and the endless possibilities of the genre. 

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