Me and my scrapbooking

Entry 6 scrap-booking

Scrap-booking can be done both as labor and as work. Labor is defined by Arendt (1958, p.7) as “…the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body”, and work as “…the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence”.

There is a large scrapbooking community in New Zealand, sharing a website called “creative memories”. They see scrapbooking as labor, in the sense that they do it as business. They may also consider this work, because it is a pleasant way of spending time productively, on a spiritual level. 

Scrapbooking as labor means nothing at this certain point in my life. I am an artist. I mostly do scrapbooking as a way of expressing my creativity, and not to fulfil financial needs. The occupation of scrapbooking comes under craft. Craftspeople in the community are makers of stories that transmit their own feelings and emotions.

This brings an image of continuity to my mind, history in images of the people I love. Whenever I make a scrapbook page, I feel like I capture moments in my family’s lives that will never return, therefore scrapbooking is one way that I can hold those moments still. At the same time, I feel like these moments will be re-lived by my children and their children when I will be long gone. 

If I view scrapbooking as work, if someone took it away from me I would feel I am losing my balance. My connection with my daughter wouldn’t be developed on such a deep level, and documenting our memories would lose its essence.