Nicole's Commentary ?'s

• Is the commentary more like a thoughtful reflective “essay” (but not an essay), or is it specifically supposed to mirror the images and go long with those? Or is it more loosely related?

I think that it could potentially be represented however you want. I believe your archive's exhibit could actually benefit from a mixture of the two throughout the piece. For example, the way your commentary starts out is more like a meta-discourse, setting up the topic of discussion. It wouldn't necessarily be referencing any particular image or artifact even though there could be a graphic present for aesthetics (loosely related).

Once you start to dive into the part about your interviews, then I could see more particular images being presented. These images could be expanded upon to link back to the central point that you're trying to get across for that section.
So in short, it's a mixture of what you described -- you can prescribe the cadence of the narrative this way.

• Do we include our image descriptions somewhere in the commentary?

I think this links back to the previous question in a lot of ways. If the item feels important and requires contextualization, I would say yes. But you can use your own discretion on that.

• Is the commentary the text that is being spaced over the exhibit? Or is it more separate?
That's a great question, and one I had myself. The way that I imagine the layout of my own, and by extension, yours, is that the commentary text brings us into the exhibit gently and provides us with enough information to get started through the exhibit. Throughout the rest of the exhibit, I'm sure additional, more quippy, text accompanies us like a guide.

• Should it be half commentary half pictures or more of one or the other? Or just whatever works for us?
Again, I'm not positive, but because the majority of your archive is image-based, rather than textually or aurally, I think that's going to be the breadth of your exhibit as well. I'm thinking that text, the actual words there are going to be more sparse. However, when the text is there, their presence is much more dramatic and substantial.