Photo Archives and the Place of Photography

This collection of essays investigates the effects of mobility and place on a range of photographic archives and explores their potential for cross-disciplinary dialogue.

The book explores photographic images used in the study of art, as well as the implications of placing European images of non-European cultures in an archive, album, library, or museum. It also addresses questions of digital space, which renders images more visually accessible, but further complicates issues relating to location. The contributors consider these issues through case studies based on a variety of archives, institutions, and disciplines. Just as photographs are conceived as unstable objects, so conventional borders between disciplines and locations are challenged and opened up with essays drawing on a range of disciplinary theories and practices. The focus of the individual chapters is global, as seen in contributions not only on Euro-American topics, but also on Orientalizing approaches to photographing the Ancient Near East, photographic archives of Bedouin subjects, and digital photographic archives in an Iranian context.

This book will be of interest to scholars of art history, visual and cultural studies, anthropology, and archaeology, as well as those working on the history and theory of photography, and histories and theories of the archive.

Geraldine A. Johnson is Head of the Department of History of Art at the University of Oxford and a College Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford.

Deborah Schultz is Senior Lecturer in Art History at Regent’s University, London.