The status of photographs in the history of museum collections is a complex one. From its very beginnings the double capacity of photography - as a tool for making a visual record on the one hand and an aesthetic form in its own right on the other - has created tensions about its place in the hierarchy of museum objects. While major collections of 'art' photography have grown in status and visibility, photographs not designated 'art' are often invisible in museums. Yet almost every museum has photographs as part of its ecosystem, gathered as information, corroboration or documentation, shaping the understanding of other classes of objects, and many of these collections remain uncatalogued and their significance unrecognised.
This volume presents a series of case studies on the historical collecting and usage of photographs in museums. Using critically informed empirical investigation, it explores substantive and historiographical questions such as what is the historical patterning in the way photographs have been produced, collected and retained by museums? How do categories of the aesthetic and evidential shape the history of collecting photographs? What has been the work of photographs in museums? What does an understanding of photograph collections add to our understanding of collections history more broadly? What are the methodological demands of research on photograph collections?
The case studies cover a wide range of museums and collection types, from art galleries to maritime museums, national collections to local history museums, and international perspectives including Cuba, France, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. Together they offer a fascinating insight into both the history of collections and collecting, and into the practices and poetics of archives across a range of disciplines, including the history of science, museum studies, archaeology and anthropology.
Edwards, Elizabeth: - Elizabeth Edwards is Professor Emerita of Photographic History at De Montfort University, Leicester, where she was Director of the Photographic History Research Centre from 2011- 2016. She is also Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Victoria and Albert Museum Research Institute, London, and Honorary Professor in the Department of Anthropology University College London. Until 2005 she was Curator of Photographs at Pitt Rivers Museum and lecturer in visual anthropology at ISCA, University of Oxford, where she is Curator Emerita and Research Affiliate. In 2015 she was the first photographic specialist to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. She has worked extensively on the relationship between photography, anthropology and history, on photographs and material culture, and on the work of photographs in museums, notably in colonial legacies. She has received many awards for her work and, over the years, has been on the boards many leading journals and of major museum and archival institutions. In addition to over 100 articles and essays, her monographs and edited works include Raw Histories (2001), Sensible Objects (2006), The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination 1880-1918 (2012) and Photographs, Museums, Collections (2015).
Morton, Christopher: -
Dr Christopher Morton is Curator of Photograph and Manuscript Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Departmental Lecturer in Visual and Material Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. He is co-editor (with Elizabeth Edwards) of Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame (2009), and the author of numerous articles on photography and anthropology, especially in Africa.
