Photography as Historical Inquiry
1970-2009
Denise Gallagher
Historiographical Essay
Spring 2013
Dr. Rebecca Conard
Introduction
This paper will analyze major issues and trends shaping the intellectual history of
photography during the last forty years. Although the topic requires some inclusion of art
historical perspectives the primary focus of inquiry is on the medium of photography interpreted
as a historical document. The working methodology is to investigate five influential scholarly
works that reflect the evolution of thought from 1970 to 2009. The paper will highlight
important questions and topics on the nature of photography and its utility as a historical
document.
Notably, the scholarship produced in the seventies was greatly influenced by French
literary and film criticism produced in the 1960s. French critic Roland Barthes gained
international acclaim by producing new, modern approaches to literature, film, and photography.
In a monograph on Barthes, historian Mireille Ribière explains his criticism of academic
treatments:
The ‘academic’ approach tended to mummify the work, turn it into some kind of
historical monument, which provided a convenient basis for the testing of students
and the conferring of qualifications. Barthes’ own view was that literature and art
generally belong to both the past and the present, and that the full meaning of
particular works is not necessarily realized at the time when they appear. Because
texts outlive their authors, they carry on being read and interpreted by readers at
different times, and their meaning is constantly evolving.1
The study begins with the 1970s because, although the decade can be considered
transitional, it launched significant advancements in the theoretical analysis of photography.2
During the seventies a range of thinkers questioned the interpretation of historical photography
based on empirical facts and universal truths which was prevailing standard of academic
1
Ribière, Mireille, Barthes (Penrith, California: Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, 2008), 33.
See Roland Barthes Mythologies (Hill and Wang: New York, 1972) and Roland Barthes (Hill
and Wang: New York, 1977).
2
1
historians. Beyond intellectual circles, the perceived truth in photography was under scrutiny due
to the increased public awareness of photographic images in everyday life after World War II.
Photography began to be viewed less as a tool in the service of history, social documentation and
science and more as a tool of advertising and coercion.3 This skepticism led to what has been
called the ‘pictorial turn’ or ‘visual turn’ meaning that contemporary culture and theory
recognize visual representations as being as important and worthy of study as language.4
Despite the emergence of the ‘visual turn’, this paper charts the rather sluggish
progression of the ‘photography as text’ concept. By analyzing five scholarly works produced
over a forty year period; the shifting interpretation of photography as an empirical fact, to a
social documentation, to a historical artifact is made evident. Over the years, the focus of
inquiry shifts perspectives from photography creation to reception, from Euro-American to
international and from a single interpretive voice to many voices.
William Stott’s work Documentary Expression and Thirties America (1973) reflects the
disjointed state of the critical discussion on photography occurring in the early 1970s. From an
American Studies perspective, Stott delves into the topic of photography by writing a cultural
history on the 1930’s documentary movement. His thesis states that the social documentary
impulse is the quintessential cultural expression of the 1930s and maintains that genre’s power as
historical document rests in its emotive qualities. Stott’s acceptance of photography as text is
based on the photographers ability to evoke a reaction in the viewer, in other words facts do not
effectively speak for themselves and must be dramatically presented to the viewer.
3
Ribière, Mireille, Barthes (Penrith, California: Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, 2008), 61-62.
Jennifer Tucker, “Entwined Practices: Engagements with Photography in Historical Inquiry,”
History and Theory Theme Issue 49 (December 2009), 2.
4
2
Alan Trachtenberg’s Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady
to Walker Evans (1989) represents a more evolved theory of photography as text by considering
photographs to be cultural constructions shaped by, and themselves shaped by history. He treats
a select few photographers as historians who were able to transcend ordinariness to successfully
interpret and record their society. Both Stott and Trachtenberg suggest that the American
photographic “masterworks” were produced by artists capable of responding to the social and
cultural discourse of their era.
In Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2001), Geoffrey Batchen fully breaks
from the tradition of focusing on individual photographers and the cult of masterworks. Batchen
assumes the meaning of every photograph is determined by broad social, cultural and political
forces, but also considers the materiality of photographs as historical objects. He believes
“photographs ARE history” to be read as texts and notably explores the importance of vernacular
photographs.5
In a collection of essays edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson titled
Photography’s Other Histories (2003) the critical debate suggests that photography serves as “a
prism through which to consider culture, self-identity, historical consciousness, and the nature of
photographic affirmation and revelation.”6 The work presents a non-western account of globally
disseminated and locally appropriated visual images and provides many examples of historical
meaning that people construct for themselves. In the introductory essay, Pinney suggests that a
greater fragility and instability of the relationship between images and their contexts exists than
5
Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History [Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The MIT Press, 2001], ix.
6
Christopher Pinney, “Introduction: “How the Other Half”” in Photography’s Other Histories,
eds. Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
2003), 2.
3
has been widely accepted by scholars. The importance of visual artifacts treated as texts to be
scrutinized is especially acute in the bourgeoning field of subaltern studies.
The paper is concluded with an analysis of a recent contribution to the historiography of
photography as historical inquiry. In 2009 the academic journal History and Theory published a
themed issue titled “Photography and Historical Interpretation” intended to bring attention to the
intensifying intellectual critique of photography as a historical source. The introduction
excellently contextualizes the scholarly interest in photography since the 1970s and boldly
suggests that the ultimate capacity of the study of photographs requires that the interpreter be
pushed to the limits of historical analysis.7 The journal issue makes clear that the once revered
‘objectivity’ of photography should be as suspect to the historian as the once revered Rankean
empiricism.
Documentary Expression and Thirties America (1973) by William Stott
Documentary Expression and Thirties America explores the documentary impulse in
popular literature, radio, television and film; however photography is the primary focus. Stott’s
work is indicative of the burgeoning critical interest in new perspectives on the history of
photography occurring in the seventies. Stott is pioneering in the sense that he analyzes 1930s
photography, particularly from the federally funded Works Progress Administration, from a
cultural perspective rather than as art history. Stott teases out the broad social, cultural, and
political issues that were impacting the photographers and connects this historical context to the
actual body of work they produced.
Jennifer Tucker, “Entwined Practices: Engagements with Photography in Historical Inquiry,”
History and Theory Theme Issue 49 (December 2009), 1.
7
4
By approaching documentary photography as a cultural historian, Stott effectively
approaches the work as text and innovatively ask “why?’ Why did documentary photographers
produce a style characterized by the absence of camera tricks or effects? However, Stott is
caught up in the visual qualities of the work. Stott’s lack of a theoretical framework and
inadequate handling of photography’s strengths and weaknesses exposes the limitations of the
early period of critical debate. Also, Stott is preoccupied with the perspective of the
photographer and does not explore the social and cultural aspects of the people being
documented. Despite these flaws, Documentary Expression and Thirties America remains an
important work that inspired many scholars to further explore the topic.
Stott proposes that during the Great Depression, America’s cultural appetite for the truth
about society was huge and that society desired a factual medium at a time when radio and
newspapers were thought to be suspect. Stott’s concludes that the mechanization of the camera
filled the need for authenticity and for a direct and immediate viewing experience. American
society was calling for the truth with more tenacity that previously seen in documentary efforts.
Stott explains that as early as the 1870s Americans began photographically documenting
natural wonders of the West followed by the progressive work of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine who
documented the urban poverty of the industrial age. The differentiating factor between the early
examples and the movement occurring in the thirties is never fully argued. Stott generalizes by
stating that Riis and Hine were ahead of their time and that the Progressive Era relied primarily
on the written word.8
8
William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973), 30.
5
Stott relies on the argument that thirties America demanded photographic evidence in
order to be convinced because the ‘central media’ was viewed with suspicion. For this reason
documentary photograph was widely accepted as real life or reality despite its own
manipulations.9 In a comparison of thirties photography to popular literature genres, Stott
indicates that both are fiction, although photography is accepted (by the public) as true.10
Stott successfully explores the documentary movement as a cultural historian through
analysis of the media, New Deal politics, and changing American cultural values; however Stott
has difficulty separating the virtues of photography as fine art from its virtues as a historical
document. Stott provides explanations for why the American public accepted the photograph as
fact; however his does not convey a specific theory on the nature of photography and often is
sidetracked into a discussion about photography’s emotive qualities. In fact the ‘intellect’ is
positioned at odds with the documentary movement which is thought to inform with emotion.
Stott writes, “Those who practice documentary tend to be skeptical of the intellect and the
abstractions through which it works. Like artists, they believe that a fact to be true and important
must be felt.”11
The thirties documentary impulse sought to document the overlooked and uncounted
Americans who lived a hard life. Stott’s curiosity focuses the various ways documents are
perceived by the viewer rather than the historical value of the documents themselves. Two types
of documents are discussed in order to understand the purpose of Works Progress Administration
produced photographs.
9
William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973), 77.
10
Ibid., x.
11
Ibid., 12.
6
The first type is a hypothetical photograph of a naturally occurring condition or universal
theme like family, hurricanes or death called a ‘human document’. The second type is a
photograph of destitute factory conditions, discrimination or abject poverty called a ‘social
document’. Stott explains, “One might say briefly that a human document deals with natural
phenomena, and social documentary with man-made.”12 The biggest difference is that social
documents encourage social improvement and constantly address “you” as the viewer. Social
documents beg the viewer to identify, pity, and ultimately participate in reform efforts.13
Stott acknowledges that federal photographers often manipulated images either through
posing, cropping, or editing choices. The documentary movement did not show the poor or
disenfranchised being lazy, lewd or cruel, but rather used the lower classes to tell the stories the
government wished to tell. Stott explains, “We must realize, though, that all documentary
photographs, like all propaganda and indeed all exposition, are to some extent biased
communication.” The people and places documentarians captured were treated like innocent
victims—simplified and sentimentalized.
Stott’s adherence to academic art history is most explicit in his analysis of James Agee’s
and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Here Stott argues that the book avoided the
clichés of thirties documentary, thereby achieving a ‘masterpiece’ status as art and as social
document. In a genre defined by sentimentality, Stott’s logic is flawed to suggest that Agee and
Evans escape convention by telling a more refined story and that they managed to document
without bias.. Stott interprets the success of the work not as exceptional documentation but as
12
William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973), 20.
13
Ibid., 28.
7
exceptional art. Strangely, Stott even infers the presence of art or artistry in the lives of the
farmers (see Figure 1). He writes:
To Agee’s theory that all simple people are artists, Evans offered concrete proof. His
photographs document these people’s sense of form, balance, symmetry, and their
fierce—almost appalling—hunger for order.
Stott was criticized for his approach to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men because he
developed a set of standards to interpret the genre, only to then elevate one work above the
others.14 Although Stott did not produce a lasting theory, his effort to explore the cultural history
of an important genre of American photography was applauded at the time and remains an
influential work. Documentary Expression and Thirties America exemplifies the first steps taken
by scholars to analyze the nature of photography.
Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (1989)
by Alan Trachtenberg
Alan Trachtenberg’s Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady
to Walker Evans represents an evolved theory of photography as text by considering photographs
to be cultural constructions shaped by history and active in shaping history themselves.
Trachtenberg’s book parallels the development of the medium beginning in 1839 with the
broader historical context through the end of the great depression in 1939. This time period of
American history includes war, the conquest of the West, the rise of cities, and decline of rural
society. Trachtenberg argues that the history of photography belongs to this larger “American”
history and is influenced by it and, in turn influences how we perceive and understand history.
14
Thomas Krueger, review of Documentary Expression and Thirties America, by William Scott,
The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 40, No. 3 (August 1974), 507.
8
Both Stott and Trachtenberg suggest that an elite group of photographers were capable of
responding to and visually rendering the social and cultural discourse of their era. The decision
to feature masterworks of American photography aligns their work with academic art history, but
also aims to expand the discipline. While Stott focused on the topics and trends of one decade,
Trachtenberg formally establishes a lasting and reciprocating relationship between photography
and history throughout time. Trachtenberg provides an in-depth interpretation of a select group
of photographers including Mathew Brady, Timothy O’Sullivan, Alfred Stieglitz and Walker
Evans.
Trachtenberg begins his argument with a reference to the book History, the Last Things
Before the Last, a work by German film theorist, Siegfried Kracauer published in 1969. Kracauer
associates photography with historical artifacts based on the assumption that photographs cannot
capture memory, specifically personal memory. In other words, photographs are limited in time
and affect. The implication is that a viewer of a photograph is not capable of the full memory of
the scene, person, event, or thing being photographed. Trachtenberg uses Kracauer’s theory to
launch his own thesis related to the ‘tension between facts and meaning’.15
Reading American Photographs explores the cultural and political context of iconic
American photographs and reconsiders the role of the photographer both as artist and as
historian. Because photographs are much more than ordered or recorded facts, they must be
interpreted as man-made rather than machine-made. To gain the most knowledge or meaning
from photographs, they must be interpreted as a consciously made historical artifact. This
15
Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to
Walker Evans (Toronto: Collins Publishers, 1989) xvi.
9
approach accepts the complex nature of all historical artifacts and aims to include photographs
among written documents and other data.
Reading American Photography was a significant contribution to the critical discussion
centered on the history of photography. In a 1991 peer review, art historian Terry Smith
questioned if the recent proliferation of attention paid to the history of photography indicated the
emergence of a disciplinary practice. Smith writes:
I sense that a new historical narrative is emerging, one to which all the approaches
are contributing, despite their distinct and, at times, incompatible orientations.
The key issue here is a political one: is this story genuinely open-ended and
inherently reflexive, or is it essentially singular, a set of variations on a peculiarly
“American” photography?16
Smith’s observation indicates that Trachtenberg is one of many writers critically
exploring the nature of photography including John Berger, Susan Sontag, Victor Burgin, Allan
Sekula and John Tagg.17 According to Trachtenberg, photographers are acting as historians by
picking and choosing which ‘facts’ must be made intelligible. He writes:
To serve as history, facts must be made intelligible, must be given an order and a
meaning which does not crush their autonomy as facts. The historian’s task resembles the
photographer’s: how to make the random, fragmentary, and accidental details of
everyday existence meaningful without loss of the details themselves, without sacrifice of
concrete particulars on the altar of abstraction.18
16
Terry Smith, review of Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to
Walker Evans by Alan Trachtenberg, Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1991),
21.
17
See John Berger, Ways of Seeing (British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972); Susan Sontag, On
Photography (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1977); Victor Burgin, Thinking Photography:
Communications and Culture (McClelland & Stewart/Canbook, 1982); Allan Sekula,
Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973-1983 (Press of the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design, 1984); John Tagg, Burden of Representation: Essays on
Photographies and Histories (University of Minnesota Press, 1993);
18
Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, xvi.
10
Trachtenberg suggests photography does not simply illustrate history via empirical
depictions but is a part of history itself. By choosing a subject, framing the viewfinder, creating
an image, and by selecting for public view, photographers serve the public as interpreters of
society thereby contributing to the overall historical narrative.
New York photographer Mathew Brady dominated the growing industry of commercial
daguerreotype portraiture in the mid-nineteenth century. As a leading proponent of the artistic
qualities that could be achieved in photographs, Brady promoted his business and the medium by
pursing famous Americans as clients. Trachtenberg’s focus is not on the most famous images
created by Brady, but on his personal journey as a photographer and his impact on American
history. Trachtenberg describes the complex web of history that Brady creates, “By making his
own name a symbol of social power, success, celebrity—and devotion to the nation—he created
a structure of meaning for the act of sitting before his portrait lens”.19
In 1850, Brady collaborated on The Gallery of Illustrious Americans, a commercially
successful book of lithographs made from daguerreotypes featuring America’s most powerful
men (see Figure 2). Trachtenberg compares the heroic treatment of The Gallery of Illustrious
Americans to the scientific treatment of African born slaves by photographer J. T. Zealy. The
pairing emphasizes two different examples of photography recording history and serving as
material culture. Trachtenberg repeats this pattern of comparisons to explore the wide range of
photographic work produced through successive discoveries, changing technologies, and
changing social forms.
Trachtenberg explores the impact of early photography on human consciousness.
Photography captured the intellectual curiosity and imagination of nineteenth century Americans
19
Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, 38.
11
because the images surpassed the capacity of the human eye by making a visual record of the
past physical and permanent. Trachtenberg suggests that the invention of photography brought a
revolution in consciousness and altered our sense of the past (another angle of the photographer
impacting history). In summary, Reading American Photographs presents a critical analysis of
photographs as cultural constructions, inseparable from the history of their creation and the
history they represent.20
Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2001) by Geoffrey Batchen
Geoffrey Batchen is Australian critic working in the United States. Ten years after
Trachtenberg’s work, Batchen published a book titled Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography,
History, a collection of essays on the nature of photography as a historical document. Batchen
represents a true break from the “masterworks” approach by focusing on photographic works
completely outside of the art historical canon.
Batchen explores the photographic object in various material and cultural contexts
assuming the meaning of every photograph “overlaps “within broader social and political forces.
When interpreting photographs Batchen looks for evidence of history anywhere from a famous
portrait to a vernacular snapshot. He believes photographs ARE history. Each Wild Idea features
number of topics; however, this paper will focus on Batchen’s essays on the timing of
photography’s invention, the Australianness of Australian photography, and the place of
vernacular in photo history.
Batchen reveals that the impulse to capture and freeze a representation of nature or of life
began well before the official launch of photography in 1839. Batchen points out that the optics
20
Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, xvi.
12
of the camera obscura were in use for thousands of years before Johann Schulze discovered that
silver chloride and silver nitrate darken in the presence of light in 1725. Because the timing of
the invention of modern photography appears rather random and fractured among many
inventors, Batchen explores the conceptual and metaphorical context rather than focusing on the
technological breakthrough. He refers to his approach as a critical or “political understanding of
photography’s timing” and concludes that a widespread desire for photography spurred its
invention.21 Batchen identifies the root of the desire to be “not just in the representation of
Nature but the nature of representation itself.”22
The broader implication is that the invention of photography relates to the
epistemological shift from the Enlightenment to the modern era. Some historians have suggested
that the invention of photography is an intellectual effort to reconcile or resolve the
representational uncertainties. Intellectuals were reexamining the rational order of nature and the
passivity of the observer. Batchen explains:
The camera obscura alone could no longer fulfill this radical new worldview. What had
to be invented instead was an apparatus of seeing that involved both reflection and
projection, that was simultaneously active and passive in the way it represented things,
that incorporated into its very mode of being the subject seeing and the object being seen.
This apparatus was photography.23
By focusing on the early history of photography, Batchen provides a new and inventive
foundation for interpreting photography. Most importantly, 1839 now represents the date when
photography hit the economic marketplace as a patented process, rather than when photography
was invented. Batchen maintains that photography is “a mode of representation that is
21
Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2001), 4-5.
22
Ibid., 18.
23
Ibid., 22.
13
simultaneously fixed and transitory, that draws nature while allowing it to draw itself, that both
reflects and constitutes its object that, partakes equally of the realms of nature and culture.”24
Batchen provides another distinctive history of photography by analyzing two books on
the history of Australian photography published in time for the country’s bicentenary
celebration. The massive influence of American photographic practice and academic writing
resulted in Australia’s photo history being seen as a supplement, not only in its artistic
sensibility, but also lack of unique character. Batchen challenges this view by teasing out the
complexities of Australian photography as historical artifact.
By examining the handling of Australia’s native photographic impulse, Batchen presents
a, albeit brief, comparative work to Trachtenberg’s Reading American Photography. Batchen
asserts that “a perverse play of origin and copy is precisely what has always made Australia
Australian,” and that the Australian history should “become a self-conscious assertion of
interdependency rather than a simple reiteration of subjection.”25
Each Wild Idea breaks from the academic lifeline to masterworks by exploring the
interpretive power of vernacular photography. Batchen explains that vernacular photographs
resist a formalists art-historical narrative because they are made by mostly anonymous, amateur,
or commercial entities and do not match the familiar progression of styles. The morphology of
ordinary photographs is also extremely varied, resulting in a quality that must be looked at and
even held to understand features like paint, embroidery, and inscriptions.
Batchen explores the wide ranging application of photographic images from cultural and
religious ceremonies to everyday life. One example is a fotoescultura most often seen in a
24
25
Ibid., 22-23.
Ibid., 55.
14
Mexican or Mexican-American home, usually consisting of a hand-colored studio portrait with
an elaborate frame held between two sheets of glass made to commemorate, memorialize, honor,
or even promote images of individuals (see Figure 3). Batchen writes, “…we find the photograph
being treated as a tangible metaphor—as something one looks at rather than through, as an
opaque icon whose significance rests on ritual rather than visual truth.”26
To Batchen, vernacular photography features an object-audience interaction that aligns it
with the qualities of material culture, not fine art. Therefore, the analysis should abandon typical
organizing principals and allow for different modes of knowing, different voices, and different
historical periods to be directly compared. The distinction between fiction and fact, interpretation
and truth should be questioned, which Batchen suggests may be easier for historians familiar
with the study of material culture.
Still, the application of a simplistic material culture analysis is not without fault. Batchen
acknowledges that photographs never have a single meaning; therefore, simply replacing the
meaning or intent of the artist with the original social or cultural context is not appropriate either.
Seeking a vernacular history of photography requires the negotiation of the object in the past and
in the present. Batchen believes that photography captures a kernel of history at its initial
exposure and then is subject to continual development, reproduction, and manipulation.27
Photography’s Other Histories (2003) edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson
Since the 1970s, the urgency of the debate on photography steadily increased and then
diversified to include critique of what historian Christopher Pinney calls a “globally
26
Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2001), 76.
27
Ibid., ix.
15
disseminated and locally appropriated medium”.28 Many of subjects discussed in Photography’s
Other Histories may be considered by many to be ethnography or anthropology; however,
editors Pinney and Nicolas Peterson’s decision to analyze them through the prism of
photography supports the increasing acceptance of the medium as historical artifact.
Two years after Batchen’s Each Wild Idea was published, Photography’s Other Histories
took on a wide range of topics first presented at a conference held at the Queensland Museum,
titled Looking through Photographs: Indigenous Histories, Presences, and Representations. Not
only is the analysis of photographs as historical documents becoming more sophisticated, but the
diversity of scholars invested in the field is expanding. In the introduction, Pinney outlines the
book’s aim which is to change the focus of the debate on the practice of photography to nonwestern, non-technological, and non-individual based analysis.
Photography’s Other Histories attempts to unpack the constructed histories of many
indigenous and marginalized groups through the critical study of photographic images produced
by individuals, scientists, journalists, governments, and entertainment promoters. The authors are
acutely aware of the dangers of accepting photographic images as truth and analyze the biases
involved in the creation, selection, publication, and collection of photographs.
Although invented by Europeans and Americans, photography spread through the world
creating volumes of visual records with extremely complex layers of meaning. In this light,
Pinney concludes that, “A greater sense of the fragility and instability of the relationship between
Christopher Pinney, “Introduction: How the Other Half” in Photography’s Other Histories,
eds. Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
2003), 1.
28
16
images and their contexts might allow the exploration of why certain images prove capable of
recoding while others are more resistant, and many others are completely intractable.”29
Australian photo-historian Roslyn Poignant analyzes photographic images of a group of
Aborigines who were forcefully taken from their homeland and toured in American and Europe
by the infamous P.T. Barnum during the late-nineteenth century. She indicates that the group
was absorbed into an already constructed stereotype of “savagery” that was frequently depicted
across many mediums.30 The exploitation and visual depiction of indigenous performers advance
a layered historical narrative both abroad and in Australia. Poignant does not, however, include
the perspective or voice of the native population itself in her essay.
Comparatively, Australian anthropologist Nicolas Peterson, acknowledges the concerns
of Aborigines in an essay investigating the changing photographic contract between native
people and photographers. Peterson discusses the rise of public concern with image ethics in
relation to photography largely produced by anthropologist in scholarly journals and magazines.
Several typical poses are decoded to expose the colonial power structure on visual display. One
example is the “line-up” photograph which features a family or village lined up in front of their
dwellings, while a second example is the ‘turned-down-top’ photograph which involved the
subject exposing their breast in a clear state of reluctance (see Figure 4). Peterson explains that
the exchange between native peoples and photographer required to produce these depictions was
a complex web of negotiations. Because the photographers make no attempt to innovate from the
Christopher Pinney, “Introduction.”4.
Roslyn Poignant, “The Making of Professional “Savages” from P.T. Barnum (1883) to the
Sunday Times (1998)” in Photography’s Other Histories, 57.
29
30
17
line-up or to hide the fact that they asked the women (and men) to take their tops off, the
photographs contain issues of representation, informed consent, and intent.31
Reminiscent of Trachtenberg’s assertion that the photographer is like a historian picking
and choosing which facts to include in the historical narrative, Peterson makes clear that
anthropologists or science oriented photographers were doing the same. The theory of
photography as a historical record; however, are remarkably different between Trachtenberg and
Peterson. Photography’s Other Histories, published in 2003, exhibits a theory based on a
complete disregard of truth in photography. Peterson automatically approached photographs of
indigenous people with apprehension and suspicion, while Trachtenberg, writing in 1989, finds
traces of humanity (see Figure 5):
The Zealy pictures reveal the social convention which ranks blacks as inferior
beings, which violates civilized decorum, which strips men and women of the
right to cover their genitalia. And yet the pictures shatter that mold by allowing
the eyes of Delia and the others to speak directly to ours, in an appeal to a shared
humanity. This represents an extraordinary achievement. Zealy allowed the
camera and the silver plate simply to show the event.32
Peterson’s account of the tensions between Aborigines and anthropologist in the 1970s
over the right to photograph and circulate images of native peoples and rituals reveals the ethical
power struggle inherent in photography. By the mid-1970s Aboriginals were able to gain a
significant degree of control over photographic images that involve them including the ability to
forbid photographs of religious ceremonies and to negotiate favorable contracts with
photographers.33 Notably, the term “documentary” is only used when describing films.
Nicolas Peterson, “The Changing Photographic Contract: Aborigines and Image Ethics” in
Photography’s Other Histories, 120.
32
Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, 56.
33
Nicolas Peterson, “The Changing Photographic Contract: Aborigines and Image Ethics” in
Photography’s Other Histories, 137.
31
18
Africanist Heike Behrend explores a intriguing photographic practice developed by a
marginalized group of Africans who appropriate the Western tradition of tourist photography
involving the camera mediating the experience of travel.34 Behrend surveys the Likoni Ferry
Photographers, a group who appropriate the travel photo obsession common in Western tourist
culture to fit the needs of locals working in the town of Mombasa, Kenya. Because photographic
representations of tourism have become inseparable from the actual journey, Behrend views the
work of the Likoni Ferry Photographers as a localization of the global flow of images.
The Likoni Ferry Photographers created semi-permanent studio spaces with hand-painted
and elaborately decorated scenes made to reference famous landmarks that are off-limits to many
working-class Kenyans due to racial discrimination. “Here, modern means of transport and
exotic places were at their disposal, and the studios with their imaginative geographies became a
surrogate for travel.”35 Behrend learned that the studio space is often more desirable than the real
thing because the stylized painted backdrops were more attractive and impressive than the actual
scene depicted (see Figure 6). In the case of the Likoni Ferry studios, vernacular photography
merges with commercial pursuits to produce a genre rich in techniques of cultural production and
empowerment.
The essays in Photography’s Other Histories suggest that photography is a cultural
practice with no fixed outcome. From reexamining the colonial archive, to acknowledging the
unequal flow and exchanges of visual images in a global market, to raising awareness of the
cultural fluidity of popular practice, the book presents a wide-range of historical consciousness
and interpretational frameworks.
Heike Behrend, “Imagined Journeys: The Likoni Ferry Photographers of Mombasa, Kenya” in
Photography’s Other Histories, 222.
35
Ibid., 231.
34
19
History and Theory, Theme Issue 48, “Photography and Historical Interpretation” (2009)
As this paper demonstrates, the critical dialogue on photography as historical inquiry
began in the 1970s and has steadily increased in sophistication, depth and in volume. The final
work under analysis is a special issue by History and Theory devoted to the nature of
photography as a historical document. In the introduction titled “Entwined Practices:
Engagements with Photography in Historical Inquiry,” Jennifer Tucker writes:
“By exposing the questions we ought to raise about all historical evidence,
photographs reveal not simply the potential and limits of photography as a
historical source, but the potential and limits of all historical sources and
historical inquiry as an intellectual project.”36
Like Photography’s Other Histories, the History and Theory issue is a collection of
essays deeply engaged with photography as a historical document. The journal’s cross-discipline
interpretation of photography as a material source reflects both the mounting interest and access
to photographs through the digitization of public and private archives. Steady growth in the
employment of photography across a range of historical studies has not only solidified
photographs as historical documents, but has spurred greater analysis of the nature of historical
evidence.37 The History and Theory issue’s origination was a workshop held at Wesleyan
University located in Middletown, Connecticut, in 2009, which aimed to address a number of
questions on photography’s role in history.
The essay titled, “Santu Mofokeng, Photographs: The Violence is in the Knowing”
historian Patricia Hayes analyzes the documentary work of one of South Africa’s most
celebrated photographers, Santu Mofokeng. The 1980’s South African documentary movement
36
37
Jennifer Tucker, “Entwined Practices”, 1.
Ibid., 3.
20
was similar to the 1930’s American movement due to similar social-history paradigms and
interestingly both carry the term “documentary.”
Mofokeng was a leading documentarian of the anti-apartheid resistance and an important
critic of the mainstream international journalism. Rather than the widely-circulated, sharpfocused scenes of violence, Mofokeng’s work reflected the everyday toil of South African blacks
that often contained smoke, mist and various photographically produced anomalies. Mofokeng’s
methodology was to document “history from below” both as a working-class photographer and
as a threatened indigenous individual.38
Mofokeng avoided violence whenever possible, choosing to draw attention to different
issues, and did not produce what is typically known as “straight” documentary. Although global
dissemination of images reflecting racial brutality is a cornerstone of civil rights struggles,
Mofokeng felt the repetitive images of the anti-apartheid movement were flagrantly monetized
due to the global demand, too simplistic, and did not address the atrocities of everyday life.
Cultural and political geographer, David Campbell responds to Hayes’ interpretation of
Mofokeng by highlighting the tension between aesthetics and ethics. The “global image
economy” created a pictorial hegemony that Mofokeng resisted both in subject matter and in
style. His use of seriti, translated as “shadow” formed by blurred lines or lack of sharpness
expresses a complex understanding of photography’s ability to capture reality (see Figure 7).
Campbell writes, “…Mofokeng conceives the everyday itself as comprised partly of what is
Patricia Hayes, “Santu Mofokeng, Photographs: “The Violence is in the Knowing,”” History
and Theory Theme Issue 49 (December 2009), 36.
38
21
invisible, so that what is or can be exposed must move beyond the realm of what can be captures
by realist photography.”39
Remarkably, both Hayes and Campbell view Mofokeng’s work, not only as a critique of,
but “beyond” or “more real” than the straight documentary style dominating the international
media. The interpretation of blurred lines to represent what is invisible is an example of what
Batchen describes as a manifestation of desire in photography. According to Batchen,
“Desire…is produced in the gap between need and demand.”40 Furthermore, Hayes and
Campbell’s interpretation is reminiscent of Stott’s misguided elevation of Let Us Now Praise
Famous Men above the bulk of 1930’s, American documentary work. The tendency to
aestheticize Mofokeng’s photography suggests an adherence to art history principles rather than
analyzing his work as historical evidence.
The relationship between photographs and history is both intellectual and material. In an
essay examining the archival assemblage of photographs from the decades preceding the
Holocaust, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer suggest that when seeking visual evidence of the
past, photographs reveal both more and less than expected.41 In an essay titled, “Incongruous
Images: “Before, During, and After” the Holocaust,” Hirsch and Spitzer examine vernacular
street photography taken on the streets of Cernauti, Romania, during the cities occupation by
Fascist Romanians and their Nazi-German allies.
David Campbell, “Black Skin and Blood: Documentary Photography and Santu Mofokeng’s
Critique of the Visualization of Apartheid South Africa,” History and Theory Theme Issue 49
(December 2009), 54.
40
Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea, 19.
41
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “Incongruous Images: “Before, During, and After” The
Holocaust,” History and Theory Theme Issue 49 (December 2009), 9.
39
22
Hirsch and Spitzer analyze the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s goal of
collecting “at least one pre-Holocaust photo showing Jews in normal circumstances, walking
comfortably and confidently down its main streets.”42 By amassing their own collection of street
photography, the authors ultimately poke holes in the museum’s objective. Through a careful
interpretation of the historical information, Hirsch and Spitzer determine that the photographs
reveal very little that could indicate “normality” especially in light of the presence of the yellow
star, indicating that waves of deportations to ghettos and forced labor camps had begun (see
Figure 8).43
In Geoffrey Batchen’s response to Hirsch and Spitzer’s essay, the broader genre of
vernacular street photography is explored, thus providing an expanded context of the street
scenes depicting Jews in Cernauti, Romania. They were almost always vertical in orientation,
showing people relatively well dressed walking along a public street either looking ahead or
toward the camera. Street photographers worked on commission and most likely came from a
different social class than their subjects. The prevalence and utter commonality of street
photography throughout the globe from 1920-1950 conflicts with Hirsch and Spitzer’s
conclusion and exposes the author’s own desire for a particular historical narrative.
The essays collected in History and Theory’s themed issue both exemplify the
complexity of and make the case for the increasing interest in engaging with photography as a
historical source. In particular, debates about ethical responsibilities, power relations and desired
historical narratives drive new scholarship. As the two “dialogue essays” explored in this paper
42
43
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “Incongruous Images,” 13.
Ibid., 18.
23
reveal, the conversation is exploratory and collaborative and by no means has a dominate theory
emerged.
Conclusion
This paper has analyzed the major issues and trends shaping the intellectual history of
photography over last forty years beginning with William Stott’s Documentary Expression and
Thirties America published in 1973 and ending with a collection of essays published in 2009.
The focus of inquiry shifts from study of photography creation to reception, from Euro-American
to international, and from a single interpretive voice to many voices. The questions being asked
of photography contemplate the photograph in relation to its use as a historical document. What
this paper makes clear is that photographs are neither more or less transparent than any other
historical source; however photographs can push the limits of historical inquiry as an intellectual
project.44
As theorist W.J.T. Mitchell suggested nearly two decades ago (1990), there has been a
“visual turn” in contemporary culture and theory in which the realm of the visual has been
recognized as being as important and worthy of intense scrutiny as the realm of language.45 In
the introduction of History and Theory, Jennifer Tucker states that the potential value of
photography for historians across a range of different fields is one of the “most productive
developments with respect to the “visual turn,” yet there remains a tendency by scholars to
continue to treat photographs as illustrations of a hypothesis already reached by other means.
44
45
Jennifer Tucker, “Entwined Practices,”, 1, 5.
Ibid., 1.
24
The academic backgrounds of the scholars consulted for this paper were generally interdisciplinary in scope and their research interests often connected to visual culture studies,
material culture or art history. Therefore, although the interest in photography as historical
inquiry is increasing, the philosophical impact of the debate may still have a long way to go to be
accepted by mainstream academic historians. However, proponents of the study of history using
photography maintain that photographs demand the same level of scrutiny as any other historical
source.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument for the increased study of photography by
historians is the overwhelming volume of photographic materials being carefully stored in
archives and museums. For example, in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of
Congress there are 164,000 black-and-white photographs made between 1935 and 1945 by the
WPA and Office of War information, and at the University of California at Riverside, there are
350,000 stereographs made between 1892 and 1963 by the Keystone View Company.46 The
rapid pace of photo-digitization will likely support greater accessibility to the vast collections
thereby supporting future scholarship.
46
Michael Lesy, “Visual Literacy,” Journal of American History (June 2007), 144-145.
25
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26
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27
List of Figures
Figure 1. Walker Evans, Sharecropper’s fireplace (the Gudger front bedroom) Let Us Know
Praise Famous Men
28
Figure 2. Lithographs by Francis D’Avignon from daguerreotypes made by the Brady studio.
The Gallery of Illustrious Americans
Figure 3. Artist Unknown (Mexican), Hombre/Man, c. 1950. Hand-painted photograph over
wood, plaster, wood frame, glass. Private collection.
29
Figure 4. (Top) A typical line-up photograph, on a postcard published by G. Muller of Adelaide.
It was posted on 20 December 1902 and addressed to Egypt. (Bottom) A typical turneddown-top photograph. Courtesy of Ron Blum.
30
Figure 6. (Left) “Jack (driver), Guinea. Plantation of B.F. Taylor, Esq., Columbia, S.C.” (Right)
“Delia, country-born of African parents, daughter of Renty, Congo”
31
Figure 6. (Top) Mutokaa Studio, 1995. (Bottom) Omalla Studio 1998
32
Figure 7. Santu Mofokeng, Winter in Thembisa, 1989
Figure 8. (Left) Ilana Schmueli [with yellow star on jacket] and her mother (courtesy Ilana
Shmueli). (Right) Berthold Geisinger, Dita (surname unknown), and Heini Stup (courtesy
Silvio Geisinger.
33