The Handbook of Photography Studies 1474242200, 9781474242202

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THE HANDBOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIES

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THE HANDBOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIES

Edited by Gil Pasternak

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First published 2020 by Bloomsbury Academic Published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright of the introduction and editorial content © Gil Pasternak, individual chapters © the contributors, 2020 Gil Pasternak has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifed as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xx–xxii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover photograph: A Palestinian man hits a poster of US President Donald Trump to condemn Trump’s policies at a protest over Israel’s violations against Palestinians, Hebron, West Bank, February 24, 2017 © Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4742-4220-2 (hbk)

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To my past, present, and future students

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CONTENTS

L ist

of

f igures

x

C ontributors

xiv

P refaCe

xx

Introduction: Photography Studies’ Prehistory, Formation, and Evolution Gil Pasternak PART I

HISTORIES AND APPROACHES

Studying Photography in Shifting Academic Landscapes Gil Pasternak 1 2 3

4

5

19

21

A Canonical History of Photography Marta Braun

26

The Social History of Photography Douglas Nickel

43

The Eye-Witness of Humanity: Changing Approaches to Photography’s Relationship to Society and Culture Melissa Miles

59

Photographic Itineraries in Time and Space: Photographs as Material Objects Costanza Caraffa

79

Forces and Forms: Theories and Methods in the History of Photography Jae Emerling

97

PART II

INTER/DISCIPLINARY CONCERNS

Disciplining Photography and Reframing Disciplinary Interests Gil Pasternak 6

1

Photography in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Intersections, Research Modes, and Prospects Luc Pauwels

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115

117

122

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viii

7 8 9

CONTENTS

After Photography as Contemporary Art Ben Burbridge

139

Photography after Philosophy Daniel Rubinstein

154

Photography and the Business of Doing History Elizabeth Edwards

170

10 Archaeology and Photography Christina Riggs

187

PART III

207

ISSUES AND DEBATES

Enduring Concerns in Photography Studies Gil Pasternak

209

11 Politics and Photography: Being Together, with Photographs Gil Pasternak

214

12 Photography and the Making of Modern Science Jennifer Tucker

235

13 Photography as a Cultural Industry: A Historical-Theoretical Overview Paul Frosh

255

14 Site of Ongoing Struggle: Race and Gender in Studies of Photography Sarah Parsons

273

15 Objects of Denigration and Desire: Taking the Amateur Photographer Seriously Annebella Pollen

292

16 Photography Meets Social Media: Image Making and Sharing in a Continually Networked Present Martin Hand

310

PART IV

327

CULTURE AND GEOPOLITICS

Global and Local Forces in Photography Studies Gil Pasternak

329

17 Australian Photographic Histories After Colonialism Jane Lydon

335

18 Beyond Orientalism: Toward a History of Indigenista Photography in the Arab World Stephen Sheehi

353

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CONTENTS

ix

19 Photography’s Appearances in China Oliver Moore

369

20 From Authenticity to Intimacy: Practicing Photography and Studying its History in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic Eva Pluharˇová-Grigienė

391

21 Photographic Histories and Practices in Southern Africa Darren Newbury

412

22 American Photographic Indicators: Addressing the Photo-Political State of a Contested Union Louis Kaplan

433

PART V USES AND INTERACTIONS

449

Photography’s Changing Faces Gil Pasternak

451

23 Viewing and Display: Pre-Photography to the 1970s Margaret Denny

456

24 Representing News with Photographs: A Visual Economy Thierry Gervais

476

25 Photographs at/of/and Museums Susan A. Crane

493

26 “Working Objects in Their Own Time”: Photographs in Archives Joan M. Schwartz

513

27 Domestic Collections Martha Langford

530

28 Future Technology in Photography: From Capture to Use of Images David M. Frohlich

548

index

566

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FIGURES

3.1

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #52, 1979

63

3.2

Nikki S. Lee, The Hip Hop Project (1), 2001

64

3.3

Tacita Dean, FLOH Ice Rink, 2001

70

3.4

Unknown/Courtesy Nadir K. Nadirov, living in Kazakhstan

72

3.5

Moh Naem, Untitled, 2014

72

8.1

Albrecht Dürer Artist Drawing a Nude with a Perspective Device, 1525

160

8.2

A Turkish police offcer carries a migrant child’s dead body (Aylan Shenu) off the shores in Bodrum

164

The frst three hours, 10.15–13.15, September 2, 2015 from the appearance of the frst picture of the body of Alan Kurdi on Twitter

165

8.3

10.1 Archaeologist Gerard Avery Wainwright at Gerzeh cemetery, Egypt, in 1910, showing the camera position for photographing a burial

188

10.2 Félix Bonfls, “Details of the Colonnade of the Parthenon”

190

10.3 John Hartmann photographing the side of a coffn in a gallery of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, in the early 1920s

195

10.4 Two Egyptian foremen and a boy at work in the tomb of Tutankhamun, December 1, 1923

199

10.5 “In the best parlour.” Archaeologist Joseph Grafton Milne with an unidentifed woman in living quarters at the Ramesseum excavation site, Luxor, Egypt

200

11.1 $100,000 Reward! The Murderer of Our Late Beloved President, Abraham Lincoln, is Still at Large. Washington D.C, 1865

218

11.2 Execution of the Conspirators at Washington, July 7, 1865

219

11.3 Palestinians hit a poster of US President Donald Trump

222

11.4 Madres de Plaza de Mayo demonstrate in Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship (1976–83), c. 1982

223

11.5 Screenshot captured from the lovenotleave account page on Instagram

225

11.6 @g6pictures, Twitter Post, August 13, 2015

229

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FIGURES

xi

11.7 @DrBFPalmer, Twitter Post, August 12, 2015

229

11.8 @ProfLSimmons, Twitter Post, August 12, 2015

230

12.1 Théodore Maurisset, “La Daguerreotypomanie”

237

12.2 Edward Emerson Barnard, A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Wa

238

12.3 Program for a tableaux or lantern-slides entertainment (front cover), 1878

246

12.4 Photomicrographs by Gravelle in printed promotional pamphlet showing nationally advertised products (Eberhard Faber), c. 1935

247

14.1 Sojourner Truth. I sell the shadow to support the substance. Eastern District, Michigan, 1864

276

14.2 Andrea Bowers, Trans Liberation: Building a Movement (Cece McDonald), 2016

281

14.3 Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Some Laughed Long & Hard & Loud) from the series From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–6)

282

14.4 Jonathan Bachman, “Lone activist Ieshia Evans stands her ground while offering her hands for arrest as she is charged by riot police during a protest against police brutality outside the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana, USA, 9 July 2016.”

287

17.1 Portraits of an Aboriginal woman … and Simon based on a photograph by Hubert Haselden

339

17.2 Uncle Poonthie, Aunty Belle, Aunty Irene Richards, and an unknown non-Indigenous man at One Mile, c. late 1940s – early 1950s. Aunty Joyce Kerswell collection. Courtesy Tom and Ellen Trevorrow

341

17.3 Michael Aird, “Vincent Brady leads a protest march, Brisbane, December 9, 1987”

343

17.4 John William Lindt. No. 11 Mary Ann of Ulmarra

345

17.5 Shauna Bostock-Smith in front of Mary Ann of Ulmarra in the Grafton Regional Gallery

346

19.1 Yami men in silver helmets, Taiwan, photographed by Torii Ryu ¯uzo ¯, 1897

372

19.2 Erwo Studio, Hangzhou, c. 1920

374

19.3 Weixin Studio, Shanghai

377

19.4 Unknown studio, c. 1950

379

19.5 Unknown studio, c. 1930

380

19.6 Zhou Hai, Beijing 1999 from the series Gongye de chenzong (Weight of Industry)

381

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FIGURES

19.7 Ai Weiwei, Study of Perspective, Tiananmen Square, 1995

383

19.8 Xue Zijiang, Longmen [sic] Stone Buddha, 1958

387

20.1 Dana Kyndrová, 1. Máj (1 May), from the series Komunistické slavnosti (Communist celebrations), Prague, 1983

394

20.2 Jindrˇich Štreit, Nesou pivo (They carry beer), Vrbno, 1981

396

20.3 Ivan Kyncl, Symbol Charty 77 (Charter 77 symbol), Prague, 1977–1980

397

20.4 Tono Stano, Fashion 2, 1985

402

20.5 Libuse Jarcovjáková, Máma (Mum), Prague, November 23, 2011

404

20.6 Dita Pepe, Radomir, Eliiska, Katerˇina, Ida, from the series Selfportraits with Men, 2007

405

21.1 Santu Mofokeng (b. 1956), The Black Photo Album | Look at Me 1890–1950, slide projection, 1997

413

21.2 José dos Santos Rufno, Beira: Batelão recebendo carga. Cais de desembarque. A Capitania do Porto (Beira: Loading a Lighter. Landing Pier. The Port Captain’s Offces, 1929

415

21.3 Omar Badsha, Touting for customers, Victoria Street, 1979

420

21.4 Cecilie//Geises, All Red netball team, sports felds, Usakos old location

426

21.5 Cedric Nunn, Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, 2008

428

21.6 Paul Grendon, Town centre, Usakos, 2015

429

23.1 Underwood & Underwood, The Great Sphinx and Pyramid of Chefren, Egypt, 1902

461

23.2 Underwood & Underwood, Philae, the “Pearl of Egypt,” 1902

461

23.3 T. W. Ingersoll, Sears Roebuck & Co. Chicago, Camels on the Street, Jaffa, 1904

462

23.4 The Grant Monument, Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois

466

23.5 Haidi’s Soldiers, Fez, Morocco

467

25.1 Exhibition announcement, Camera Obscured, Presentation House, Vancouver 1999

497

25.2 Sue Frause, Chihuly Glass and Garden, Northwest Room

499

25.3 Arizona State Museum, The Pottery Project: 2,000 Years—20,000 Vessels: “Mohave Water Carrier by Edward Curtis 1903,” 2014

501

25.4 Curtis Reframed advertising pamphlet, 2014

503

25.5 Diego Romero, No Pictures Please, 2014

504

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FIGURES

xiii

28.1 Audiocamera and audioscanner prototypes

551

28.2 The audioprint album and audioprint player prototypes

553

28.3 The story creator and story repository interfaces developed on the StoryBank project

554

28.4 A trio of home photo displays: Photomesh, Photoillume, and Photoswitch

557

28.5 The Pearl and 4streams photo display prototypes

558

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CONTRIBUTORS

Marta Braun teaches at Ryerson University and is Director of its graduate program in Film+Photography Preservation and Collections Management. She is author of Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey 1830–1904 (1992), Eadweard Muybridge (2010), and the children’s book Muybridge and the Riddle of Locomotion (2013). Her essays have appeared in Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe (2014), Helios, the Art of Eadweard Muybridge (2010), Musée de quai Branly; la collection (2008), and L’Art de la Photographie des origins à nos jours (2007). She has been made a fellow of the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie, Weimar Germany (IKKM), a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Ben Burbridge is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Co-Director of the Centre for Photography and Visual Culture at the University of Sussex. His curated exhibitions include Revelations: Experiments in Photography (2015) and the 2012 Brighton Photo Biennial, Agents of Change: Photography and the Politics of Space. Co-founder of Ph: The Photography Research Network and a former editor of Photoworks magazine, his writing on photography, contemporary art, and politics has been published widely. Burbridge is the editor of two books on photography—Revelations (2015) and Photography Reframed (2018; with Annebella Pollen). He is currently completing work on his frst monograph, provisionally titled Nothing Personal: Photography in the Age of Communicative Capitalism. Costanza Caraffa is Head of Photothek at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, MaxPlanck-Institut. She edited the volumes Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History (2011) and Photo Archives and the Idea of Nation (2015; with Tiziana Serena), among others, and in 2009 she initiated the Photo Archives open conference series (London and Florence 2009, New York 2011, Florence 2011, Los Angeles 2016, Oxford 2017, Florence/Abu Dhabi 2019). Between 2015 and 2018 Caraffa was coordinator of the collaborative project Photo-Objects – Photographs as (Research) Objects in Archaeology, Ethnology and Art History, and in 2018 she co-curated the exhibition Unboxing Photographs at Kunstbibliothek (Berlin). Susan A. Crane is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on thematic issues of collective memory, historical consciousness, and how historians use historical photographs as sources. She is the author of Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany (2000) and editor of Museums and Memory (2000). Crane is currently editing The Cultural History of Memory, vol. 5: The Nineteenth Century (Bloomsbury) and completing a monograph titled “ … and then Nothing Happened”: On Seeing the Past as Nothing.

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CONTRIBUTORS

xv

Margaret Denny is an independent photo historian with a PhD in Art History that she was awarded by the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2010. Denny has taught the survey of photography at colleges and universities in Chicago for over ffteen years, and presented papers at national and international conferences. American and British women in commercial photography are her area of research specialization. Her essay “Mrs. Albert Broom’s Interesting ‘Snap Shot’ Post Cards” appeared in the Museum of London exhibition catalogue Soldiers and Suffragettes: The Photography of Christina Broom (2015). In 2018 Denny collaborated on Margaret Bourke-White’s Different World exhibition and catalogue at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College (Winter Park, Florida). Elizabeth Edwards is a visual and historical anthropologist. She is Emeritus Professor of Photographic History at De Montfort University (Leicester), Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professor at VARI (the Victoria and Albert Museum Research Centre, London, 2017– 2020), Honorary Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University College London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Edwards has worked extensively on the relationships between photography, history, and anthropology. She has written over ninety papers and articles, and her monographs and edited works include The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination 1885–1912 (2012), Sensible Objects (2006), Photographs Objects Histories (2004), Raw Histories (2001), Anthropology and Photography (1992). Jae Emerling is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History in the College of Arts and Architecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He is the author of Theory for Art History and Photography: History and Theory. His work has also appeared in the Journal of Visual Culture, History of Photography, CAA Reviews, Journal of Art Historiography, and X-TRA: Contemporary Art Quarterly. He is currently working on a book about the aesthetic-historiographic concept of transmissibility. Some of this work has appeared in the books Contemporary Art about Architecture, Bergson and The Art of Immanence, a special issue of the Journal of Visual Culture entitled Architecture!, and The Dark Precursor: Deleuze and Artistic Research. David M. Frohlich is Director of Digital World Research Centre at the University of Surrey and Professor of Interaction Design. He joined the Centre in January 2005 to establish a new research agenda on new media innovation with social and cultural beneft. Prior to joining Digital World, Frohlich worked for fourteen years as a senior research scientist at HP Labs, conducting design research on the future of mobile, domestic and photographic technology. He has a PhD in psychology from the University of Sheffeld and post-doctoral training in Conversation Analysis from the University of York. Paul Frosh is a Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research spans visual culture, media aesthetics, consumer culture, and media witnessing. His books include The Poetics of Digital Media (2018), Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication (2011; edited with Amit Pinchevski), Meeting the Enemy in the Living Room: Terrorism and Communication in the Contemporary Era (2006; edited with Tamar Liebes), and The Image Factory: Consumer Culture, Photography and the Visual Content Industry (2003). He is currently researching iconic photographs and Israeli collective memory, and writing about digital visual culture.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Thierry Gervais is Associate Professor at Ryerson University and Head of Research of the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC), Toronto. Between 2007 and 2013 he was the editor-inchief of Études photographiques. He curated the exhibition Dispatch: War Photographs in Print, 1854–2008 (RIC, 2014) and co-curated exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2013), the Musée d’Orsay (2008), and the Jeu de Paume (2007). At the RIC, he organized fve symposia (2012–2018) and edited The “Public” Life of Photographs (2016), the frst volume of the academic RIC Book series published in partnership with MIT Press. His most recent book is, The Making of Visual News: A History of Photography in the Press (Bloomsbury, 2017; co-authored with Gaëlle Morel). Martin Hand is Associate Professor of Sociology at Queen’s University, Kingston (Canada), where he teaches courses on New Media, Consumer Culture, and Sociological Theory. His central research trajectory has been the unintended social and cultural consequences of digitization in everyday life. Hand’s previous publications include Big Data? (2014; co-edited with Sam Hillyard), Ubiquitous Photography (2012), Making Digital Cultures (2008), The Design of Everyday Life (co-authored, 2007), as well as articles and essays about visual culture, photography, digitization, technology, and consumption. He is currently conducting research into the mediatization of time. Louis Kaplan is Professor of History and Theory of Photography and New Media at the University of Toronto. He is the author of numerous books in photography studies including Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Biographical Writings (1995), American Exposures (2005), The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (2008), and Photography and Humour (2016). He has collaborated with artist Melissa Shiff on research-creation projects supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada that utilize the emergent technologies of augmented reality (Mapping Ararat) and virtual reality (The Imaginary Jewish Homelands of I.N. Steinberg). Kaplan serves on the editorial boards of History of Photography and Photography & Culture. Martha Langford is Research Chair and Director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and a professor of Art History at Concordia University in Montreal. Her most recent publication is an edited collection: Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfnished World (2017). Books on photography include Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums (2001), Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art (2007), and A Cold War Tourist and His Camera (2011; co-written with John Langford). Langford is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Jane Lydon is the Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History at the University of Western Australia. Her research centers upon Australia’s colonial past and its legacies in the present. Her work in partnership with European museums and Aboriginal communities has produced a website portal that provides a major heritage resource for Aboriginal communities in providing access to historical photograph collections at: https://ipp. arts.uwa.edu.au. Her books include The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the emergence of Indigenous rights (2012), and most recently she has edited Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre (2018; with Lyndall Ryan) and Visualising Human Rights (2018), which examines the cultural impact of the framework of human rights through visual culture.

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CONTRIBUTORS

xvii

Melissa Miles is a Professor of Art History and Theory at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research centers on the history and theory of photography, with a particular focus on its connections to politics and intercultural relations. She is author of Photography, Truth and Reconciliation (2019), Pacifc Exposures: Photography and the Australia-Japan Relationship (2018; with Robin Gerster), The Language of Light and Dark: Light and Place in Australian Photography (2015), The Burning Mirror: Photography in an Ambivalent Light (2008), and co-editor of The Culture of Photography in Public Space (with Anne Marsh and Daniel Palmer, 2015). Oliver Moore is Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Groningen. He studied at the universities of London, Cambridge, and Fudan (Shanghai), taught at the universities of Leiden and Kyoto, and curated collections of Chinese art and material culture at the British Museum and the Dutch National Museum of Ethnology. He is the author of Rituals of Recruitment in Tang China (2004), a social history of early Chinese civil service examinations, as well as essays on early and modern Chinese art, science, and society. His current project, Photography’s Chinese Metaphors, a study of photography’s early concepts and reception in China, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury. Darren Newbury is Professor of Photographic History and Director of Postgraduate Studies (Arts and Humanities) at the University of Brighton. He is the author of Defant Images: Photography and Apartheid South Africa (2009) and People Apart: 1950s Cape Town Revisited. Photographs by Bryan Heseltine (2013); and co-editor of The African Photographic Archive: Research and Curatorial Strategies (2015; with Christopher Morton) and a Special Issue of Visual Studies on “Photography and African Futures” (2017; with Richard Vokes). Newbury was editor of the international journal Visual Studies from 2003 to 2015, and has curated exhibitions at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and District Six Museum (Cape Town). Douglas Nickel is the Andrea V. Rosenthal Professor of Modern Art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Prior to his arrival at Brown, he served as a curator in the Photography Department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and as director of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, Arizona. His publications include Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian Photographer Abroad (2004), Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception (1999), and Snapshots: The Photography of Everyday Life, 1888–present (1998). Sarah Parsons is an associate professor in Art History and Visual Culture at York University, Toronto. She specializes in the history of photography and is the editor of a volume of essays by Abigail Solomon-Godeau entitled Photography After Photography: Gender, Genre, and History (2017) and of Emergence: Contemporary Canadian Photography (2009). Parsons’s research on Susan Sontag, Sally Mann, and William Notman has been published in the journals History of Photography, Photography & Culture, and at the Art Canada Institute online. She is co-editor of Photography & Culture and a founding member of the Toronto Photography Seminar. Gil Pasternak is Reader in Social and Political Photographic Cultures in the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University (UK). His research investigates intersections of photography with sociopolitical realities and cultural heritage

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xviii

CONTRIBUTORS

practices, especially in Israeli society, twentieth-century Poland, and the histories of Polish Jewry from the interwar to the post-communist era. Currently fnalizing a monograph on Israel’s sociopolitical photographic cultures, he previously published Visioning Israel– Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Confict (2020), Visual Conficts: On the Formation of Political Memory in the History of Art and Visual Cultures (2011; with Paul Fox), and a special issue of Photography & Culture titled “Photography in Transitioning European Communist and Post-Communist Histories” (2019). Pasternak is also co-convener of Ph: The Photography Research Network and a member of the advisory board for Apna Heritage Archive and the journal Photography & Culture. Earlier in life, Pasternak worked as photojournalist and photography archivist, as well as an editorial and fne art photographer. Luc Pauwels is Professor of Visual Research Methods at the University of Antwerp, Founder and Director of the Visual & Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi) and VicePresident Research of the “Visual Sociology” Research Committee of the International Sociological Association (ISA). He has published widely on visual research methodologies, visual ethics, family photography, website analysis, anthropological flmmaking, visual corporate culture, urban culture, and scientifc visualization. Pauwels’s books include: Visual Cultures of Science (2006), The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods (2011; with E. Margolis), and Reframing Visual Social Science: Towards a More Visual Sociology and Anthropology (2015). He is on the editorial board of the journals Visual Studies, Visual Communication, and Journal of Visual Literacy. Eva Pluharˇová-Grigiene˙ is an Associate Lecturer in Art History at Europa-Universität Flensburg. Her current research focuses on social documentary photography in socialist Central Europe in its global contexts. Among other institutions, she has taught at Humboldt University Berlin and provided consultancy for the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. She is the author of Die Migration der Bilder. Das Memelgebiet in fotografsch illustrierten Büchern, 1889–1991 (2017) and has published in German, British, Polish, Lithuanian, and Czech journals, exhibition catalogues, and edited volumes. Annebella Pollen is Principal Lecturer in the History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton, where she teaches and researches visual and material culture. Her major publications include Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life (2015) and a study of an interwar artist-led youth movement, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians (2015) with an accompanying 2015–16 exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery (London). Pollen has also edited Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice (2015; with Charlotte Nicklas) and Photography Reframed: New Visions in Contemporary Photographic Culture (2018; with Ben Burbridge). Christina Riggs is a historian of archaeology, photography, and ancient Egyptian art. She is Professor of the History of Art and Archaeology at the University of East Anglia and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University. Her books include Photographing Tutankhamun: Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and the Archive (2018), Tutankhamun: The Original Photographs (2017), and Unwrapping Ancient Egypt (2014). Riggs’s work on the photographic archive of the Tutankhamun excavation formed the basis of the exhibition Photographing Tutankhamun, together with her Wordpress blog of the same name.

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CONTRIBUTORS

xix

Daniel Rubinstein is Reader in Philosophy and the Image at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. Internationally recognized for his writings on the digital image in the context of contemporary philosophy, modern science, and online platforms, his research spans the entangled dimensions of art, media, and biopolitics. His new book Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in Digital Culture (2019) examines the radically fractal nature of images with a specifc link to desire and memory. Rubinstein is the founding editor of the journal Philosophy of Photography, and Course Leader of MA Contemporary Photography: Practices and Philosophies. Joan M. Schwartz is a historical geographer, photographic historian, and archival theorist. She is Professor and Head, Department of Art History and Art Conservation at Queen’s University, Kingston (Canada), where she teaches courses in the history of photography and nineteenth-century visual culture. From 1977 to 2003, Schwartz was a specialist in Photography Acquisition and Research at the National Archives of Canada, Ottawa. Her research and writing focus on the power of archives and photographs to shape notions of place and identity. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and the Society of American Archivists. Stephen Sheehi is the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Chair of Middle East Studies at the College of William and Mary (Virginia). He is the author of Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–1910 (2016), Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims (2011), and Foundations of Modern Arab Identity (2004). He is also a co-author of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Theories and Practice of Psychoanalysis in Palestine (forthcoming; with Lara Sheehi) and Camera Palaestina: Photographic Witnessing in the Albums of Wasif Jawharriyeh (forthcoming; with Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar). Currently, Sheehi is developing the research project “Decolonizing Photography.” Jennifer Tucker is a cultural historian of science specializing in the study of technology, law, photography, and visual culture. The author of Nature Exposed: Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Science (2006), she also has published numerous articles and book chapters and recently completed a book manuscript about photography and facial likeness in the Victorian courtroom. Her current projects include a study of photographic chemistry and the Victorian alkali industry. The editor in 2009 of an issue of History and Theory about photography and history, she is co-editor of a forthcoming Photography and Law Reader and served as co-editor of “Political Histories of Technoscience” for Radical History Review.

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PREFACE

Just like the history of photography, the story of The Handbook of Photography Studies has more than one beginning. On a practical level, the decision to start working on a book proposal came about in June 2015, during a conversation I had with Davida Forbes, who at the time commissioned photography titles for Bloomsbury Publishing. Davida attended that year’s international conference that colleagues and I organize annually in the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University in Leicester (United Kingdom), where I have taught and worked with students of all academic levels since 2013. The conference was dedicated to the exploration of photography in print. In hindsight it probably provided an appropriate background for the discussion Davida and I were having around the question of what themes and topics might scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences want to read about in a printed volume on photography studies. To fnd an answer, I reminded myself of the many questions I carried around when I studied the history and theory of photography and photographic practice during my bachelor and master’s education. I also refected on all the things I tried to understand when I wanted to learn how to work with photographs as social, cultural, and historical primary research sources during my years as a doctoral research student. Although already then I knew that one volume could not possibly satisfy all my interests, I remember clearly how much I was hoping to walk into the library one day and fnd a book that would help me understand: how do photography scholars go about researching; how do they evaluate the sources they encounter; what informs their thought processes; how do they put theory into practice; how do they employ photography in disciplines not so familiar to me; what research approaches are “in”; how come other approaches are all of a sudden “out”; did everyone around the world understand and practice photography the same way throughout the medium’s history; does everyone understand and practice photography the same way in our time; and so on and so forth. Many of these questions ended up informing the way I decided to structure the handbook and the choices I had to make about its scope. It is, therefore, safe to say that my wish to have such a book when I had just begun my journey into the academic study of photography—and also later, when my research interests gradually shifted—can probably be considered as another beginning for the story of the present volume. Editing a book with only one’s own interests in mind is probably never a good idea, however. To keep myself in check as it were, I considered the courses and modules I have delivered since I began working in academia in 2006. I also brought to mind as many recollections as I was able of the questions my students have raised during sessions and oneto-one meetings over the years. I asked myself what worked well, what was less effective, what students struggled with most, what could help them make additional progress, and what kinds of informative texts I wish I could have shared with them. As earlier in life I worked as a photojournalist, photography archivist, and editorial and commercial photographer, and because I also practiced and exhibited fne art photography, I have had

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the privilege of working with students in diverse academic felds since I joined academia. Some of them trained as professional and fne art photographers. Others specialized in history and theory of photography. Still others researched social, cultural, and political histories as well as other realities with photographs. Bearing in mind the curiosities, needs, and skill sets of this distinct range of students has led me to bring into the handbook an equally diverse range of scholarly voices from discrete academic backgrounds in order to showcase and communicate the intellectual wealth of the feld of photography studies. In this sense, it could be said that each of the student cohorts I have worked with so far marks another beginning moment in the story of this handbook. Despite my attempt to make this volume as wide ranging and inclusive as possible, it would seem that every book must have its word and page limit. Large, thick, and heavy as it may be, this handbook, similar to any other, was mainly designed to offer a detailed but still broad overview of the feld it covers. It discusses its histories and it explains the key methodologies feld scholars have employed. It considers a diverse range of historical and current photographic technologies and practices. It also gives generous information about the feld’s subjects of interest. Although there are indeed other themes and topics I had to either leave out completely or play down, so to speak, the handbook makes the feld’s numerous excitements clear and accessible, demonstrating why photography has mattered so much since its appearance, why it still greatly matters today, and how we might go about studying and understanding its signifcance even better. Anyone who might have edited an academic book, especially of a large scale such as this handbook, will know all too well how much time and work it takes to endeavor to make it read and fow as if every part, chapter, paragraph, and word has fallen into place naturally. Truth be told, the result often conceals enormous efforts that even most of the contributors to the publication are not aware of, as they are usually only familiar with what they experienced while writing their chapters and responding to the editor’s comments, queries, and requests. Editors greatly care about their contributors and the satisfaction of those. At the same time, they have many other responsibilities to attend to that go beyond their work on the texts submitted by the authors. Conceptualizing, commissioning, negotiating, tweaking, accommodating, and persuading are but some of the activities I carried out to bring the idea of this handbook to fruition, always keeping in mind the needs of interested readers above anything else. The reason I refer to my editorial duties and the challenges they entailed is because one can rarely complete such a project without the help and assistance of others. The project of which the outcome is this volume is no different and, indeed, along the way I had the honor of meeting, working with, and consulting some magnifcent people who certainly deserve special mention. A lineup of people at Bloomsbury Publishing have provided me with help and sound advice throughout the four-year period of my work on the volume. I am grateful to each one of them, but two were particularly instrumental at key moments, and they deserve a more personal acknowledgement in my opinion. For her unconditional support and guidance from the moment I began writing the proposal for this volume and until the latter was commissioned, the frst of them is Davida Forbes, whom I mentioned earlier. The second is Sophie Tann, who assisted me especially during the year leading to publication of the volume. I am thankful to Sophie for being always ready to make time to address my questions and provide me with the help I needed in order to keep the production of this volume on track.

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PREFACE

Next, I would like to thank all the chapter authors across this volume, not least for working with me to make their fabulous contributions even stronger and clearer. It is of course above all because of their commitment that I was able to turn the dream of this volume into a reality. In particular I want to thank Martha Langford, Jane Lydon, and Douglas Nickel for providing me assistance and good advice throughout the process, whether by recommending authors, sharing impressions, or discussing ideas. I am especially grateful to Elizabeth Edwards with whom I have had the pleasure of working at the Photographic History Research Centre. Our countless conversations about this handbook and about photography more broadly have certainly informed many of my editorial choices and decisions regarding the selection of authors, themes, and topics included here. If the volume still has any faws, however, let all the blame be on me. Many thanks must also go to all individuals, institutions, and organizations who have granted permission to include copies of the images reproduced in the volume. The authors and I have made every effort to obtain permission to publish copyright material but if for one reason or another a request has not been received, the copyright holder should get in touch with the publisher. Now that work on this volume is complete I can say with confdence that it offers a series of thoroughly informative introductions to the highly diverse feld of photography studies and its interests. As on many levels it is the volume I have always wanted to have to teach from, I dedicate it to all the bachelor, master’s, and doctoral students I have worked with at University College London, Chelsea College of Arts, the University of Huddersfeld, and De Montfort University, as well as to those I will work with in the future. Gil Pasternak, Editor, 2019

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Introduction Photography Studies’ Prehistory, Formation, and Evolution GIL PASTERNAK

As recently as less than half a century ago analytical photographic literature was sparse, and dedicated photography scholars were uncommon. Writings about photography from that time predominantly focused on issues related to techniques of image production and the organization or meaning of visual content (Newhall 1964; Szarkowski 1966, 1978; Berger 1972; Sontag 1973). United by their approach to photography as a universally coherent entity, they tended to raise questions concerning the difference between photographic images and other image types, such as paintings, drawings, and engravings. Most of them also included critical evaluations of the photographic medium’s complex relationship with reality and the aesthetic of Realism. The semi-polemic nature of these writings cultivated some readership, especially among philosophers, journalists, and art critiques. Scholars and the world of academia, however, remained largely uninterested in the study of photography, and academic publishers usually showed no interest in publishing on the subject. Today, at the end of the second decade of the twenty-frst century, this reality could not be more remote. Photographic scholarship is readily available and the number of self-identifying photography scholars is steadily increasing. While this statement may primarily apply to the Anglosphere, a similar situation is rapidly becoming noticeable in Western Europe, and Eastern and Central European as well as Middle Eastern scholars are also following suit. Whether in North America, Australia, South Africa, the Middle East, Western, Central, or Eastern Europe, photography scholars come from a diverse range of academic disciplines, from history and art history to anthropology, archaeology to sociology, literature to geography, and others. They also come from many subject areas, such as visual culture, area studies, politics, museum studies, cultural heritage, and gender studies. As such they write on topics concerning recent as well as more distant photographic practices, uses, and cultures, rejecting the perception of photography as a coherent and predictable medium. Instead, their works suggest that social processes, cultural customs, and relational connections are at the very heart of the entire photographic apparatus. Current scholarship considers these as the defning factors of photography’s many manifestations, uses, practices, and methods of distribution. The fact that discussions in the feld are now frst and foremost informed by discourses that underpin research in academic disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences has also infuenced the way in which photography scholars write

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THE HANDBOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIES

about photography. They have largely turned away from mere criticism and polemics toward inductive research and argumentation strategies. So, they delineate the diverse uses of photography and the different functionalities that photographs serve. Thus, the study of photography not only emerges out of academic interest in other sociocultural phenomena, but it also transforms the ways scholars conduct research into such phenomena. At the turn of the twenty-frst century, in other words, the world of academia is open to the study of photography and to the use of photographs as sources. Encountering essays on photographic records and data collection in textbooks on qualitative research methods is no longer the exception (e.g., Pink 2001: 49–76; Tinkler 2013; Rose 2016). With this signifcant growing interest in photography and the subsequent increase in photographic scholarship, photography studies has become fully absorbed into the knowledge economy. Leading European, North American, and British academic publishers either have a subject category dedicated to photography in its broader sense, or at least they compile book series designated to scholarship in the feld. Many of them solicit monographs and edited volumes on photography and photographic historiography. Some also distribute subject-specifc journals, including History of Photography, Photography & Culture, Photographies, and Philosophy of Photography, and additional titles also exist, both in English and other languages. Where publishers have not yet established dedicated journals, they have at least expanded the scope of their subject-related journals to include photography as an additional theme, and invited feld experts to join these journal editorial advisory boards. So, how has the feld of photography studies gained prominence in academia and the cultural industry? What has it been concerned with? Where is it situated in the academy, and what contributions has it made to society and culture more broadly? Beginning with this very introduction, The Handbook of Photography Studies answers these and other questions through examinations of the involvement of photography in academic research, alongside comprehensive discussions of scholarly research on photography. Its main intention is to present a broad view of the feld and provide the increasing number of students of photography with informative knowledge about the multifaceted issues and debates that feld scholars have grappled with since its formation. Along the way, the volume introduces some of the feld’s pioneering and innovative studies, together with its prevalent research themes and approaches. Their discussion showcases the wide range of photographic practices and applications that have constituted the feld’s centers of attention, foregrounding some of the social and cultural meanings that photographs acquired at different moments in time and in different places. One can of course fnd numerous other introductory volumes to the feld, some of which have become classic references since their publication: Ben Burbridge and Annebelle Pollen’s edited volume Photography Reframed: New Visions in Contemporary Photographic Culture (2018); David Bate’s Photography: The Key Concepts (2009), at the time of writing in its second edition of 2016; Liz Wells’s edited volume Photography: A Critical Introduction (1996), now in its ffth edition of 2015; Mary Warner Marien’s Photography: A Cultural History (2002), now in its fourth edition of 2014; Stephen Bull’s Photography (2009); Liz Wells’s edited collection The Photography Reader (2002), now in its second edition of 2019; among many others. The Handbook of Photography Studies is unique in its attempt to bring together specialist contributors

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from the feld’s widest possible range of academic environments while providing them with a relatively generous spac