Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums

by Elizabeth Edwards

Photographs have had an integral and complex role in many anthropological contexts, from fieldwork to museum exhibitions. This book explores how approaching anthropological photographs as 'history' can offer both theoretical and empirical insights into these roles. Photographs are thought to make problematic history because of their ambiguity and 'rawness'. In short, they have too many meanings. The author refutes this prejudice by exploring, through a series of case studies, precisely the potential of this raw quality to open up new perspectives. Taking the nature of photography as her starting point, the author argues that photographs are not merely pictures of things but are part of a dynamic and fluid historical dialogue, which is active not only in the creation of the photograph but in its subsequent social biography in archive and museum spaces, past and present. In this context, the book challenges any uniform view of anthropological photography and its resulting archives. Drawing on a variety of examples, largely from the Pacific, the book demonstrates how close readings of photographs reveal not only western agendas, but also many layers of differing historical and cross-cultural experiences. That is, photographs can 'spring leaks' to show an alternative viewpoint. These themes are developed further by examining the dynamics of photographs and issues around them as used by contemporary artists and curators and presented to an increasingly varied public. This book convincingly demonstrates photographs' potential to articulate histories other than those of their immediate appearances, a potential that can no longer be neglected by scholars and institutions.

Genres: Photography, Anthropology, Ethnography

284 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2001

About the author

Elizabeth^^Edwards

A visual and historical anthropologist, Professor Edwards has worked extensively on the relationships between photography, anthropology and history, on the social practices of photography, on the materiality of photographs and on photography and historical imagination. She has previously held posts as Curator of Photographs at Pitt Rivers Museum and lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Oxford, and at the University of the Arts London. In addition to major monographs, she has published over 80 essays in journals and exhibition catalogues over the years, is on the board of major journals in the field including Visual Studies and History of Photography. She serves on numerous academic committees and peer-review colleges, was Vice-President of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2009-12 and in spring 2012 held a Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham. With colleagues in the Netherlands and Norway, she undertook a major HERA/European-funded project on the role of the photographic legacy of the colonial past in contemporary Europe. She is currently working on late nineteenth and early twentieth century photographic societies and networks of photographic knowledge, on the market in ‘ethnographic’ photographs across scientific and popular domains in the nineteenth century, and the relationship between photography and historical method.

Reviews

[Jenn Kause · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the chapter on salvage ethnography- very applicable to my research but also how past anthropologists such as Malinowski used reenactment and what that means for museums using those photographs or how to approach that topic of “manipulated culture”.