Archaeology and photography: time, objectivity and archive

Book synopsis: Does a photograph freeze a moment of time? What does it mean to treat a photographic image as an artefact? In the visual culture of the 21st century, do new digital and social forms change the status of photography as archival or objective – or are they revealing something more fundamental about photography's longstanding relationships with time and knowledge? Archaeology and Photography imagines a new kind of Visual Archaeology that tackles these questions. The book reassesses the central place of Photography as an archaeological method, and re-wires our cross-disciplinary conceptions of time, objectivity and archives, from the History of Art to the History of Science. Through twelve new wide-ranging and challenging studies from an emerging generation of archaeological thinkers, Archaeology and Photography introduces new approaches to historical photographs in museums and to contemporary photographic practice in the field. The book re-frames the relationship between Photography and Archaeology, past and present, as more than a metaphor or an analogy – but a shared vision. Archaeology and Photography calls for a change in how we think about photography and time. It argues that new archaeological accounts of duration and presence can replace older conceptions of the photograph as a snapshot or remnant received in the present. The book challenges us to imagine Photography, like Archaeology, not as a representation of the past and the reception of traces in the present but as an ongoing transformation of objectivity and archive. Archaeology and Photography will prove indispensable to students, researchers and practitioners in History, Photography, Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies and Museum and Heritage Studies