| Photographs, Museums, Collections: Between Art and Information Contributor(s): Edwards, Elizabeth (Editor), Morton, Christopher (Editor) |
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ISBN: 1472524926 ISBN-13: 9781472524928 Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic OUR PRICE: $128.70 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 2015 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Photography | History - Art | Museum Studies - Business & Economics | Museum Administration And Museology |
| Dewey: 770.74 |
| LCCN: 2014043584 |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.1" W x 9.2" (1.70 lbs) 256 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The status of photographs in the history of museum collections is a complex one. From its very beginnings the double capacity of photography - as a tool for making a visual record on the one hand and an aesthetic form in its own right on the other - has created tensions about its place in the hierarchy of museum objects. While major collections of 'art' photography have grown in status and visibility, photographs not designated 'art' are often invisible in museums. Yet almost every museum has photographs as part of its ecosystem, gathered as information, corroboration or documentation, shaping the understanding of other classes of objects, and many of these collections remain uncatalogued and their significance unrecognised. This volume presents a series of case studies on the historical collecting and usage of photographs in museums. Using critically informed empirical investigation, it explores substantive and historiographical questions such as what is the historical patterning in the way photographs have been produced, collected and retained by museums? How do categories of the aesthetic and evidential shape the history of collecting photographs? What has been the work of photographs in museums? What does an understanding of photograph collections add to our understanding of collections history more broadly? What are the methodological demands of research on photograph collections? The case studies cover a wide range of museums and collection types, from art galleries to maritime museums, national collections to local history museums, and international perspectives including Cuba, France, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. Together they offer a fascinating insight into both the history of collections and collecting, and into the practices and poetics of archives across a range of disciplines, including the history of science, museum studies, archaeology and anthropology. |
Contributor Bio(s): Morton, Christopher: - Dr Christopher Morton is Curator of Photograph and Manuscript Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Departmental Lecturer in Visual and Material Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. He is co-editor (with Elizabeth Edwards) of Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame (2009), and the author of numerous articles on photography and anthropology, especially in Africa. Edwards, Elizabeth: - Professor Elizabeth Edwards is Research Professor of Photographic History and Director of the Photographic History Research Centre. A visual and historical anthropologist, she has worked extensively on the relationships between photography, anthropology and history in cross-cultural environments and on the social practices of photography. Her monographs and edited works include Anthropology and Photography (1992), Raw Histories (2001), Photographs Objects Histories (2004), Sensible Objects (2006), Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame (2009) and most recently The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination 1885-1918, (2012). She has published over 70 essays in journals and exhibition catalogues over the years and was recently featured in 50 Key Writers on Photography (2013). She is on the board of major journals in the field including Visual Studies and History of Photography. She recently completed a major HERA/European-funded project on the role of the photographic legacy of the colonial past in contemporary Europe (http//: photoclec.dmu.ac.uk). |