Filip Mitricevic, "The Ways in Which I Never Thought About My Great-Grandfather: An Essay on the Potentials of Photography as a Historical Document," Currents of History 3/2020 (2020), 247-268. (original) (raw)
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This paper is on the trail of answering the theoretical question of the potential of photography as a historical source. The paper does not aim for a historical reconstruction in the classical sense but is an attempt to show the reach of this visual media in historical research, based on the correlation of a sample of family photographs, oral history, and theory. By employing the author’s “personal voice,” the paper attempts to correlate particularities with a broader context and general theory. The author uses photographs of his great-grandfather, made at a prisoner-of-war camp during the World War II, to show the limitations of photography as a historical source.
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European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2002
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