Practising photography: an archive, a study, some photographs and a researcher (original) (raw)

This paper begins from the assumption that the meanings of a photograph are established through its uses. This point has been well made by a number of historical geographers in recent arguments for the importance of photography as a record of historicallyspecific ways of seeing the world. This paper, however, extends that argument, and focuses on the relationships between the photograph and the historical geographer. Drawing on my own experiences of working in the Print Room of the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at photographs taken by Lady Hawarden in the mid-nineteenth century, I discuss the effects of that archive both on them and on myself as a researcher. I argue that that archive is a powerful space which to a certain degree allies the visual and spatial resources of the photographs and the research practice of the historical geographer to its own discipline; but I also argue that its discipline can be disrupted by its own contradictory discourses and by other relationships between researcher and the photographs. In conclusion, I ask for more consideration to be given to contemporary research practice in relation to historical photographs. Historical geographers cannot themselves claim to be merely the descriptive recorders of history and geography if they wish to deny this status to photographs.