Book synopsis: This is the first volume to explore the place of photography in archaeology: the parallel histories of the two fields, their similarities and differences, and their current and future relationships. Since its earliest beginnings, photography has been innately archaeological. Its ability to freeze a moment of time gives photographic images an uncanny quality, whilst also allowing them to be a uniquely valuable recording tool. Photography has been a central element of archaeological method and practice since the late 19th century, and yet the apparent neutrality and passive objectivity of photographic images in the creation of archaeological knowledge is rarely interrogated. Meanwhile, archaeology's photographic character – the significance of the visual, of documentation, and of intervention in temporal process – remains even less explored. Digital technology has made photography both ubiquitous and ephemeral, questioning the status and authenticity of the image as material archive. Thus, despite their shared histories and present commonalities, these various intimate connections between archaeology and photography remain under-explored.
This volume will mark a watershed in the emergence of a new generation of studies of archaeological photography, bringing together new studies of archaeological photography from leading researchers in the field, both of historical photographs in archives, and of contemporary practice. It explores the legacy of historical photography on contemporary archaeological fieldwork and image-making, and takes stock of what the vision for the future relationship between archaeology and photography might be, through seven key themes – time, materials, fieldwork, representation, documentation and the archive, and the profilmic
