Liliana Gómez
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Towards a History through Photography. An Introduction
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Abstract
Gómez, Liliana. “Towards a History through Photography. An Introduction“ Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, Tel Aviv University, 2015, vol. 26, no. 2, 7-16.
FAQs
AI
What role did photography play in shaping historical narratives since the 1830s?
The study indicates that photography introduced an epistemic divide by providing 'truthful' visual accounts of historical events, competing directly with traditional historiography since its inception in the 1830s.
How has the perception of photography evolved within historical discourse?
Early perceptions of photography as an inferior medium have shifted, particularly after its widespread use established it as a credible source for historical studies, as noted by Clément Chéroux.
What implications does photography have for understanding subaltern narratives?
Photography acts as a privileged medium that potentially elevates subaltern voices, as demonstrated by Greg Grandin's analysis of indigenous representations in the Guatemalan context.
What challenges exist in integrating photography into historical research methodologies?
The integration is complicated by lingering doubts about the photograph's reliability and its association with subjective visualities, as articulated by Tomás Pérez Vejo.
How does the tension between facts and meanings affect photographic interpretation?
Siegfried Kracauer highlights that photographs embody a 'tension' between objective visual details and their subjective meanings, shaping their interpretation within historical contexts.
References (31)
- Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History: Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), p. xiv.
- Pierre Nora cit. Ilsen About and Clément Chéroux, Fotografie und Geschichte (Leipzig: Institut für Buchkunst, 2004), p. 10 (my translation).
- Ilsen About and Clément Chéroux, Fotografie und Geschichte (Leipzig: Institut für Buchkunst, 2004), p. 97 (my translation).
- See here also Tomás Pérez Vejo, "¿Se puede escribir historia a partir de imágenes? El historiador y las fuentes icónicas", Memoria y sociedad, 16: 32 (2012), pp. 17-30.
- I refer here in particular to the early interventions by Robert Levine that stimulated a broader discussion about the relationship between photography and history in Latin America: Robert Levine, Images of History: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Latin American Photographs as Documents (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989).
- Robert Levine, "Windows on Latin America: Understanding Society through Photo- graphs," Special Issue South Eastern Latin Americanist (June-Sept. 1987).
- Pérez Vejo, "¿Se puede escribir historia a partir de imágenes? El historiador y las fuentes icónicas," p. 20.
- Ibid.
- Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 57.
- Monika Walter, "Material," in Karlheinz Barck (ed.), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001), p. 883 (my translation).
- Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, p. xiv. See also Siegfried Kracauer, His- tory: The Last Things before the Last (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
- Jorge Coronado, "Toward Agency: Photography and Everyday Subjects in Cuzco, 1900- 1940," Latin American Perspectives, 36: 3 (2009), p. 124.
- Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, p. xvi.
- Nora cit. About and Chéroux, Fotografie und Geschichte, p. 42 (my translation).
- Pérez Vejo, "¿Se puede escribir historia a partir de imágenes?", p. 20. 15 Ibid., p. 22.
- Ibid., p. 27. See also Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
- See here W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995).
- Jens Andermann, The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007).
- See here for instance Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Peterson, Photography's Other Histories (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003);
- Greg Grandin, "Can the Subaltern Be Seen? Photography and the Effects of Nationalism," Hispanic American Historical Review, 84: 1 (2004), pp. 83-111.
- Coronado, "Toward Agency," pp. 119-135.
- See also Jorge Coronado's argument on the diverse use of Andean photography in differ- ent social classes as an indicator for "photography's ubiquity and its attendant presence in spaces and with social actors with which lettered indigenismo often did not come into contact." Coronado, "Toward Agency," p. 128.
- Jacques Derrida, Grammatologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), p. 258. 25
- Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, p. xv.
- Heike Schlie, "Bemerkungen zur juridischen, epistemologischen und medialen Wertig- keit des Zeugnisses," in Schlie and Wolfram Drews (eds.), Zeugnis und Zeugenschaft. Perspektiven aus der Vormoderne (Munich, Wilhelm Fink, 2011), p. 26.
- See here Oliver Scholz, "Das Zeugnis anderer -Sozialer Akt und Erkenntnisquelle," in Sibylle Schmidt, Sybille Krämer and Ramon Voges (eds.), Politik der Zeugenschaft. Zur Kritik einer Wissenspraxis (Bielefeld: transcript, 2011), pp. 23-45.
- Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), p. 252.
- See here Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography (New York: Zone Books, 2008).
- Peter Geimer and Michael Hagner, "Vergangenheit im Bild. Einleitende Bemerkungen," in Geimer and Michael Hagner (eds.), Nachleben und Rekonstruktion. Vergangenheit im Bild (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), p. 11 (my translation).
- Ibid., p. 11 (my translation).
- Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, p. xvii.