Photographic practices in museum archaeology

Abstract

This chapter highlights the role of photographs as working objects in archaeological museums by elaborating on practices with and on them in a historical focus. It explores these themes with reference to case studies of German (classical) archaeology, including the Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. First, it will address the very physical engagement with photographs by annotating, retouching, and cutting. Further, it focuses on the functions of photographs in archaeological exhibition displays in the past and today. It discusses how photo archives in archaeology are by no means innocent places: naming and cataloguing of photographs give evidence of the contested history of archaeology and its difficult heritage—a concern which transfers to the digital realm. Colonial legacies, for instance in classifying artefacts and in reference systems, continue into a digital image file’s metadata. In conclusion, the chapter reflects what happens to those collections of analogue photographs nowadays if they are subject to historization and digitization.