Description
Book SynopsisAlmost all museums hold photographs in their collections, and museum professionals and their audiences engage with photographs in a myriad of ways. Yet despite some three decades of critical museology and photographic theory, and an extensive debate on the politics of representation, outside art museums, almost no critical attention has been given specifically to the roles, purposes and lives of these photographs within museums. This book brings into focus the ubiquitous yet entirely unconsidered work that photographs are put to in museums. The authors'' argument is that there is an economy of photographs in museums which is integral to the processes of the museum, and integral to the understanding of museums. The international contributors, drawn from curators and academics, reflect a range of visual and museological expertise. After an introduction setting out the range of questions and problems, the first part addresses broad curatorial strategies and ways of thinking about ph
Trade Review’This most needed volume represents a highly inspiring investigation into the role of photography as object and tool of representation in museums and archives today. Through a comprehensive selection of contributions by an interdisciplinary variety of authors - all drawing on hands-on experience - this volume fills up a void in photography and cultural studies. It is a must-read for everyone working with the materiality and meaning of photography.’ Mette Sandbye, University of Copenhagen, Denmark ’We have been needing a book like this for a long time. Looking at what photographs do, and could do, in museums, it beautifully fills a gap that has for too long stayed open in the literature on museums, museum practice, representation and photographs. On these pages we see photographs as acts of remembrance, as haunting, as absent, as representational forms and as much more besides. And throughout, this essential new volume not only explores the work of photographs in museums, but also makes a significant contribution to far wider debates on the processes of representation.’ Sandra Dudley, University of Leicester, UK
Table of ContentsList of Figures, Notes on Contributors, Acknowledgements, Introduction, The Affective Photograph, Curatorial Strategies 1: Working Images, Curatorial Strategies 2: Photographi Art Works, Curatorial Strategies 3: Contested Stories, Working In The Real World, Digital Environments and Photograph Collections, Index
