Photographs objects histories : on the materiality of images

Photography in anthropology., Photographs, Material culture.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-218) and index.
We cite from the cover:
"This innovative volume explores the idea that while photographs are images, they are also objects, and this materiality is integral to their meaning and use. It explores the different institutional, political, religious and domestic spheres in which photographs exist through a diverse range of international case studies - from the Netherlands. North America and Australia to Japan, Romania and Tibet All show that physical properties, the nature of use and the cultural formations in which the photographs function make their 'objectness' central to how we can understand them in new ways.
The contributors come from disciplines including history of photography, visual anthropology and art history, and they have all developed original methodological strategies to engage with the materiality of photographic images. Inspiring and instructive, the book can be used both as a much-needed survey of this exciting new area of investigation, and as a handbook for the student or academic on how to understand photographs as objects in diverse contexts.
Elizabeth Edwards is Head of Photograph Collections. Pitt Rivers Museum. Lecturer in Visual Anthropology, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford and holds a Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of the Arts London. Her most recent book is Raw Histories (2001)
Janice Hart is Head of Research at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, and course director for the MA in Photography: History and Culture. She curates exhibitions and writes on the history of
photography and contemporary art practice."
Contents:
1. ELIZABETH EDWARDS AND JANICE HART: Introduction: photographs as objects ;
2. JOAN M. SCHWARTZ: Un beau souvenir du Canada: object, image, symbolic space ;
3. GEOFFREY BATCHEN: Ere the substance fade: photography and hair jewellery ;
4. ELIZABETH EDWARDS AND JANICE HART: Mixed box: the cultural biography of a box of 'ethnographic' photographs ;
5. GLENN WILLUMSON: Making meaning: displaced materiality in the library and art museum ;
6. ALISON NORDSTRÖM: Making a journey: the Tupper scrapbooks and the travel they describe ;
7. SUSAN LEGÊNE: Photographic playing cards and the colonial metaphor: teaching the Dutch colonial culture ;
8. NUNO PORTO: 'Under the gaze of the ancestors': photographs and performance in colonial Angola ;
9. CLARE HARRIS: The photograph reincarnate: the dynamics of Tibetan relationships with photography ;
10. GABRIEL HANGANU: 'Photo-cross': the political and devotional lives of a Romanian Orthodox photograph ;
11. RICHARD CHALFEN AND MAI MURUI: Print Club photography in Japan: framing social relationships ;
12. JOANNA SASSOON: Photographic materiality in the age of digital reproduction ;
References ; Index.