The Proof of the Picture

The author analyses the use that has been made of albums of
19th-century slum-housing in late 19th century Leeds for
enabling bills to permit a inner-city clearance scheme. From
Tagg's interview, preceding this article, (see 3022) we abstract
the following remarks: ""Historians of housing used these albums
of photographs as illustrations allegedly showing us what
19th-century housing was like. None seemed to have asked about
the photographs as a historical practice. As historians, they
were caught in the notion of the photograph as evidence, which
was precisely the notion these photographs tried to establish in
their currency''. (...) ""Photography as an instrumentality of
power, mobilized by the local Medical Officer of Health and the
local engineer as a means of intruding into the area was a trace
of a kind of power, but it was not entirely succesful: the
photographers never got in anyone's house. The photographs were
then to be used to gain the power literally to knock down the
area, to un-house the inhabitants. To do that, however, the
photographs had to be established as real; they did not already
possess an evidential value''. (...) ""It was a chance actually
to look at the historical negotiation of the idea that
photographs are self-evident''.