Photography and Archaeology

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Description

In Photography and Archaeology, Frederick Bohrer examines some of history's most famous archaeological excavations, as well as lesser-known and previously unpublished finds, from the Mediterranean, Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas, and the ways these sites have been represented in photographs. Bohrer shows how the development of photography in the nineteenth century made archaeology available to a much wider audience, and he discusses how these images revealed the material traces of the past, as well as their meaning and use today.

Reviews

This is a beautiful book containing many gorgeous photographs and it is a delight to handle. It covers a broad range of material and will widen the horizons of readers familiar with standard histories of photography. The reader will be encouraged to dig more deeply into the archaeological publications of the past to discover more photographic delights. * Cassone Art Review *
Photography's unreliability may seem like a well-worn subject. Yet the long history of archaeology's attempts to bend photography to its will allows this book - part of Reaktion's excellently-produced Exposures series - to unearth numerous photographic curiosities and provide some fresh insights into an issue on which you might have thought there was little new to say.' * Source *
Bohrer explores the intimate relationship linking photography and archaeology, beginning as both disciplines started coming into their own in the 19th century. Four well-illustrated chapters address the distinctive and wide-ranging role of the photographic image standing in for the artifact, recording the context, and allowing both laypeople and scholars access to the world of archaeology . . . This brief but unique examination of the relationship between photography and archaeology addresses the many interesting facets of their long, intertwined history. Recommended.' * Choice *
Photography and Archaeology is another worthy entry in Reaktion Books' series on photography and history, culture, and social sciences . . . [it] surveys the history of photography in archaeology, raising pointed questions about the past and our capacity to see, know, and represent it.' * Anthropology Review Database *
This book explores the close ties between the rise of scientific archaeology and the spread of the new medium of photography from the mid-nineteenth century through to the present day. While many of us are aware that early archaeology's popularity was facilitated largely by means of photographic images, Bohrer demonstrates that, in their quest for the objective documentation of the past, archaeologists and scholars of antiquity were also directly involved in the invention of the new photographic technologies. This beautifully illustrated book will be welcomed by archaeologists and photography historians alike.' * Zainab Bahrani, Edith Porada Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, New York *

Author Bio

Frederick N. Bohrer is Professor of Art at Hood College, Frederick, Maryland, and author of Orientalism and Visual Culture: Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-century Europe (2003).