Photography & History: A Past & Present Workshop, Birmingham
30-31 May 2018
This workshop hosted by Elizabeth Edwards and Lucie Ryzova sought to explore different modes of ‘doing’ history in the age of photography. My invited paper was based on a new strand of research looking at the role of photography in shaping notions of history and heritage in Thatcher’s Britain. Here I am particularly interested in revisiting Raphael Samuel’s work on the topic to excavate an alternative reading of ‘heritage photography’ – one that is less concerned with the surface of the image than with issues of production, circulation, materiality and affect.
Colin Sterling 