Output details

Dislocated Narratives and Sites of Memory: Amateur Photographic Surveys in Britain 1889-1897

Based on rigorous empirical research, this article is the first to examine the early phase of the photographic survey movement and its international connections. It considers such surveys as material artefacts, and theorises their import in regard to the construction and projection of place. The research began after the serendipitous discovery of a reference in an old photographic journal to a set of slides named ‘Illustrated Boston’ sent from the Boston Camera Club to Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association in 1889. The research, funded by a British Academy Small Grant, showed that the Boston survey proved a catalyst for UK counterparts to undertake similar ventures.

Guided by the ‘club reports’ in nineteenth century photographic journals, the research involved tracking the slides as they travelled between camera clubs, across the United Kingdom. This entailed intensive searches - many still ongoing - in libraries and archives to discover whether any purported surveys were carried out or still existed, and to uncover any relevant information (such as photographic association minutes or personal letters) about how surveys were conducted. Some surveys discovered, for example Cardiff, had not been previously critically considered.

The research builds on an important body of work undertaken by Professor Elizabeth Edwards which focused on Sir Benjamin Stone’s National Photographic Record Association. However, this new work focuses on the formative period, and is therefore distinct within the field. The article was widely cited in Edwards' subsequent monograph 'The camera as historian: amateur photographers and historical imagination 1885-1918' Duke University Press, 2012; and has also referenced by A. Blaikie The Scots Imagination and Modern Memory, Edinburgh University Press 2010.