The burden of representation : essays on photographies and histories

Photographs are used as documents, records and evidence every day in courtrooms and hospitals, on passports and driving licences. But how did photographs come to be established and accepted, what sort of agencies and institutions have the power to enforce this status and, more generally, what concept of photographic representation is entailed and what are its consequences? In addressing such issues, John Tagg traces a previously unexamined history which has profound implications not only for the theory and practice of conventionally separated areas of amateur, professional, technical, documentary and art photography, but also for the understanding of the role of photography in processes of modern social regulation. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-33 A Democracy of the Image: Photographic Portraiture and Commodity Production....Pages 34-59 Evidence, Truth and Order: Photographic Records and the Growth of the State....Pages 60-65 A Means of Surveillance: The Photograph as Evidence in Law....Pages 66-102 A Legal Reality: The Photograph as Property in Law....Pages 103-116 God’s Sanitary Law: Slum Clearance and Photography in Late Nineteenth-Century Leeds....Pages 117-152 The Currency of the Photograph: New Deal Reformism and Documentary Rhetoric....Pages 153-183 Contacts/Worksheets: Notes on Photography, History and Representation....Pages 184-211 Back Matter....Pages 212-242