Exchanging photographs: preliminary thoughts on the currency of photography in collecting anthropology

Abstract

This paper explores the way in which photographs operated as exchange objects within the interpretative community of emerging anthropological practice in the second half of the nineteenth century. Photographs became socially salient objects, enmeshed with a visual economy which reflected complex and wide – reaching scientific and social networks. At the same time, shifts in collecting interests and the scientific value accorded to certain kinds of images emerges as another way of tracing disciplinary shifts within anthropology. The study of history of collecting suggests that the « anthropological archive », which has in recent years been a privileged site of critique, was more ambiguous, nuanced and complex than such an homogenising model suggests. Although concentrating on British material, the paper presents an approach also applicable within other national or colonial traditions.

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