Photography and archaeology

Summary: Starting with the earliest photographs of Roman bronze statuettes preserved in the archives of the Collection of Classical Antiquities of the National Museums in Berlin, the author first examines the beginning of scientific work with photographs of ancient sculpture and small art in Berlin, which was decisively influenced by Eduard Gerhard (1795-1867), the first archaeologist at the museum, and can be dated to the years around 1860. He then discusses three unpublished bronzes, some of which have disappeared: the statuette of a naked boy playing the double flute, the head of a large statuette of Attis and a chariot bronze in the shape of Bacchus. Illustrated by further photographs from the archive and the photo library of the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities, the book ends with a plea for the systematic review and evaluation of historical photo collections.

Zusammenfassung: Ausgehend von den frühesten im Archiv der Antikensammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin erhaltenen Fotografien römischer Bronzestatuetten untersucht der Verfasser zuerst den in Berlin maßgeblich durch Eduard Gerhard (1795–1867), den ersten Archäologen am Museum, geprägten und in die Jahre um 1860 anzusetzenden Beginn des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens mit Fotografien antiker Plastik und Kleinkunst. Danach behandelt er exemplarisch drei mutmaßlich unveröffentlichte, heute z. T. verschollene Bronzen: die Statuette eines ehemals auf der Doppelflöte spielenden nackten Knaben, den Kopf einer großen Attisstatuette und eine Wagenbronze in Gestalt des Bacchus. Illustriert durch weitere Fotografien aus dem Archiv und der Fotothek der Berliner Antikensammlung steht am Ende ein Plädoyer für die systematische Sichtung und Auswertung historischer Fotobestände.

Photo report by Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro. Contact sheet with photographs taken at the Deir el-Bahari, Temple of Hatshepsut (Egypt). These images are intended for editorial use (print, online, and broadcast) and personal use. Please contact the author for the right to use images.

The close relationship between photography and archaeology is widely acknowledged. Since its invention, photography has been an indispensable documentation tool for archaeology, while the development of digital technology has facilitated the growing needs of an archaeological excavation in recording and archiving. Still, both photography and archaeology are much more than documentation practices. On the one hand, photography is the most appropriate medium for creating visual art; on the other, the excavation is a locus where material and immaterial knowledges are constantly being produced, reproduced and represented; as such, it constitutes an ideal “topos” for experimentation in creating images. This entangled relationship between photography and archaeology, and art and documentation, has only recently attracted attention, emerging as a separate field of study. Archæographies: Excavating Neolithic Dispilio consists one of the very first experimentations in printed format, dealing with this visual interplay between archaeology and photography. The case study is the excavation of the Greek Neolithic settlement of Dispilio. The book tackles archaeological practice on site, the microcosms of excavation, and the interaction between people and “things”. Archaeographies derives from an on-going, blog-based project, launched in 2006 (visualizingneolithic.com). The black-and-white photos of the book were selected from a large archive, and are loosely assembled as an itinerary. They are accompanied by a laconic commentary, in order to retain the sense of ambiguity and allow multiple interpretation of the images.

Reviews
Callaher, W.  R.,  2013, The Archaeology of the Mediterannean World, http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/3373/
Gheorghiu, D., 2014, Antiquity 88 (340): 671-672.
Morgan, C., 2014, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, www.equinoxpub.com/home/morgan-book-review/

Η παρούσα εργασία αφορά τον σχεδιασμό μίας εφήμερης / “pop-up” έκθεσης, όπου ένας ανασκαφικός χώρος, αυτός της Κουτρουλού Μαγούλας στη Φθιώτιδα, αποτελεί τον βασικό σεναριακό σκελετό για την αφήγηση των πολλαπλών εννοιών που σχετίζονται με την ανασκαφική πράξη. Κύριο αφηγηματικό μέσο αποτελεί η χρήση στατικών και κινούμενων εικόνων που εστιάζουν στα σώματα που δρουν σε ένα αφαιρετικά αποδοσμένο σκηνικό μίας αρχαιολογικής ανασκαφής. Η σύνθεση των εικόνων αυτών -αποτέλεσμα μίας φωτοεθνογραφικής έρευνας κατά τη διάρκεια της ανασκαφής της νεολιθικής θέσης- σε αφηγηματικές ενότητες συνδέονται με αποσπάσματα του ακαδημαϊκού αρχαιολογικού λόγου στο ψηφιακό τμήμα της έκθεσης. Αυτή η εικαστική εγκατάσταση, μια εναλλακτική, μη αντικειμενοκεντρική, έκθεση της αρχαιολογικής διαδικασίας έχει τη δυνατότητα να επιτελείται σε διαφορετικούς χώρους, εξαιτίας της ευέλικτης μορφής της και των λιτών εκθεσιακών στοιχείων της. Επιπλέον, τόσο οι ενότητες του εκθεσιακού σεναρίου της όσο και το οπτικοακουστικό υλικό που χρησιμοποιείται μπορεί να προσαυξηθεί, ακολουθώντας, για παράδειγμα, την παραγωγή του ακαδημαϊκού λόγου της εν εξελίξει αρχαιολογικής έρευνας.

The present essay concerns the design of an ephemeral / “pop-up” exhibition, where an excavation site, that of Koutroulou Magoula in Fthiotida, Greece, consists the basic backdrop for the narration of the multiple notions related to the excavation praxis. The main narrative medium is the use of static and moving images that focus on the bodies that interact in an abstractly rendered topos of an archaeological excavation. The composition of these images -the result of a photo-ethnographic research during the excavation of the neolithic site- into narrative sections are connected with textual excerpts of the academic archaeological discourse in the digital part of the proposed exhibition. This audiovisual installation, an alternative and non-object-oriented exhibition of the archaeological process, has the potential to be performed in different settings due to its flexible form and the minimal nature of the architectural and visual elements used. In addition, both the narrative sections of the exhibition’s scenario, as well as the audio-visual material used can be augmented, following, for example, the production of the academic discourse of the ongoing archaeological research.

In the continuous process of storing, managing, processing and interpreting the data from the field, the production of images seems to be an enduring activity, which mirrors and reveals the continuity of research more than the written production does. In light of this potential
quantity of images produced in the course of archaeological research, digging and drawing seem to be bound together by reciprocal necessity.

In accordance with the contemporary focus on the history of archaeology, new attention has recently been paid to archaeological drawings. In particular, approximately two centuries of archaeological research in the Near East and their graphic/visual documentation constitute a prominent case study. In fact, the circulation of images of ancient Mesopotamian monuments in both the scientific and public domains contributed more in a way to the consolidation of the historical importance of the first discoveries in contemporary Western culture and politics of the 19th century than narrative reports did.

Most important, the echo of that visual documentation is reflected in the current interpretation of ancient architecture as it has been reflected in the primary record of the archaeological remains through the past decades of field research, independently of the application of
traditional or informative instruments of drawing.

Thus, in accordance with the numerical and qualitative relevance of the drawings in the archaeological set of data, it seems important to pursue specific lines of research regarding archaeological drawings, not only to valorize the archives and their contents, but also to trace and develop a helpful method for reading a drawing as an alternative narrative
accompanying both discovery and interpretation.

Photo report by Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro. Contact sheet with photographs taken at the Deir el-Bahari, Temple of Hatshepsut (Egypt). These images are intended for editorial use (print, online, and broadcast) and personal use. Please contact the author for the right to use images.

The article seeks to reconstruct the circumstances that led the photographer
Baron Paul des Granges to take photographs of the volcanic
eruption on Santorini and of the prehistoric excavations on Therasia,
in December 1866. This concrete case study was moreover the starting
point of an attempt to shed more light on the epistemic processes of
knowledge transfer by means of photographs in their various dispositive
constellations. It was thus shown that the photographs of Paul des Granges
circulated in at least two scholarly exchange networks. The scientific
actors in these networks were able to make use of these photographs in
their publications, and to refer to their personal inspection of the visual
information conveyed by the photographs as a substitute to personal
autopsy of the archaeological evidence, thereby protecting the validity
of their own argumentation. In addition to elaborate setting up of the
final depiction, publishing the photographs of the finds of Therasia required
further visual transformation, as the photos had to be converted
into copper engraving for reproduction in print. In order to guarantee
authenticity and scientific reliability, the now transformed visual information
had at the same time to be linguistically secured, thereby paving
the way to profound epistemic reshuffling of scientific communication.

A arqueologia é uma disciplina que se vale intensamente da dimensão visual, articulando materialidades e relatos, buscando as várias fontes possíveis de informação e criando uma imagem dos grupos que estuda. Ao longo de sua constituição, o olhar científico arqueológico passou a incorporar outro tipo, o olhar fotográfico, no seu discurso, desde meados do século XIX. A maneira como a fotografia foi incorporada pela arqueologia, com os últimos antiquários e os fotógrafos-viajantes até o presente, resultando na fotografia arqueológica, é uma das questões que norteiam o texto que se segue. Espera-se ressaltar de que modo a arqueologia tem incorporado a fotografia na suas práticas, assim como a maneira que a arqueologia recorta sua paisagem disciplinar e a transforma num cenário construído, revelando o próprio construto que é o objeto científico. Problematizando a interpretação da fotografia como mimese do real, procura-se rever seu papel na arqueologia, com ênfase no registro de campo e na fotografia como um veículo de divulgação de idéias e resultados.

Volume 16/1 Τόμος 16/1 Παράβασις· τοῦτο λέγεται παράβασις, ἅπερ ἔλεγον ἐπιστρέφοντες οἱ χορευταὶ πρὸς τοὺς θεωμένους. ἔστι δὲ ὁ τρόπος, ὅταν καταλιπὼν τὰ ἑξῆς τοῦ δράματος ὁ ποιητὴς συμβουλεύῃ τοῖς θεωμένοις ἢ ἄλλο ἐκτὸς λέγῃ τι τῆς ὑποθέσεως. Παράβασις δὲ λέγεται, ἐπειδὴ ἀπήρτηται τῆς ἄλλης ὑποθέσεως, ἢ ἐπεὶ παραβαίνει ὁ χορὸς τὸν τόπον. ἐστᾶσι μὲν γὰρ κατὰ στοῖχον οἱ πρὸς τὴν ὀρχήστραν ἀποβλέποντες· ὅταν δὲ παραβῶσιν, ἐφεξῆς ἑστῶτες καὶ πρὸς τὸ θέατρον ἀποβλέποντες τὸν λόγον ποιοῦνται.

Photo report by Kenia de Aguiar Ribeiro. Contact sheet with photographs taken at Deir el-Bahari, Temple of Hatshepsut (Egypt). These images are intended for editorial use (print, online, and broadcast) and personal use. Please contact the author for the right to use images.

Art | Memory | Place: Postgraduate research seminar
IMMA, 13 November 2015

Near the small Italian town of Cassino nearly 2,000 American soldiers were killed, wounded or captured in just two days of fighting. Frustration with the slow advance up through Italy turned into hypnotic obsession and hatred of the dominating, panopticonic monastery above Cassino. Many on the Allied side erroneously convinced themselves that the famous Benedictine monastery of Montecassino was being used by the Germans to observe all Allied movement on the plains below. So on February 15th 1944 over 1,000 tons of high explosives were dropped onto Monastery Hill. It was not, however, until May 18th and 75,000 military casualties later that the monastery would be finally taken, thus opening the road to the prized eternal city of Rome. But just two days after that city's liberation the Allies landed in France, and the maelstrom of Cassino gradually faded. Below the monastery's ruins also lay a pulverized Cassino which on March 15th had become the Allies' direct target. A New Zealander described it looking 'like it had been raked over by some monster comb and then pounded all over by a giant hammer'. It was the end of the world, Weltuntergang, fine del mondo: 100% destruction. It became la Città Martire, or 'martyred city'. But what is the significance of Cassino today? While the past can be buried, built on and overgrown, it is the obscurity marking the twilight descent from living history into oblivion that engages me. I am interested and motivated by the fact that the war generation is rapidly vanishing and soon there will be 'no eyes that looked at the emperor', no living witnesses to these now mostly 'traceless' events. At what point, I wonder, did the battle become 'history', 'irrelevant' or 'boring'? At what point did the hundreds of local women and children raped by Moroccan irregulars 'disappear'? All of this in a country which has excelled in the art of the aesthetic and with more UNESCO sites than anywhere else. Although no longer scorched and moonscaped, when there is seemingly nothing left of the conflict one is left with a potential 'no-history' visual recording at this remove. Once there was nothing left of the town, now there is nothing left of its destruction. Once the colossal monastery lay smashed, now it is a pristine, mature reconstruction. My task primarily through photography is to investigate and record the topography surrounding Cassino and to suggest the increasingly invisible past.

Video of my work available here: https://vimeo.com/214629943

The collection Paul des Granges, consisting of approximately 200 negatives and spanning the years between 1865 and 1880, is one of the oldest photographical collections currently preserved at the photographical archive of the DAI Rome. The aim of the project is both a systematic exploration of the collection as well as a reconstruction and contextualisation of the life and work of Paul des Granges by the means of an accompanying archival and bibliographical research. Paul des Granges was not only a pioneer of photography at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century but he also had a vast personal, pan-European network at his disposal. Although emphatically praised by his contemporaries, he was almost forgotten at the end of the 19th century.

[ΚΟΡΠΟΥΣ, ΧΧΙ-ΧΧΙΙ] is a photo-essay experimenting on the series of the Catalogues of Sculpture of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. In this photographic process both the printed and the digital form of the academic corpora as well as the visualization of the sculptures themselves -the outcome of a specific academic photographic gaze- are understood as materialities, parallel archeological objects. Their photographic re-negotiation comments on the limits of printed and digital materiality, as well as the practice of archaeological accumulation and classification, aiming to the creation of new, black-and-white, textures resulting from the two-dimensional, pseudo-three-dimensional or intensely digitally altered re-photographed bodies.

[ΚΟΡΠΟΥΣ, ΧΧΙ-ΧΧΙΙ] is available in two different mediums:
• in digital form, freely accessible through the Museolab website
• in printed form, each copy being individually reprocessed

Το [ΚΟΡΠΟΥΣ, ΧΧΙ-ΧΧΙΙ] αποτελεί μία πειραματική φωτογραφική εργασία  στην οποία χρησιμοποιείται ως μελέτη περίπτωσης η σειρά των Καταλόγων Γλυπτών του Αρχαιολογικού Μουσείου Θεσσαλονίκης. Σε αυτή τη φωτογραφική διαδικασία τόσο η έντυπη και η ψηφιακή μορφή των ακαδημαϊκών καταλόγων, όσο και οι ίδιες οι εικονοποιήσεις των γλυπτών -αποτέλεσμα ενός συγκεκριμένου ακαδημαϊκού φωτογραφικού βλέμματος- νοούνται ως υλικότητες, παράλληλα αρχαιολογικά αντικείμενα. Η φωτογραφική επαναδιαπραγμάτευσή τους σχολιάζει τα όρια της έντυπης και ψηφιακής υλικότητας, καθώς και την πρακτική της αρχαιολογικής συνάθροισης και ταξινόμησης, με στόχο τη δημιουργία νέων, ασπρόμαυρων, υφών που προκύπτουν από τα διδιάστατα, ψευδο-τριδιάστατα ή έντονα ψηφιακά αλλοιωμένα επαναφωτογραφημένα σώματα.
Το [ΚΟΡΠΟΥΣ, ΧΧΙ-ΧΧΙΙ] είναι διαθέσιμο σε δύο διαφορετικά μέσα:
• σε ψηφιακή μορφή, ελεύθερα προσβάσιμη στον ιστότοπο του Museolab
• σε έντυπη μορφή, όπου το κάθε αντίτυπο είναι ξεχωριστά επανεπεξεργασμένο

Summary: For a formerly restored, but in the core probably Roman-imperial bronze statuette of a standing god (Jupiter or Neptune) in the Antikensammlung of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin the author postulates the origin from a private collection of ancient and postclassical small bronzes which was resolved at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. By means of historical photographs, he succeeds in comparing the baroque pedestal, which is no longer associated with the figure, with the corresponding pedestal of a Roman bronze statuette of a genius or city god presumably coming from the Borghese collection. The present essay thus sheds light on the previously untapped possibilities for the reconstruction of ancient Roman collections of antiquities through the systematic screening and evaluation of early photographs.

In the field, aerial photography takes place typically simultaneously with the excavation progress, as a recording tool. It is accomplished by the use of an aerial vehicle (e.g. small aircraft, helicopter or balloon) and multiple shooting from different angles and heights. As a tool is non destructive, it does not affect the landscape, nor the archaeological site itself.

This is the extended version of Part A of a paper entitled:
«The Hellenic Society Photographic Archive (ELIA/MIET): Photography and the configuration of archaeological memory».
The paper was read jointly with Maria G. Moschou (who wrote Part B) at
Imaging the Past/Collecting the Future: Archive, Photography, Cinema, Museums. First International LYNX "Center for the Interdisciplinary Analysis of Images" Conference. Lucca, IMT School for Advanced Studies, June 22-25, 2016.

Im Rahmen der traditionellen Jahrestagung des Deutschen Archäologen-Verbands kam die Arbeitsgemeinschaft ‚Archäologie und Fotografie' am 27. Juni 2014 im Fürstenberghaus der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster zu ihrem 4. Treffen zusammen. Das gegenüber dem Vorjahr erfreulicherweise um 30 Minuten auf zwei Stunden ausgedehnte Zeitfenster ermöglichte diesmal drei Vorträge, die von ca. 15 Interessierten verfolgt und anschließend lebhaft diskutiert wurden. Nach einem Dank an die Vortragenden, Diskussionsteilnehmer und Zuhörer stellte der Leiter für das kommende Jahr ein 5. AG-Treffen in Aussicht.

Cet article utilise des photographies pour étudier les transformations économiques et socioculturelles survenues au cours du XXe siècle dans un village autochtone du nord du Chili. Les ruines industrielles et la culture matérielle de l’exploitation du soufre dans la communauté autochtone d’Ollagüe sont des témoins privilégiés d’une époque qui aspirait, dans l’utopie industrielle du XXe siècle, au développement économique régional et national. L’utilisation d’un ensemble de photographies comme éléments mnémoniques permet une interprétation fondée sur l’expérience et la mémoire. Cet article offre également une réflexion sur une discipline archéologique qui peut contribuer à la compréhension du contexte local d’une modernité complexe, avec ses propres expériences et spécificités.

L’apparition de la photographie a-t-elle modifié la perception de l’éruption de 79 en tant que catastrophe historique majeure, et du Vésuve en tant que volcan dangereux et encore très actif au xixe siècle ? Alors que les guides et récits de l’époque ne négligent pas l’importance du risque volcanique présent, les premières photographies montrent surtout le pittoresque de l’ascension du volcan et sont le relais de l’expression tragique de la terrible mort du passé avec les moulages en plâtre des corps visibles lors la visite émouvante du site de Pompéi.

A la fin du XIXe siècle, Adolf Michaelis (1835-1910), professeur d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie, a rassemblé un grand nombre de photographies, sous la forme de tirages sur papier, qui concernent les sites antiques. Le fonds est aujourd'hui dans la collection de l’Institut d’Archéologie classique de l’université de Strasbourg ; il a été numérisé puis rendu accessible en 2014.  Les studios professionnels (Brogi, Sommer), auxquels Michaelis a acheté les photos, suivent de près les fouilles du site de Pompéi, alors en pleine effervescence, et nous livrent un état patrimonial du site au tournant du XXe siècle en focalisant sur certains lieux et thématiques. L'objectif pédagogique de Michaelis dicte-t-il uniquement ses choix ? Nous analyserons la démarche de Michaelis en regard des catalogues connus des studios auxquels il s'est adressé et de l'avancée des fouilles.

Au début du XIVe siècle, Simone Martini et Giotto di Bondone étaient séparés par l'âge, les traditions artistiques et l'antagonisme économique, politique et culturel entre Sienne et Florence. Le premier, siennois et plus jeune d'environ dix-huit ans, explorait des voies pour intégrer la plasticité au cadre « précieux » de l'art gothique. Le deuxième, mûri au sein du « classicisme » florentin, avait largement dépassé les normes figées et hiératiques de la peinture précédente pour y insuffler le plaisir du dynamisme narratif. Cependant, bien que par des chemins souvent opposés, tous les deux exprimaient une césure définitive par rapport aux conventions artistiques et culturelles du Moyen Âge. L'individualisme de leurs figures, chacune marquée par une expression et des traits caractéristiques, brisait l'esprit « communautaire-égalitaire » gravé dans la tradition chrétienne ; en même temps, une perspective empirique et rudimentaire, ainsi qu'un soin inouï pour les détails matériels introduisaient les hommes et les objets représentés dans une narration qui, pour la première fois, se voulait « historique ».