Oh! What a Parade

The exhibition and accompanying book, “Points of View: Capturing the Nineteenth Century in Photographs,” drawn from the extensive holdings of photography at the British Library, presents an opportunity to reflect upon the influence of institutional and disciplinary practices on the perceived nature and meaning of photographs. This essay explores the presentation of the great icons of the art history of photography within the physical and intellectual space of the British Library and within the material and literary contexts of their original circulation. It flags the role of both iconic and vernacular photographs in lived experience, knowledge production, nation-building, and social memory, and suggests that greater scholarly attention to the function of photographs in society and to the spaces in which photographs generate meaning can help open up well-known images to wider disciplinary and interdisciplinary scrutiny

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Context (archaeology · Discipline · Exhibition · Literature · Materiality (auditing · Meaning (existential · Parade · Photography · Scrutiny · Social science · Sociology · Vernacular · Visual arts · History · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory