How reliable is the photograph as a historical source?

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Concepts and Methods. Avril Smith 14/11/01

How reliable is the photograph as a historical source?

In his posthumously published book Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes writes 'It is the advent of the Photograph ... which divides the history of the world'. His faith in the photograph is so strong that he also claims that now this form of evidence is available 'the past is as certain as the present'. 1 In attempting to answer the question 'How reliable is the photograph as a historical source', this faith must inevitably be challenged. It will be necessary to look at how photographs have been used by historians and to consider what they have contributed to our understanding of the past. The question of whether it was possible to manipulate images in the early days and if there were other methods of falsification which would undermine the veracity of photographic evidence, must be asked. Some well known 'frauds' will be examined and the impact of developing technology on our ability to trust what we see, will be examined. I will touch briefly on one or two instances where the use of a particular photograph has been vindicated by later evidence, and areas of historical study that may seem less open to deception will be considered. By this stage the conclusion drawn should be fairly obvious.

The use of photographs has greatly enhanced the study of history since the middle of the 19th century. Early photographs may appear stiff and formal, but they convey a sense of Victorian lifestyles in away that words alone could not do. We may believe that in the early days of photography it was difficult, if not impossible, to manipulate the prints to show something which was not there, or remove something that was, and even where this could be done an expert would detect the alterations easily. So can we say that in those days at least, the photograph was a reliable historical source? Possibly, if the origins of the photograph can be verified and where there would seem to be no gain from dissimulation.

Books such as A Victorian Eyewitness bear testimony to the value of preserving images which would otherwise be lost forever. If we had no photographs of the Crystal Palace (P.H. Delamotte 1854), the tragedy of its destruction would be all the greater.2 And Frank Meadow Sutcliffe's studies of the Whitby fisherfolk preserve their 'now vanished way of life'.3 Furthermore, could anyone really visualise 'inflating buffalo skins to cross a river in the Himalayas' without Samuel Bourne's wonderful photograph? 4
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However, the same book provides us with very early evidence of the use of photography to deceive. A photograph of dead 'rebel' soldiers from the American civil war taken in 1863 by T.H. O'Sullivan was later proved to actually show Northerners.5 This use of photographs for propaganda purposes was of course famously used by the Nazis in the second World War. Even Barnado was accused of 'artistic fiction' when he produced his 'before' and 'after' photographs of the waifs and strays he turned into industrious young men and women.6

By 1861 Spirit Photography had become a common ...

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