Photography's afterlife: Documentary images and the operational archive. (September 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McQuire, Scott
• Other Names: Were Graeme guest-editor.; Favero Paolo guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of material culture. Volume 18:Number 3(2013)
• Page Start: 223
• Page End: 241
• Publication Date: 2013-09
• Subjects: Digital archives -- digital photography -- documentary practice; Material culture -- Periodicals; 306
• DOI: 10.1177/1359183513489930
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1359-1835

Abstract

In the 1980s, the deployment of digital cameras inspired widespread concern about the 'death of photography' and the loss of the evidentiary value of photographic images. In retrospect, it is easy to see that many of these fears were either overstated or simply misplaced. Nevertheless, the digital threshold has enabled enormous changes to the way in which images are produced, circulated and stored. In this article, the author considers how images 'testify' in the digital milieu. He approaches this issue by way of several long-standing debates in documentary practice, namely context, access and stance. He then argues that the current shift of the photograph from 'picture' to 'data' is driving a related shift in the image archive, creating the conditions for what he calls the operational archive. Operationality has significant implications for developing new protocols for managing image archives that are relevant to historically oppressed groups such as Aboriginal peoples in Australia