Towards a History through Photography: An Introduction

Abstract

It is no secret that images hold a special place in historiography. We speak
of a complicit though complicated relationship between images and history, a
relationship that has long been vital because images have always provided important
insights into history and were accepted as equal to other written source
materials. This is certainly true for those historians who work on antiquity or the
early modern period, and the medievalists. Yet, with the chemical-technological
invention of photography in the 1830s this relationship seems to have experienced
serious frictions.