The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories

254 Pages·1988·27.005 MB·English

by  John Tagg (auth.)

Communications and Culture
In the age of satellite transmission and digital storage, postmodern art
works and global art sales, al\ that is clear amid the confusion of voices
is that old cultural assumptions no longer hold. The difficult distinc
tions now are not only those between high and low cultures but also
those between state and market, national and multinational cultures.
We can no longer assume clear boundaries between the various media
themselves, as entertainment corporations absorb all forms of com
munication. We can't even refer confidently to specific publics or
audiences or markets any more. Cultural consumption now means
ever-shifting networks of taste, activity and enjoyment that are not
easily correlated with the usual social categories of race or class, age
or gender.
The new constituencies for cultural goods are also new constituencies
for cultural theory. More than ever before it is possible now for new
voices to be heard, for readers to be addressed in new ways, mobilised
for new sorts of interest. Our purpose in short, is to develop the
Communications and Culture series beyond the position cultural
theory has currently reached in the academy. Mass culture and
subculture, semiotics and psychoanalysis, reception and deconstruction,
the familiar terms of communications and culture studies will be used
as stepping stones to what is necessary: a reconstruction of popular
culture as a public sphere. To this end we will be commissioning
multi-disciplinary work on the most pressing issues of cultural policy
and practice, namely, cultural value, cultural politics and cultural
identity. These are not issues of interest only to the theorist. They
concern the everyday lives of us all.
Rosalind Brunt • Simon Frith • Stuart Hall • Angela McRobbie
COMMUNICATIONS AND CULTURE
Series Editors ROSALIND BRUNT, SIMON FRITH, STUART HALL,
ANGELA McROBBIE
Founding Editor PAUL WALTON
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner POSTMODERN THEORY:
CRITICAL INTERROGATIONS
Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (eds) POSTMODERNISM AND SOCIETY
Victor Burgin (ed.) THINKING PHOTOGRAPHY
Victor Burgin THE END OF ART THEORY: CRITICISM AND
POSTMODERNITY
Sean Cubitt VIDEOGRAPHY: VIDEO MEDIA AS ART AND
CULTURE
Lidia Curti FEMALE STORIES, FEMALE BODIES: NARRATIVE,
IDENTITY AND REPRESENTATION
James Donald (ed.) PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CULTURAL THEORY:
THRESHOLDS
Peter M. Lewis and Jerry Booth THE INVISIBLE MEDIUM: PUBLIC,
COMMERCIAL AND COMMUNITY RADIO
John Thgg THE BURDEN OF REPRESENTATION
John Tagg GROUNDS OF DISPUTE: ART HISTORY, CULTURAL
POLITICS AND THE DISCURSIVE FIELD
Janet Wolff THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF ART (2nd edition)
The Burden of Representation
Essays on Pkotograpkies and Histories
John Tagg
palgrave
nacmillan
* o John Tagg 1988
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ISBN 978-0-333-41824-6 ISBN 978-1-349-19355-4 (aBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19355-4
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Transferred to digital printing 2002
In memory of my mother,
Ethel Tagg, born 1922, died 1980
Contents
List oj Plates viii
Acknowledgements
Xl
Introduction 1
1 A Democracy of the Image: Photographic
Portraiture and Commodity Production 34
2 Evidence, Truth and Order: Photographic Records
and the Growth of the State 60
3 A Means of Surveillance: The Photograph as
Evidence in Law 66
4 A Legal Reality: The Photograph as Property in
Law 103
5 God's Sanitary Law: Slum Clearance and
Photography in Late Nineteenth-Century Leeds 117
6 The Currency of the Photograph: New Deal
Reformism and Documentary Rhetoric 153
7 ContactsIWorksheets: Notes on Photography,
History and Representation 184
Notes and Riferences 212
Bibliography 231
Index 237
Vll
List of Plates
l. Honore Daumier, Pose de l'homme de la nature and Pose de l'homme
civilise from Croquis Parisiens, 1853. (Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris)
2. Mme Pierre-Paul Darbois, Mr Henry Rosales, painted miniature,
1843. (Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum)
3. Physionotrace engraving by Gilles-Louis Chretien, 1793. (The
Kodak Collection, National Museum of Photography, Film
and Television)
4. Unknown photographer, daguerreotype portrait in its case.
(Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum)
5. W. H. Fox Talbot, Gentleman Seated, calotype, 1842. (Trustees
of the Science Museum, London)
6. D. O. Hill & R. Adamson, Portrait oj D. O. Hill, calotype,
c.1845. (Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum)
7. Unknown photographer, Portrait of a Man with a Tall Hat,
collodion glass negative, c.1860. (Trustees of the Science
Museum, London)
8. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Alice Liddell,
albumen print from a collodion negative, c.1858. (Graham
Ovenden)
9. Pages from an album of cartes-de-visite of Prominent French
Figures. (Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum)
10. Andre Adolphe Disderi, Carte-de-visite Portrait of Marshal Vintry,
albumen print. (Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum)
II. Gaspard-Felix Tournachon (Nadar), Gioacchino Rossini, albumen
print. (National Portrait Gallery, London)
12. Pages from an album of Kodak snapshots, 1893-1894. (Trustees
of the Science Museum, London)
VlIl
List of Plates IX
13. Front page of The Daily Mirror, 22 April 1912, half-tone plate.
(Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd)
14. Robert Demachy, Primavera, gum print, from Photographie est-elle
un art?, 1899. (Gernsheim Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center, University of Texas at Austin)
15. Unknown photographer, Birmingham Prisoners, ambrotypes,
186~1862. (West Midlands Police)
16. Unknown photographer, Wandsworth Prison Records, 1873. (Public
Records Office, London, PCOM 2/291)
17. Dr H. W. Diamond, Inmate of the Surrey Counry A.rylum from an
album entitled Portraits of Insaniry, albumen print, 1852-1856.
(Royal Society of Medicine)
18. Unknown photographer, Stockport Ragged and Industrial School,
albumen print, c.1865. (Metropolitan Borough of Stockport,
Local Studies Library)
19. Thomas Barnes & Roderick Johnstone, Personal History of a
Child at Dr Barnardo's Home, albumen prints, 1874-1883. (The
Barnardo Photographic Archive)
20. Unknown photographer, Huntingdon Coun!J Gaol Records, 1872.
(Cambridgeshire County Constabulary)
21. John Thomson, The Crawlers from Street Life in London,
Woodburytype, 1877-1878. (The Mansell Collection)
22. Thomas Annan, Close No 11 Bridgegate from Photographs of Old
Closes, Streets, Etc., albumen print, 1867. (The Mansell
Collection)
23. Jacob A. Riis, Bandits'Roost, New York, bromide print, 1888.
(Museum of the City of New York)
24. Unknown photographer, Yard off St Peter's Square, No 79 on Plan
from Ciry of Leeds, Insanitary Areas, 1896. (University of Leeds,
Brotherton Library)
25. Unknown photographer, Yard, East of Bridge Street from
Photographs of Properties of Petitioners in the Quarry Hill Unhealthy
Area, 1901. (University of Leeds, Brotherton Library)
26. Unknown photographer, View No 13: Interior of Higgins' Yard.
The View Speaks For Itself from Report of Dr Ballard to the Local
Government Board, etc . ... upon the Slaughter-Houses and Slaughter
Yards in the Borough, and as to the Establishment of a Public Abattoir,
28 June 1880. (Leeds City Libraries, Local History Depart
ment)
27. Edmund & Joseph Wormald, Slaughter-House Looking Towards
x List of Plates
Entrance, Vicar Lane, c.1893. (Leeds City Libraries, Local History
Department)
28. Unknown photographer, Yard off Harrison's Buildings from Cig
of Leeds, Insanitary Areas, 1896. (University of Leeds, Brotherton
Library)
29. Unknown photographer, Yard in Paper Mill, Looking East from
Photographs oj Properties oj Petitioners in the Quarry Hill Unhealthy
Area, 1901. (University of Leeds, Brotherton Library)
30. Willie Swift, Interior of Cellar Dwelling, Mushroom Court from D.
B. Foster, Leeds Slumdom. Illustrated with Photographs of Slum
Properg by W. Swift, Leeds 1897. (Leeds City Libraries, Local
History Department)
31. Willie Swift, Group of Slum Children in Court Off Charlotte Street,
Holbeck from D. B. Foster, Leeds Slumdom, Leeds 1897. (Leeds
City Libraries, Local History Department)
32. Jack Delano, Union Point, Georgia, 1941. (Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division)
33. Russell Lee, Hidalgo Coung, Texas, 1939. (Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division)
34. Walker Evans, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1935. (Library of
Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
35. Walker Evans, Edwards, Mississippi, 1936. (Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division)
36. Lewis Hine, Young Couple, 1936. (WPA National Research
Project, National Archives, Washington, DC)
37. Lewis Hine, Cotton Mill Worker, 1912. (International Museum
of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New
York)
38. Walker Evans, Post Office at Sprott, Alabama, 1936. (Library of
Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
39. Dorothea Lange, Workers, Richmond, California, 1942. (Oakland
Museum)
40. Dorothea Lange, FamilY Bound for Krebs, Oklahoma, from Idabel,
Oklahoma, 1939. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs
Division)