Megan B Ratliff

Photography takes on a multitude of meanings and practices among many disciplines, with this text focusing on its uses within anthropological and artistic research. The interplay between these two disciplines can expand the typical uses of photographic output, going beyond the confines of either discipline. The text looks at two case studies focused on artists, Susan Hiller and Carrie Mae Weems, and their use of pre-existing photographs in their work. They are both practicing artists who create methodologies specific to the photographs they are using. In doing so, they blur the boundaries between artistic practice and anthropological inquiry. Carrie Mae Weems’ photographic series called From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried reaches back to the very beginnings of photography. By creating new narratives with some of the earliest photographs made, she unveils some of the negative repercussions of early anthropological images and how photographs are used to construct historical identity. Hiller’s project called Dedicated to the Unknown Artists features her private collection of postcards procured in Britain over the course of many years, which she created a method of citing and organizing according to several contextualizing factors. Examining both of these series reveals a methodological approach to using pre-existing photographs informed by artistic and anthropological frameworks. Recontextualizing photographic objects brings to the foreground concerns which perhaps exist in the blind-spot of any one discipline. The photographic object is imbued with concerns from several disciplines and this text presents one means of negotiating those concerns through an interdisciplinary methodology.

Photographing the recently deceased during the turn of the 19th century, and its resulting material culture, is
expressive of several overlapping issues during this time. These concerns revolve around Western notions of death
in relation to photographic technology, and a rapidly changing social relationship with both. Postmortem
photography reveals shifting paradigms in association with the use of technology and conflicting dualities
regarding how the deceased were dealt with as simultaneously a person and non-person. It offers a platform to
explore the embedded contradictions within the photographic medium as both a harbinger of truth, yet non-truths,
as well as a technological tool sitting somewhere between the sciences and arts. The essay unpacks three
overlapping and shifting issues regarding the relationship of general conceptions of death, as acted out within the
medium of photography. Firstly, the text lays out the practice and reasons for photographing the deceased.
Secondly, the text explores how memory is manifested in the deceased and the photographic object. Lastly, how
postmortem photography captures shifting cultural paradigms in relation to new technology. Postmortem
photographs are objects which embody both historical means of grieving the dead and reveal a new ever-changing
relationship with it. It is simultaneously dealing with the present, past, and future, in which the photographic
object allows access to some essence of the original sitter. Tracing the reasons and practices for postmortem
photography reveal how the intimate connectedness of memory and objecthood influence each other, while trying
to negotiate evolving technologies and conceptions of handling the deceased.