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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2025
Photographs are seldom at the centre of Greek historical research, despite their frequent use as illustrations. Despite this neglect of photography, modern Greek history would seem unimaginable without photographs, highlighting photography's integral role in our thinking about the past. In this article I offer some theoretical reflections on the impact of photography on historical imagination. Thereafter I take a closer look at some examples that do consider photography's role in the practice of Greek history, showing how photographs have been both mistrusted and embraced in historical research.
1 Stathatos, J., ‘The three-way mirror: photography as record, mirror and model of Greek national identity’, in Carabott, P., Hamilakis, Y. and Papargyriou, E. (eds.), Camera Graeca: photographs, narratives, materialities (Farnham 2015) 25-52 (25)Google Scholar.
2 Tucker, J., ‘Entwined practices: engagements with photography in historical inquiry’, History and Theory 48.4 (2009) 1-8 (4)Google Scholar. See also Burke, P., Eyewitnessing : the uses of images as historical evidence (London 2001)Google Scholar.
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5 Tucker, ‘Entwined practices’, 5.
6 Tucker, ‘Entwined practices’, 5.
7 Tucker, ‘Entwined practices’, 5. Elizabeth Edwards Photographs and the Practice of History : a short primer (London 2022) has recently provided a very useful overview of the many ways in which photographs disturb the practice of history. Although, as Edwards notes, this is not an exhaustive account, it offers pathways to develop ‘fluid historiographical sensibilities’ that, while photography-led, can inform a wider range of ways to do history.
8 Thomas, ‘The evidence of sight’, 153.
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12 Thomas, ‘The evidence of sight’, 154. See also R. Kelsey, ‘Of fish, birds, cats, mice, spiders, flies, pigs, and chimpanzees: how chance casts the historic action photograph into doubt’, History and Theory 48.4 (2009) 59-76.
13 Roth, ‘Photographic ambivalence and historical consciousness’, 93.
14 Thomas, ‘The evidence of sight’, 154. See also S. Kracauer, History: the last things before the last (Princeton 2013) 5.
15 Thomas, ‘The evidence of sight’, 157.
16 Thomas, ‘The evidence of sight’, 158.
17 Thomas, ‘The evidence of sight’, 160.
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21 Stathatos, ‘The three-way mirror’.
22 E. Kouki, ‘War photographs re-used: an approach to the photograph collection of the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Sarandaporo’, in Carabott, Hamilakis, and Papargyriou, Camera Graeca, 257-74.
23 A. Moschovi and A. Tsirgialou (eds.), Η Ελλάδα μέσα απο την φωτογραφία : 160 χρόνια οπτικές μαρτυρίες (Athens 2007).
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25 Asdrachas, ‘Η φωτογραφία, απείκασμα της ιστορίας’, 18-19.
26 Asdrachas, ‘Η φωτογραφία, απείκασμα της ιστορίας’, 20. Photographs are ‘both enticing and dangerous and must therefore be controlled by other sources.’: Edwards, ‘Photography and the business of doing History’, 174.
27 Tucker, ‘Entwined practices’, 5.
28 Tucker, ‘Entwined practices’, 4-5.
29 S. Asdrachas, ‘Η φωτογραφία, απείκασμα της Ιστορίας’, 19.
30 Athens 2009.
31 S. Asdrachas, ‘Αντί προλόγου : Η παγίωση της Ιστορίας στη φωτογραφική παράσταση’, in Vervenioti, Αναπαραστάσεις της Ιστορίας, 10-11.
32 Asdrachas, ‘Αντί προλόγου’, 10-11.
33 L. Jordanova, ‘Photography and Greece – a historian's perspective’, in Carabott, Hamilakis, and Papargyriou, Camera Graeca, 361-6 (366).
34 Amygdalou, K., ‘Déjà vu at the archive: photography, national narratives, and the multiple histories of the Smyrna fire', International Journal of Islamic Architecture 9.2 (2020) 315-36 (319)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Amygdalou, ‘Déjà vu at the Archive’, 318.
36 Amygdalou, ‘Déjà vu at the Archive’, 322.
37 Amygdalou, ‘Déjà vu at the Archive’, 323.
38 The potential of photographs to offer up new knowledge of the past has also been explored by Ulrich Baer, who sees photographs offering up spectral haunted evidence of the past which cannot be gained otherwise: Spectral Evidence : the photography of trauma (Cambridge MA 2002).
39 Amygdalou, ‘Déjà Vu at the Archive’, 328-9.
40 Sechos came to the Benaki to deposit some materials at the Historical Archive; he was not invited to the photographic archive as a result of any particular research into this series of Papaioannou's photographs. This encounter came about by pure chance. F. Konstantinou, ‘Οι διαφορετικές αναγνώσεις της φωτογραφικής εικόνας με αφορμή τη σειρά Όμηροι, Ιανουάριος 1945 από το αρχείο της Βούλας Παπαϊωάννου’ in I. Papaioannou (ed.), Η ελληνική φωτογραφία και η φωτογραφία στην Ελλάδα (Athens 2013) 82-93.