PHOTOGRAPHY AND PRESERVATION
FUTURE ANTERIOR JOURNAL

Jorge Otero-Pailos, Founder and Editor
Iñaki Bergera, Guest Co-Editor

Deadline for submission: July 15, 2013.

How can photography help rethink received understandings of
preservation, and vice versa? Future Anterior will dedicate a special
issue to probing the ramifications of new theories of photography
within preservation and testing the ways in which preservation ideas,
practices and desires may be transforming how photography is
conceived. Papers should not only present rigorous historical research
but also outline novel theoretical and critical analyses.

Future Anterior invites papers from scholars in preservation and its
allied fields that explore any aspect of this special issue’s theme of
“Photography and Preservation.” The editors are particularly
interested in articles that examine the relationship between
photography and preservation in a variety of contexts and timeframes,
including the following.

By the 1840s, John Ruskin was urging preservationists to seize “every
opportunity afforded by scaffolding to approach [art and architecture]
closely, and putting the camera in any position that will command” it.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century Camillo Boito established
the now standard practice of systematically photographing all phases
of a restoration, and archiving the pictures for future reference and
to insure the reversibility of treatments. Has this standard
preservation practice had import in other fields? For instance, are
there similarities or resonances between the photographing of
preservation events and the role of the photograph in performance art?
It would be impossible to discuss the emergence of modern preservation
without mentioning photography, and yet their relationship and mutual
influences has yet to be properly studied.

The institutionalization and professionalization of preservation in
the mid-nineteenth century was spurred in part by national and
colonial photographic surveys, which not only inventoried heritage
efficiently but also helped to shape public perception, concentrating
attention on, and therefore changing the cultural value of, a select
group of buildings and objects. It is well known that the first
photographic surveys mapped onto earlier established travel routes
such as the European Grand Tour. But how did photography inflect the
didacticism of those earlier networks with a preservation agenda?
Photography was arguably the most effective mass media instrument to
construct and disseminate visual knowledge and appreciation of
buildings and immovable objects that were distant both in time and in
place, and as such it also formed the necessary evidentiary basis for
the internationalization of preservation movements. Can preservation
provide a new entry point to contemporary thinking about notions of
identity and representation inherent to photography?

How was the work carried out by talented and dedicated architectural
photographers orchestrated into a set of objectives for the nascent
field of preservation? For example, could the obsession of
preservationists with building facades be traced to Denis Baldus’s
(1813-82) and Gustave Le Gray’s (1820-82) development of the standards
for the elevation photograph? What were the aesthetic touch points of
preservation photography, and how have they changed as the field has
evolved?

Due to its perceived relation with time and memory, photography became
one of the primary narrative visual anchors from which to build and
shape preservation and its attending theoretical debates. But as
photography changed from the hands of a few artist-photographers into
the hands first of amateurs, and now into everyone’s phone, our
conceptions of what objects constitute a valuable anchor to memory and
expression of temporality have also changed. How did, for instance,
the sudden availability of hand held cameras in the postwar era figure
in the expansion of preservation from a restricted focus on canonical
monuments to include popular and vernacular buildings? How has the
popularity of so-called Ruin Porn photography influenced notions of
post-industrial heritage and debates about its authenticity? And
conversely, how do preservation aesthetics figure in the subtle
framing of patinas, decaying timbers, and flaking paints that Ruin
Porn stereotypically catalogues?

In war and its aftermath, heritage photography has been invoked as
evidence of crimes against humanity. What is the role of photography
in the nascent field of architectural forensics, and how does it
borrow or differ from traditional preservation photography? In extreme
cases, photography also sometimes figures as a substitute for
preservation, a measure of last resort when the material object is
certain to be lost. How did the photographic image come to be
conceptualized in discourse as an extension of preservation?

Preservation often relies on the identification of types and styles as
baselines for establishing the rarity, exemplarity or commonality of
heritage. What role did photography play in shaping the practice of
comparing, contrasting and categorizing heritage in typological and
stylistic terms? What was the role and influence of architectural
photographic archives in the teaching and practice of preservation?

How has preservation adapted its practices and ambitions when
photography is not available or permitted? For example, how do issues
of intellectual property and other restrictions governing the
circulation of photographs (such as recent security concerns in
embassies) affect the ability of public and private preservation
organizations to advocate for historic resources?

Photography figures in preservation both as a lingua franca, and as
the undecipherable visual language of specialization, such as in thin
section petrography or thermal photography. What continuities or
discontinuities can be traced between the various photographic
practices at work in contemporary preservation? What is the
interaction between the “subjective” rhetorical evocation and the
“objective” recording of architecture made through photography?

Future Anterior is a peer-reviewed journal that approaches the field
of historic preservation from a position of critical inquiry. A
comparatively recent field of professional study, preservation often
escapes direct academic challenges of its motives, goals, forms of
practice and results. Future Anterior invites contributions that ask
these difficult questions from philosophical, theoretical, and
practical perspectives.

Articles submitted for peer review should be no more than 4000 words,
with up to five illustrations. Text must be formatted in accordance
with the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition. All articles must be
submitted in English, and spelling should follow American convention.
All submissions must be submitted electronically. Text should be saved
as Microsoft Word or RTF format, while accompanying images should be
sent as TIFF files with a resolution of at least 300 dpi at 8” by 9”
print size. Figures should be numbered clearly in the text. Image
captions and credits must be included with submissions. It is the
responsibility of the author to secure permissions for image use and
pay any reproduction fees. A brief author biography (around 100 words)
must accompany the text.

For further manuscript guidelines, please visit:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/journal-division/Journals/future-anterior/manuscript-submission-guidelines-future-anterior
Acceptance or rejection of submissions is at the discretion of the
editors. Please do not send original materials, as submissions will
not be returned.

Please email all submissions to:
Future.Anterior.Journalgmail.com

Or mail to:

Future Anterior
400 Avery Hall
Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027

Questions about submissions can be mailed to the above address or
emailed to:

Jorge Otero-Pailos
Founder and Editor, Future Anterior
Jo2050columbia.edu

or

Iñaki Bergera
Guest co-Editor, Future Anterior
Associate Professor, University of Zaragoza
ibergeraunizar.es