Photography aided in the formation of archaeology as a scientific discipline. In the final years of the Grand Tour, photography became increasingly available and tourists made and acquired photographs of the sites they visited. A rising interest in analyzing sites, and excavating them to understand them better, prompted new methods of recording such as scale drawing and photography. Film photographs famously have the quality of appearing to be a simple indexical record of what was before the camera, and yet photography can equally be open to experimentation and innovation.

This evening’s conversation brings together two archaeologists who have examined the use of photography in early archaeology to discuss how the technology prompted new ways of thinking about evidence in the study of the human past.

By comparing various contexts where photography played a critical role in excavation, from Dura Europos to Pompeii, scholars Jen Baird and Sophie Hay will interrogate the relationships between the two fields.