Photography and Heritage Documentation

The past is always irretrievably lost; nevertheless, we are left with ourheritage and photographs. In some cases, the two may also coincide.On one hand, photographs themselves form part of our heritage, andon the other hand, they are used to document our heritage. In thisarticle, I discuss how photography affects our engagement with thepast, shapes our understanding of the past, and recreates the past inthe present day. Photography is instrumental in shaping concepts andpractices central to many approaches to heritage. Examples can beconsidered in this article of heritage presentation and interpretation,as well as surveying and archiving processes. Documentation is anintegral part of heritage preservation, conservation, and restoration.Since all objects can be considered as sources of information, thepreservation of heritage can also be viewed informationally. Sinceits introduction, photography has actively participated in the processof defining heritage and also in its institutionalization. Heritage,regardless of its location, is easier to grasp and handle in visual form. The use of photography significantly changed the way thegeneral public experienced architecture. Through photographs,distant objects suddenly became closer. The circle of individualswho had visual knowledge of architecture increased noticeably.Photography contributed significantly to the introduction ofheritage objects and thus to the broader use of the term “heritage”itself. Today, conservation/restoration can no longer be imaginedwithout photography. Again, this is not something particularlysurprising, since photography was developed in addition to thepreviously used methods of visual representation. It must berecognized that photography helped make the describing andsurveying of monuments more accurate. Photography did notbring a radical change to the documentation of monuments, butwas smoothly integrated with visual practices that had been in useuntil that day in age. Photography also plays an important role inthe theoretical discussion of conservation/restoration. The centralproblem of conservation and restoration is the question of objectauthenticity. Photography’s association, whether apparent or not,with nature and objectivity allowed it to be used to support varioustheoretical concepts. Obviously, the relationship between heritageand photography is not unilateral or clearly defined; it is a complexinteraction between multifaceted phenomena.