2022/04/07 by Hugo Silveira Pereira · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Historical Art and Culture Studies #Photography and Visual Culture #Visual Culture and Art Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/00225266221091050
openalex publication_date 2022/04/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Photography has been recording different aspects of human activity since the early nineteenth century. Additional innovations since then have rendered it less expensive, less cumbersome and more accessible to users. Today, the universe of photographs is immense. In this paper, I offer a theoretical approach to the use of photography in mobility and transport history. I argue that photography is much more than a mere illustrative resource and that it can be used as a primary source that provides visual materiality to aspects of transportation in the past (subjects, objects and landscapes), which can complement information found in written sources. Moreover, I speculate that photography may have a double role: as a vehicle that transports observers to faraway locations and ideas and landscapes back to observers; and as a tool for territorial appropriation of peripheral territories by core regions.