photoblogs

by Michael Shanks

Archaeology shares a great deal with photography. Particularly time and a temporality of actuality.

Here is how I descibe it in my wiki entry on the archaeological (also mentioned on 10 December).

Four archaeological temporalities:

  • The moment (for example, of origin, or of discovery) arrested/captured (in slow moving sediments).
  • Date – when it was, has been, and when excavated – the application of chronometry.
  • Ruin and decay – a continuity of metamorphosis from past through present.
  • Actuality – a return of what is no longer the same (through ruin and decay, and the act of discovery/recollection). The nonarbitrary conjunction of presents: the past’s present, the time of archaeological excavation or discovery, and the time of viewing, reading, recollection.

    • Recollection

    It is not only that archaeologists gather fragments and build collections. Like memory, the work of archaeology is re-collection – the reinsertion of pieces of the past into a form that carries significance in the present, carried forward from the past. As in memory, the (archaeological) traces of the past do not constitute a timeline or linear account. They resonate with a present experienced moment; this is what precipitates their reemergence, their recollection. This is actuality.

    So photoblogs add a wonderful nuance – photos of everyday matters strung together in a sort of inderterminate (re)collection.

    Katachresis

    Philip@philosophistry (awesome blog) has a fine list of photoblogs (mostly in my minimalist taste). [Link]

    A favorite of mine – Low Resolution @ Fluffco.com.

    low resolution photoblog

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