Photographing Hellenism

Contents

Preface & Acknowledgements

Abbreviations & Digital Resources

Chapter 1: Introduction: Archives and Photographic Collections

The SPHS Photographic Collection

Chapter 2: Collecting Images

The Formation of the SPHS Collection

Chapter 3: The Photographic Library

Materiality

Metadata

Categorisation

Chapter 4: Focus

Ways of Visualising

Chapter 5: Travellers and Photography

The Travelling Public and the SPHS

BSA Study Tours

Research Tours

Chapter 6: Modernity and Relics of the Past

The Exotic and Familiar

Contemporary Landscapes

Relics of the Past

Chapter 7: Documentation

Professionalising the Field

Shifting Priorities and Phantom Images

Changing Focus: Duplication, Manipulation, and Publication

Engagement: Secondary Use

Chapter 8: Visual Aids in Classical Studies

Teaching with Lantern Slides

Slide Sets and Illustrated Lectures

The Visual Message

Chapter 9: Fluctuating Value

The Decline

The Fall

Chapter 10: Reception in the Digital Age

Connectivity, Standardisation, and Interoperability

Exploring Ways of Viewing Digital Image Collections

Chapter 11: Photographing Hellenism

References

Index

About the Author

Deborah Harlan is a UK-based independent scholar who has published on historical photographs of classical lands: academic lantern slide teaching collections, travel photographs in the late Victorian period, the photographs of William Stillman, and the photographs by the Hellenic Travellers’ Club. Based on her professional experience with libraries and archives, she catalogued, digitised, and studied the British School at Athens’ SPHS photographic collection, while in residence at the British School at Athens from 2015 to 2022. In that period, she published a series of 28 blog articles based on the collection, which were posted in the BSA Archive Stories webpage as related material was made publicly available on the BSA Digital Collections site.