Conference on the Historical Use of Images_report (2009)

7/27/2019 Conference on the Historical Use of Images_report (2009)

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Conference report

Conference on the Historical Use of Images

Joeri Januarius and Nelleke Teughels

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Although the theoretical debate has been ongoing for some years now1

and is

influenced by other social sciences like anthropology, cultural geography and communication

sciences, images remain a yet uncultivated source for contemporary historical and

archaeological research. Iconographical evidence is often only included or discussed in texts

as a mere illustration of theories or conclusions the author has based on written or oralsources. At first sight, tough, the study of images seems a very obvious thing to do. We are

indeed living in the 21st century, a time where visual culture (internet, posters,

advertisements, television) is dominant. Sources are abundantly produced, and the interest of

archives in preserving audiovisual collections is increasing. However, the implementation of

visual material in past and current research is not a thing that goes without saying. Although

we notice a slow but steady change, the various university programs in Belgium do not or

seldom offer their students tools to handle visual sources. Due to the lack of a critical visual

theory and methodology and a systematic, consistent approach, in many cases, the potential of

iconographical sources is rarely fully exploited, and important aspects are overlooked. This is

certainly the case at Belgian universities, where the written word is still the number one

source for contemporary historians. In addition, most examples of thorough archaeological

research based on visual sources concern pre-historic and classical times, using a traditional

iconographical approach that is strongly influenced by art historical research. As soon as

written sources are at hand, it seems, visual expressions are pushed to the background instead

of applying them, since they offer complementary information. This is, surprisingly,

especially the case for archaeology of the contemporary period, although the twentieth and

twenty-first centuries have seen a tremendous increase in the amount of visual expressions.

1Burke, Peter, Eyewitnessing. The uses of images as historical evidences (London, Reaktion Books, 2001);

Hamilton, Peter (ed.), Visual research methods (London, Sage Publications, 2006); Januarius, Joeri, 'Picturing

everyday life of Belgian limburg Miners:photographs as a historical source' inInternational Review of Social

History, 2008, 2; Van den Eeckhout, Patricia, 'In de wereld ieder zijn recht? Zoektocht naar de evidenties vanalledag, op de werkvloer en daarbuiten' in Art, Jan, De Nil, Bart & Marc Jacobs (red.), Gezocht: het verhaal van

Jan Modaal. Acta Colloquium Arbeid en Cultuur, 1800-2000 (Gent, Amsab-ISG, 2008), p. 75-98.


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Against this background, the Art Sciences and Archaeology Department and History

Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and FARO (Vlaams Steunpunt voor Cultureel

Erfgoed) with the support of the Ministerie van het Brussels Gewest jointly organised the

Conference on the Historical Use of Images, that took place on Tuesday 10 and Wednesday

11 March 2009. The original aim of this international conference was to address the

importance, significance and value of images for contemporary historical and archaeological

research and the study of cultural heritage (1890-1980). We wanted to focus on the positive

insights that might be garnered from visual material as well as on the possible difficulties

researchers encounter while working with these sources. This is quite an ambitious project,

knowing that not only the collection of visual sources is very wide, but that this also requires

an interdisciplinary approach between history and archaeology, and interactional expertise of

other disciplines like art history, anthropology, sociology, communication sciences and

linguistics.

On the first day of the conference, PhD and Master students and other researchers

were invited to present their research in different thematic sessions. The second day, dr. Anne

Cronin (Department of Sociology, University of Lancaster, UK) conducted a masterclass

during the morning session, entitled 'Seeing Time: advertising images and the spatio-

temporalities of neo-capitalism'. In the afternoon, dr. Marga Altena (Radboud University

Nijmegen) gave a lecture about 'Negotiating History: Representations of the Past through

Visual Media' and dr. Kees Ribbens (historian, The Netherlands Institute for War

Documentation) talked about his experience in the field of popular culture and cultural

heritage and about how visual sources determine our vision of the past (see annexe 1 for the

conference programme).

In the first session on Tuesday, Pictures, politics and propaganda, the starting point

of the papers were images, which were created with a clear ideological purpose. Vladimir

Dobrenko (University of Oxford) analysed how the Bolsheviks categorised and

conceptualised their enemies in political posters throughout the course of the October

Revolution and the Civil War. He showed how these images and the labelling and depiction

of the enemy worked within two systems that overlapped and were in contradictory at the

same time. The analysis of the posters revealed a dilution of the Marxist ideology with

Russian tradition.


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Sergei Kruk(Riga Stradins University) proposed an interesting semiotic approach to

examine the alteration of the representation politics and the methods that were used to

depreciate unwanted monuments in twentieth-century Latvia.

Rika Devos (UGent) lecture on the spatial relationship between the USSR and USA

pavilions at Expo 58 and the political import of these buildings and the images that were

produced of them demonstrated how repressed tensions and antagonisms which were not

clearly articulated in words, were clearly visible in contemporary images. Her presentation

illustrated the wide variety of iconographical material that can provide insight in past events

and political and social relationships, using technical drawings, photographs and postcards as

a primary source for her research.

In the session Artefacts and narratives of power, Thomas Cauvin (European

University Institute) focused on how exhibitions interpret, construct and try to produce

official narratives of the past, using two exhibitions on the Irish 1798 Rebellion as case

studies. This raised questions with regard to the difficulties of interpreting images and

demonstrated that the meaning of images is never clearcut and depends greatly on the context

of display.

Fabrice Serodes (University of Salford) also illustrated the changing meaning of images

throughout time and especially in different social, political and cultural contexts. Both

presentations dealt with the shaping and stimulating of the so-called social or cultural

memory, an aspect that was more extensively discussed by Kees Ribbens (Netherlands

Institute of War Documentation) in his lecture the following day. Visual culture is indeed

inevitably linked with aspects of heritage and representations of the past, and questions on

which images can be deciphered as historical can be posed. Musea, with historical

exhibitions, and (historical) tourism, inspired by nostalgia and longing for authenticity, seem

to be common ways to get in touch with (popular) history and shape the way we think about

and look at the past.

A womens journal as an influential mediator was central in the session The iconic

child.Nele Van den Cruyce (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) presented a well-thought-out mixed

methodology, also signalling the weaknesses and advantages of her approach. She

demonstrated that a critical awareness of our own way of seeing and the mechanisms that

structure it, of the inherent subjectivity of the source material is an important step in

maximalising the quality of the research outcome.


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Another side of the visual source material was stressed in the session Workers in the

picture. Both presentations looked for the point were reality and image converged. Rachel

Worth (The Arts Institute, Bournemouth) elaborated on the question of photographic truth. In

her study of the photography of Henry Peach Robinson, different ways of staging photographs

was clearly brought into vision. Researchers should at all times be wary of the conscious and

unconscious manipulation of the depicted scenes by the author of the source material. Alain

Michel (Universit d'Evry-Val-d'Essonne) used photographs, films and industrial drawings as

the basis of a 3D reconstruction of the C5 workshop in which the Renault Automobile

Company introduced the manual chassis assembly line in 1917. He stressed the way images

are used to apprehend the reality of the work they represent as a first hand source for the

historian and proposed a historical methodology.

In the last session, Utopian landscape, the interpretation of photographs, postcards

and a television series proved to be very telling for an analysis of the interaction of humans

with the landscape.Rien Emmery (KULeuven) demonstrated that TV images can be suitable

documents for the history of mentalities. In addition, he stressed the social effects these

cultural constructions can generate: these mass-produced, popular discourses are able to

influence professional and political actors, as well as the broader public.

Davy Depelchin (UGent) argued that postcards, photographs, architectural drawings and other

images can offer an insight in the architecture of lost coastal buildings, especially since

written and physical evidence of pre-war tourist exploitation at the Belgian coastline is

lacking.

Anne Cronin reflected on the spaciality and temporality of advertisements. She offered

us a very interesting and workable theoretical framework and useful concepts for approaching

visual and material culture. She gave us insight in the different ways of seeing and on how

they affect our encounter with images in the broadest sense of the word.

Marga Altena (Radboud University Nijmegen) pleaded for a serious incorporation of

images within historical sciences. By showing different photographs of women in a context of

industrial labour, she elaborated an interesting way, or better, an interesting ways of looking

at images, which are based on her innovating PhD-research of 2003. Five steps are to be

considered: what do we see on the picture? Which parties have influenced the creation of the

picture, and in what kind of tradition the picture has to be located? What information does a


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cross-examination of the pictures with written sources has to offer researchers? And finally,

what is the political, social and cultural context of the analysed image? Future research will

show us if how valuable this method can be.

With this conference, we wanted to bring together researchers from different

disciplines within the human sciences that are using images as their primary source. First, to

illustrate the enormous potential images have as a historical source. Second, to reveal the

particular difficulties in working with images, and finally, to stimulate interdisciplinary or

multidisciplinary research between historians, archaeologists, sociologists, art historians and

researchers working in the field of visual culture studies. We think we reached this aim,

gathering 13 speakers from a wide variety of disciplines within the human sciences, as can be

clearly seen in the list of invited speakers (see annexe 2). In addition, we attracted more than

40 participants, including historians, archaeologists, art historians, members of archives and

heritage centers. The general remarks of the participants were very positive and welcoming

towards the initiative that was the first meeting of historians and archaeologists of this kind.

This enthusiasm is promising and signals that there is indeed a real interest of these

disciplines in working with images and that there is a need for co-operation and the exchange

of knowledge about dealing with these valuable sources.

In any case, a critical reflection on the use and relevance of source material has proven to be a

useful exercise. Different disciplines have closely collaborated, in that extent that the

boundaries of otherwise strictly separated social sciences have been torn down. We are

convinced that it has made clear that an interdisciplinary approach combining historical and

archaeological theories and methodologies and the insights provided by the developments in

visual culture studies can lead to a better understanding of the past. This conference has

shown the importance and the potential of visual sources, but also that cooperation and

interdisciplinarity are the key to the future of visual culture studies in Belgium and abroad.

Visual sources should be appropriated by the current academia, bringing about a thorough

change in current mentalities.

Another important conclusion to this conference could be the idea that a customized

approach, dependant on the topic and research questions, should be cherished by historians

and contemporary archaeologists. Let it be clear: although the question of theory and

methodology certainly is a very delicate one, our different speakers have shown that there are

numerous, scientific and valuable ways of approaching visual material. Although it is

necessary to question research methods, we think that we have been able to show that


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theoretical and methodological problems are no sufficient argument to reject visual material

as historical source.


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Annexe 1: Conference Programme

Programme 10 March

9 a.m. - 9.30 a.m.: Opening + coffee

9.30 a.m. - 9.45 a.m.: Introduction: the Historical use of Images (drs. Joeri Januarius and dra.

Nelleke Teughels)

9.45 a.m. - 10.45 a.m.: Pictures, politics and propaganda (discussants: Prof. Dr. Bruno De

Wever and dra. Nelleke Teughels)

Vladimir Dobrenko: 'The Image of the Enemy in Bolshevik political posters during theOctober Revolution and the Civil War'

Sergei Kruk: Wars of Statues: Ius imaginum and Damnatio memoriae in the 20thcentury Latvia

Rika Devos: A cold war sketch10.45 a.m. - 11 a.m.: Coffee break

11 a.m. 11.45 a.m.: Discussion Pictures, politics and propaganda

11.45 a.m. - 12.45 p.m.: Artefacts and narratives of power (discussant: Dr. Marc Jacobs)

Thomas Cauvin: Explaining the past through artefacts? 1998 historical exhibitions inIreland and Northern Ireland

Fabrice Serodes: Historical use of a caricature. The destiny of the perfidious Albion.12.45 - 2 p.m.: Lunch

2 p.m. - 3 p.m.: The iconic child (discussant: Prof. Dr. Nico Carpentier)

Nele Van den Cruyce: 'Reflections of a child'3 p.m. - 4 p.m.: Workers in the picture (discussant: Prof. Dr. Patricia Van den Eeckhout and

drs. Joeri Januarius)

Rachel Worth: 'Representations of English rural working-dress and the photography ofHenry Peach Robinson (1830-1901)'

Alain P. Michel: 'Visual documents, Virtual reality and the renewal of Labour history'4 p.m. 4.15 p.m.: Coffee break

4.15 p.m. 6 p.m.: Utopian landscapes (discussant Prof. Dr. Dries Tys)

Bieke Cattoor: A cartographic exploration of territorial figures generated by road andrailway infrastructure in the South of West Flanders and its, 1722- 2007

Rien Emmery: Looking Past the Rural Idyll: History, TV Fiction and theRepresentation of the Flemish Countryside

Davy Depelchin: 'The story of an orientalist daydream: the use of images in brandingthe Belgian seaside resorts as exotic playgrounds for the 19th and early 20th-centurybourgeoisie, and its importance as historical evidence for the present day'


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Programme 11 March

10 a.m. 11.30 a.m.: Masterclass Anne Cronin: 'Seeing Time: advertising images and the

spatio-temporalities of neo-capitalism'

11.30 a.m. 11.45 a.m.: Coffee break

11.45 a.m. 1 p.m.: Masterclass Anne Cronin: 'Seeing Time: advertising images and the

spatio-temporalities of neo-capitalism'

1 p.m. - 2.15 p.m.: Lunch

2.15 p.m. - 3.30 p.m.: Masterclass Marga Altena: 'Negotiating History: Representations of

the Past through Visual Media'

3.30 p.m. - 3.45 p.m.: Coffee break

3.45 p.m. - 5 p.m.: Masterclass Kees Ribbens: 'Images all over. History visualized ... and

made invisible'

5 - 5.30 p.m.: Conclusions by the organisation (Joeri Januarius and Nelleke Teughels)

5.30 p.m. 6.30 p.m.: Reception


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Annexe 2: List of invited speakers

Marga Altena, Centre for Thanatology, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Thomas Cauvin, Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute

Anne Cronin, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University

Davy Depelchin, Master student in Art History, Universiteit Gent

Rika Devos, Faculty of Engineering, Universiteit Gent

Vladimir Dobrenko, Oxford University

Rien Emmery, Centrum voor Agrarische Geschiedenis, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Sergei Kruk, Information and Communication Science, Riga Stradins University

Alain Michel, History Laboratory, Universit d'Evry-Val-d'Essonne

Kees Ribbens, Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Royal Netherlands Academy of

Arts and Sciences

Fabrice Serodes, European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford

Nele Van den Cruyce, Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Rachel Worth, Fashion History, The Arts Institute Bournemouth


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Annexe 3: List of discussants

Nico Carpentier, Department of Communication Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Bruno De Wever, Department of History, Universiteit Gent

Marc Jacobs, Director of FARO

Joeri Januarius, History Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Nelleke Teughels, Department of Art & Archaeology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Dries Tys, Department of Art & Archaeology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Patricia Van den Eeckhout, Department of Political Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel


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Annexe 4: organisation

Organising committee

Junior Researchers

Joeri Januarius, Department of History (HIST), Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Nelleke Teughels, Department of Art History & Archaeology (SKAR), Vrije Universiteit

Brussel

Supporting ZAP-members

Prof. Dr. Peter Scholliers, Department of History (HIST), Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Prof. Dr. Dries Tys, Department of Art History & Archaeology (SKAR), Vrije Universiteit

BrusselOther members

Prof. Dr. Patricia Van den Eeckhout, Department of Political Sciences (ESP), Vrije

Universiteit Brussel

Prof. Dr. Johan Swinnen, Department of Art History & Archaeology (SKAR), Vrije

Universiteit Brussel

Prof. Dr. Bruno De Wever, Department of History, Universiteit Gent

Dr. Marc Jacobs and Bert Schreurs, Directors of FARO Vlaams Steunpunt voor Cultureel

Erfgoed, Brussel

Scientific Committee

Joeri Januarius, Department of History (HIST), Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Nelleke Teughels, Department of Art History & Archaeology (SKAR), Vrije Universiteit

Brussel

Prof. Dr. Peter Scholliers, Department of History (HIST), Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Prof. Dr. Dries Tys, Department of Art History & Archaeology (SKAR), Vrije Universiteit

Brussel

Dr. Marc Jacobs, Director of FARO Vlaams Steunpunt voor Cultureel Erfgoed, Brussel

Documents

Conference on the Historical Use of Images_report (2009)