Emergent Images Matters of Affect in Heritage Photography

This chapter explores the ecological emergence of a highly specific heritage “thing” – in the case a single photographic image – across a variety of material conditions and modes of encounter. When John Thomson produced the image in March 1866, he used the most popular photographic technology of the time, known as the wet collodion process. The commingling of natural processes and cultural practices is immediately evident in Thomson’s Bayon image. The unique material qualities of the collodion solution, glass plate, wooden camera and silver nitrate impress themselves upon the photograph. In a wide-ranging study of British survey photography in the late nineteenth century, E. Edwards describes the lantern slide as “a much underestimated player in the formation of historical consciousness and imagination”. Thomson’s use of the technology is well documented and aligns with a period in which the educative power of photographs was paramount.