Photography and Public History: Facing New Challenges

Photography, together with written material, is one of the traditional communication channels of public history. Written material on its own, especially in our predominantly visual era, can often fail to convey the desired message; but images on their own can be misunderstood if no text is added to place them in the context. The scientific use of photograph requires the contextualisation of images by verified data. With the growth of sources in the field of public history, it is vital to constantly check and compare any available data about images because it could be tempted to play on the emotions generated by some photographs to elicit a stronger reaction from the public. This is ignoring the fact that reinterpreting a photo in this way is essentially the same as rewriting history.