Photographing archaeological labor was routine on Egyptian and other Middle Eastern sites during the colonial period and interwar years. Yet why and how such photographs were taken is rarely discussed in literature concerned with the history of archaeology, which tends to take photography as given if it considers it at all. This paper uses photographs from the first two seasons of work at the tomb of Tutankhamun to show that photography contributed to discursive strategies that positioned archaeology as a (...) scientific practice – both in the public presentation of well-known sites and in the self-presentation of archaeologists to themselves and each other. Since the subjects of such photographs are often indigenous laborers working together or with foreign excavators, I argue that the representation of fieldwork through photography allows us to theorize colonial archaeology as a collective activity, albeit one inherently based on asymmetrical power relationships. Through photographs, we can access the affective and embodied experiences that collective effort in a colonial context involved, bringing into question standard narratives of the history and epistemology of archaeology. (shrink)

To Shoot Photographs of Tutankhamun – The Making of an Exhibition Star. In the 1970s, the exhibition “Treasures of Tutankhamun” toured the world. It still ranks today amongst the most popular museum exhibitions of all time. This article explores photography used in the catalogue of this blockbuster exhibition in the USA and West Germany; it describes how the pictures of Tutankhamun's objects, which were made by a team from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, introduced a significantly (...) new and different approach to catalogue photography. Until the 1960s, Ancient Egyptian artefacts had been documented by means of bare frontal or profile images in black and white; their close‐grained, accurately shaded quality allowed the objects to be investigated independently of the viewer's location. The high gloss colour images of the 1970s, however, instead sought to lend the objects something a photograph could not normally achieve: a palpable presence. They captured sensational traces, creating star items that one “just had to see for oneself”. In other words, the article presents how catalogue photos were able to participate in the creation of star objects and therefore also contributed to the exhibition's enormous success. The historical background behind the rise of this sensational photography in the 1960s and 1970s will be discussed and framed theoretically. In showing how photography played an important role in transforming the objects taken from Tutankhamen's tomb, it argues that mobilising museum objects through media can induce (semiotic and material) transformations of objects. (shrink)

If the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, or the Sword of Goujian were destroyed, nothing could replace them. New works of art that are even more impressive may be created, which may replenish the value in the world in quantity, but they would not fully replace the loss. Works of art and historical artifacts have irreplaceable value. But just what is irreplaceable value? This paper presents perhaps the first analysis. Irreplaceable value is a matter of (...) intrinsic value in virtue of unreinstantiable good-making properties, which give rise to reasons to preserve and protect. (shrink)