The Historian, the Picture, and the Archive Export

@article{citeulike:3815014, abstract = {One of the persistent features of historical writing about the sciences in the last twenty years has been the concern of a number of historians who insist on the need for a new awareness of the role of visual images and image making. The author believes that, rather than reducing the analysis of visual culture to a single set of principles, the point of the academic study of scientific images is the recognition of their heterogeneity, the different circumstances of their production, and the variety of cultural and social functions they serve. This essay challenges historians to discover new ways of framing the historical meanings of scientific images within the larger contexts of signifying symbols, images, and mediations that make up culture. The study of nineteenth-century practices of building collections of scientific photographs provides the background for a discussion of the significance of picture archives in the history of science, of the historical mechanisms that frame some pictures as scientific and others as unscientific, and of the need for further research on how scientific images generate meaning.}, author = {Tucker, Jennifer}, citeulike-article-id = {3815014}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/501104}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/501104}, day = {1}, doi = {10.1086/501104}, journal = {Isis}, keywords = {art, science-studies, sts}, month = {March}, number = {1}, pages = {111--120}, posted-at = {2008-12-20 23:50:07}, priority = {2}, title = {The Historian, the Picture, and the Archive}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/501104}, volume = {97}, year = {2006} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:3815014 L3 - citeulike-article-id:3815014 N2 - One of the persistent features of historical writing about the sciences in the last twenty years has been the concern of a number of historians who insist on the need for a new awareness of the role of visual images and image making. The author believes that, rather than reducing the analysis of visual culture to a single set of principles, the point of the academic study of scientific images is the recognition of their heterogeneity, the different circumstances of their production, and the variety of cultural and social functions they serve. This essay challenges historians to discover new ways of framing the historical meanings of scientific images within the larger contexts of signifying symbols, images, and mediations that make up culture. The study of nineteenth-century practices of building collections of scientific photographs provides the background for a discussion of the significance of picture archives in the history of science, of the historical mechanisms that frame some pictures as scientific and others as unscientific, and of the need for further research on how scientific images generate meaning. IS - 1 JF - Isis EP - 120 TI - The Historian, the Picture, and the Archive VL - 97 SP - 111 KW - art KW - science-studies KW - sts AU - Tucker, Jennifer PY - 2006/03/01/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/501104 ER -