"framings": some case studies

Photographs of the colonial past are put to work in museums, histories and memory practices in many ways.  Their meaning emerges from a process of ‘framing’.[1] Framing establishes a relation between analysis and practice is both more fluid and discursive than the concept of ‘context’ alone. ‘Framing’ is thus constituted through a discursive matrix of content, style, context and museum and archival environments, which determines the work of photographs in museums.

This section presents a series of such ‘framings’ which the PhotoCLEC team have found productive to ‘think with’. They form a group of case studies of museum displays, archiving practices, remediations and repurposings of photographs. As case studies, they raise questions about, and perhaps suggest some answers to, photographic dilemmas in the ways in which museums represent the colonial past.