ABSTRACT
Building on the core themes of memory and affect, Chapter Four turns to the archive as a key material and conceptual space of photographic engagement within heritage. Here particular attention is paid to the enduring circulation of images depicting Angkor and Famagusta from different historical junctures. Drawing on the work of Ann Stoler and Yael Navaro-Yashin, I look to different theories of ‘the ruin’ as they relate to the photographic archive to help understand this circulation. This moves beyond ideas of melancholic contemplation to considered how the photograph as ruin might offer a critical vantage point on the present and the future. To help open up this discussion I look to a variety of archival dispositions, including the ongoing dispersal of John Thomson’s photographs, the production and re-use of colonial-era images of Angkor in recent exhibitions, the shifting values attached to photography and heritage by Britain in relation to Famagusta, and the alternative archival spaces opened up by grassroots collecting initiatives in Cyprus and Cambodia. Across all of these archival field-sites a picture emerges of photographic ‘ruins’ as epicentres and agents of potential change, rather than as simply mute records of the past.
