ABSTRACT
Photographs that were never taken haunt the archive. What no one thought to photograph, and why, has much to tell us about what everyone did photograph, often in such predictable patterns – Egyptian men carrying crates of swaddled artefacts, or Western archaeologists looking busy with antiquities. Some photographic possibilities were forgotten or overlooked, or else deemed unnecessary or inappropriate – all the objects or angles that never made it in front of Burton’s lens, for instance, or identifiable portraits of the ru’asa Carter named in his books. There were other photographs that simply could not be, because there was no camera present, or conditions were inadequate, or the significance of the event was realized only after it took place. The unique and localized acts of discovery feted by conventional narratives of archaeology, and heralded in the media, present a photographic problem if no one thought to capture them at the time.
