ABSTRACT
It is generally presumed that the mass printed visual began to play a particular ideological role in the construction of historical narratives in Europe after the invention of the movable printing press by the engraver, inventor and printer Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. From the 1840s a large and variegated cache of visual material was produced worldwide but the historians were slow to realize its historical potential. Whereas earlier the artists took time to produce images the camera operated instantly to photograph slaves, plantations, tribals, workers, plants, animals, intellectuals, monarchs, professionals and almost everything which inhabited the modern industrial and colonial world. Studio photography developed in Europe and the colonies converting the photograph into a statement of social identity. In order to use the visual archives historians must depart from the primary motive of modern establishment history which, in general, is a narration of the “formation and legitimation of the nation state.”.
