Absent Histories and Absent Images

Based on research in a range of UK museums, this paper (Museum & Society, 11.1), co-authored with Prof. Elizabeth Edwards, explores the visibility and invisibility of the photographic legacy of colonialism in museum galleries. The essay examines the conditions for the ‘disavowal’ of the colonial past in historical narratives developed by museums, and the anxieties that cluster around such narratives in a postcolonial and multicultural society.

The photographic legacy of the colonial past offers a way into these histories, but only through critical engagement with photographs both as images and objects.