Photography, history and anthropology: An interview with Elizabeth Edwards

Abstract

In her interview, Professor Elizabeth Edwards re-flects on her training as a historian and anthropologist. Through remembering her trajectory, we follow the situations, people, and institutions that provided his encounter with photogra-phy. First, in the museological practice that allowed her to in-vestigate photography’s social circuits, uses, and functions as an object of material and visual culture, and, later, as a teacher and researcher in relevant institutions in the United Kingdom and Europe. Throughout the interview, relevant reflections were presented, highlighting the conceptual implications relat-ed to the materiality of photography, the anthropological ap-proach to cultural systems, and the importance of photography as a platform for observing the relationships between past, present, and future. It combines her reflection with a relevant set of historiographical references that allow a precise configu-ration of its main interlocutors in elaborating a complex ap-proach to photography.