Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Past by Ballantyne Tony

Author:Ballantyne, Tony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Otago University Press

Chapter 7

Chance Residues: photographs and social history

Bronwyn Dalley

Old photographs bring out the voyeur in any historian. They allow us to peer into people’s houses, share their celebrations and tribulations, or watch them work, relax or play. Photographs take us to places that no longer exist, to events that changed the world, and to public and community occasions; they allow us to eavesdrop on the past. We can gaze upon friends, relatives, loved ones, national figures, or complete strangers – some long dead, others still with us – who are for ever frozen in time. Some of these figures arranged themselves deliberately for the camera, some were placed in position by the person behind the lens, but we also catch glimpses of those photographed without their consent and others snapped unawares.

For some types of information, photographs offer access to the past that other sources, especially written, seldom elucidate, or do not portray with such immediacy. This is particularly the case with the quotidian and the small, taken-for-granted details that so frequently go unmentioned in other media but which form the fabric of everyday life in the past. So often, such details are the ‘involuntary confessions’ of history, the things tucked away in the corner of images.1 Historian James Ryan has termed these incidentals the ‘chance residues’ of the past – those unintended forms or details that lie in historical sources.2

In this essay, I use a selection of photographs to explore some chance residues of daily routines and material culture in the past, especially relating to work and personal appearance. Everyday routines occur, sometimes unnoticed or unhistoricised, as political régimes move in and out of power, stock markets boom and collapse, and the population ages. Small events – the clothes worn, the styles of hair, the culture of work – help give meaning to people’s lives in the past, and may carry the traces of wider social issues and patterns.

This essay offers a visual perspective on New Zealand’s twentieth-century social history. I suggest ways of utilising photographs as historical sources and examine some of the challenges facing historians who want to use photographs in order to help reconstruct historical moments. Through a combination of image and text, I explore how photographs can provide a multitude of pathways into social history, for every picture tells many stories.

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