Photo Archives VI: Photography as Protocol

This talk examines the idea that photography has entered into the protocols of archive practice, informing and perhaps deforming them beyond recognition. What might a photographic protocol be? And how could an image, a photographic image, act within the confines expected of protocols? The paper explores how photographic practices and the protocols of archiving have come together in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The paper also interrogates how far the idea of photographic protocols can lead to a better understanding of the place of photographs and photographic archives within disciplinary imperatives.