Exploration On Camera

The camera was widely promoted as an ally of geographical science. Yet it also reinforced potent myths about explorers and exploration.

The invention of photography in 1839 was greeted with enthusiasm by geographers, though only with the introduction of portable cameras and moving film did exploration and photography become truly inseparable. The RGS offered photographic training to explorers, appointing John Thomson instructor in 1886, and later promoted the use of film on scientific expeditions. Photographs, especially in lantern slide form, became an essential part of geographical education and entertainment.

Archival photographs can provide powerful evidence concerning the landscape and people encountered by explorers, as well as the role of local guides and porters. More rare is evidence concerning the production of photographic images in the field, as in the depiction of the Brazilian film-maker Silvino Santos in his Amazonian ‘laboratory’. Archival photographs can obscure as much as they reveal: the camera is not a neutral witness.

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