Utilizando la fotografía en la historia de la ciencia y de la tecnología: una propuesta metodológica

Abstract

Photography has been used to record different features of human societies since its invention in the first half of the nineteenth century. After years of being used as an illustrative tool in history, photography conquered its place as a primary source since the mid-1980s. In this article I add to this debate with a methodological approach to use photography in history of science and technology (including medicine and engineering). I argue that photography offers an exclusive view to understanding how science and technology were implemented, used, represented,and presented to the public.I offer both practical guidelines and a theoretical framework, basedon Barthesian semiotics. I claim hat this proposal has the potential to be used as a common denominator between assorted photographic collections and therefore to allow broader comparisons across different historical and geographic contexts.Moreover, it promotes thecritical view of photography that should not be taken by its face value, but it should be understood within its sociotechnical and technoscientific context. I focus on photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but this approach may be applied to more recent photographic collections. This reflectioncertainly has its limitations and shortcomings, and it is naturally open toimprovements, through its practical application to photographic collections.