An Archaeology of Memory: A biography of photographs taken by E.L. Mitchell 1908-1930

At its broadest level, this archaeology of memory excavates how the nature of the collective memory influences the writing of history. The site for this excavation is a cultural biography of a group of photographs taken by the British migrant photographer E.L. Mitchell between 1908 and 1930.
This dissertation traces the history of destruction, survival and the lives of Mitchell's photographs across time and space, and unravels the networks behind their movement across the Empire and into multiple published, institutional and imperial contexts. Through this biography, the processes by which Mitchell's photographs became part of the construction of an imaginary sense of place, landscape and people are uncovered. The ideological role that both Mitchell's photographs and the memory institutions such as libraries and archives that now house them, continue to play in the formation of an idea of people and landscape are central to this active history of the photographs. Through tracing the social networks behind the creation and control of the documentary collective memory, this dissertation reveals why these photographs are used today, and perpetuate the same myths about the past that they were originally created to serve. Thus, this archaeology is a study of understanding how we imagined, came to know, and how we now remember a place - in this case, Western Australia.
Through bringing photographs into history in this manner, and incorporating their histories as part of this process, this dissertation demonstrates the importance of photographs as historical source materials, and the potential for writing histories using the contexts in which photographs are found as primary evidence. In co-locating all traceable surviving evidence of Mitchell's work, this study takes an archival approach to researching the contexts and lives of photographs. In incorporating the research processes as an integral part of this study, this dissertation rests as a critique of collection management practices that exert a formative influence on the nature of historical research.
Through challenging both the transparency of the photograph and the neutrality of institutional memory, this dissertation demonstrates the possibilities of photographs to be seen as documents. In order for the research potential of photographs to be realised, this study further reveals the need for a closer association between those who manage and those who use documentary collections, a process which could be achieved through developing an increased visual literacy of both collection managers and researchers.