Photographs as historical evidence of Malta and Gozo in the first half of the twentieth century : Emmanuele Sciortino and Giuseppe Cremona photographic collections

Abstract

Various public and private archives in Malta possess large photographic collections of Malta and Gozo of the past. Several authors have published them as collections in books. Others use photographs to fill up pages. Nevertheless, very few authors and academics have analysed photographs as historical evidence. Although Kurt Tucholsky stated that a picture says more than a thousand words, not everyone possesses the capacity to read them or delve deeper in the study of the pictorial image and are always utilized as secondary to the written word. According to Peter Burke, Raphael Samuel regarded himself and other cultural historians as visually illiterate. Recent contributions have presented photographs as an album accompanied only with very short captions or even as illustrations without any comments. Historians are logocentric, meaning focusing on written evidence. They do not take photographs seriously, proving the invisibility of the visual. Burke states that images have their place alongside written historical evidence and oral history. The overall objective of my proposed research is to value photographs as historical evidence. The specific aims and hypotheses are to test how photographs can shed light on Malta and Gozo in the first half of the twentieth century. The method that I will be employing is of choosing sixteen photographs, six from the Emmanuele Sciortino Photographic Collection at The National Archives of Malta and ten from the Giuseppe Cremona Photographic Collection, found in a private archive owned by Mr John Cremona. The former was active in photography circa 1927 to circa 1940, while the latter was active circa 1920 to 1950. Furthermore, I will be analysing and reading the referred photographic evidence whilst comparing them with written and oral evidence. I will adopt methods and techniques in line with the thought of Peter Burke and others to further investigate my hypothesis. The study hopes to show that photographs are historical evidence that can prove or disprove historical written evidence. Unfortunately, one must keep in mind that photographs can be ambiguous and can have multiple meanings. This is thus one of the limitations foreseen for this thesis. In addition, according to Burke, cultural historians may differ among themselves in their use of visual evidence, in this case being photographs.