A Study of Photographic Works on the Ancient World by Herbert List and Joel Sternfeld

via the writings of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida

Abstract

Practitioners of photography seeking to record the past face the twin barriers of place and time as they can only record what is before the lens. However, the ancients never worshipped in today’s ruins, never touched their fallen walls, never saw them in our sunrises or sunsets. The ruins of today seem not to be the past, being their post-collapse and imperceptible degradation. Yet the past ought to be traceable and recoverable if correctly approached. This essay seeks to evaluate two key photographic works concerning the ancient world by photographers Herbert List and Joel Sternfeld through writings engaged with antiquity in the contemporary by philosophers Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida.

First delivered in 2016 for Photography Plus Context: Photography in Academic Research, UCL Institute of Archaeology, London. Edited and expanded upon 2024-2025.