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In 1941, Alison Frantz and Lucy Talcott, archaeologists and members of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, published a book for "the benefit of civilian aid" in occupied Greece. Contributed by the members of the School and their friends, the photographs of ancient stones and Byzantine monuments, of bucolic scenery and peasant life, of sun-blasted islands, indigenous architecture and customs that featured in the modestly produced but not so modestly entitled publication This is Greece were selected and edited together with ancient verses to evidence that "in Greece past and present [were] separated by no wide gulf". Haunting the history of Modern Greece and feeding Europe's Philhellene sentiments since the early 19th century, this belief in the "continuity of tradition" and the inseparability of "the two Greeces—the ancient and the modern" seemed to uniformly underline the travel books and illustrated tourist guides that were published under homonymous or suchlike titles in the late 1940s and 1950s, and which rebranded Greece as a must-see destination for the educated European traveler. This chapter argues that similar idea(l)s, thematic and/or morphological, not only informed the ways that Greek photographers, amateurs and professionals, visualized Greece and the "imagined community" of the Greek nation in the post-war years, but would also constitute the point of ideological, conceptual and aesthetic departure from the imag(in)ing of Greece "à ciel ouvert" in the work of succeeding generations. Three distinct moments in the history of Greek Photography, the 1950s, the 1980s and the 2000s, are cross-examined endeavouring to show how photography from a "nation-building tool" that afforded post-war generations with iconic images of Greekness in an era of political turbulence, would, in subsequent decades, challenge the preconceptions of collective consciousness about national identity and associated motivations, historical narrative and factuality, and as such, at its most elemental, the ...

This article seeks to explore the impact of digital technologies upon the material, conceptual and ideological premises of the colonial archive in the digital era. This analysis is pursued though a discussion of creative work produced during an international, multidisciplinary artist workshop in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that used digital material from colonial photographic archives in the Netherlands to critically investigate the ways national, transnational and personal (hi)stories in the former colonies in Southeast Asia have been informed and shaped by their colonial past. The analysis focuses on how the artists' use of digital media contests and reconfigures the use, truth value and power of the colonial archive as an entity and institution. Case studies include: Thai photographer Dow Wasiksiri, who questions the archive's mnemonic function by substituting early twentieth-century handcrafted association techniques with digital manipulation; Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann, who compresses onto the same picture plane different historical moments and colonial narratives; and Indonesian photographer Agan Harahap, who recomposes archival photographs into unlikely juxtapositions disseminated through social media. By repurposing colonial archival material and circulating their work online such a re-imag(in)ing of Southeast Asia not only challenges the notions of originality, authenticity, ownership and control associated with such archives, but also reclaims colonial-era (hi)stories, making them part of a democratic, expanding, postcolonial archive.

This article seeks to explore the impact of digital technologies upon the material, conceptual and ideological premises of the colonial archive in the digital era. This analysis is pursued though a discussion of creative work produced during an international, multidisciplinary artist workshop in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that used digital material from colonial photographic archives in the Netherlands to critically investigate the ways national, transnational and personal (hi)stories in the former colonies in Southeast Asia have been informed and shaped by their colonial past. The analysis focuses on how the artists' use of digital media contests and reconfigures the use, truth value and power of the colonial archive as an entity and institution. Case studies include: Thai photographer Dow Wasiksiri, who questions the archive's mnemonic function by substituting early twentieth-century handcrafted association techniques with digital manipulation; Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann, who compresses onto the same picture plane different historical moments and colonial narratives; and Indonesian photographer Agan Harahap, who recomposes archival photographs into unlikely juxtapositions disseminated through social media. By repurposing colonial archival material and circulating their work online such a re-imag(in)ing of Southeast Asia not only challenges the notions of originality, authenticity, ownership and control associated with such archives, but also reclaims colonial-era (hi)stories, making them part of a democratic, expanding, postcolonial archive.

This paper seeks to explore the impact of digital technologies upon the material, conceptual and ideological premises of the colonial archive in the digital era. This analysis is pursued though a discussion of creative work produced in the context of an international, multidisciplinary artist workshop in Yogyakarta, Indonesia that used digital material from colonial archives to critically investigate the ways national, transnational and personal (hi)stories in the former colonies have been informed and shaped by the colonial past. The analysis focuses on how the artists' use of digital media contests and reconfigures the use, truth value and power of the colonial archive as an entity and institution. Case studies include: Thai photographer Dow Wasiksiri, who questions the archive's mnemonic function by substituting early twentieth-century handcrafted association techniques with digital manipulation; Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann, who compresses onto the same picture plane different historical moments and colonial narratives; and Indonesian photographer Agan Harahap, who recomposes archival photographs into unlikely juxtapositions disseminated through social media. By repurposing colonial archival material and circulating their work online such a re-imag(in)ing of South East Asia not only challenges the notions of originality, authenticity, ownership and control associated with the colonial archive, but also reclaims colonial (hi)stories making them part of a democratic, expanding, postcolonial archive.

The chapter explores how creative repurposing of networked photographs and online interactivity may open new channels and networks for the critical re-evaluation of mainstream culture and subcultures, identity politics, history and power structures. The analysis focuses on the work of Indonesian artist Agan Harahap, who uses strategies of appropriation, digital manipulation, allegory and irony to make unexpected visual and contextual interventions in popular and archival imagery, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, the public and the private. Over a decade, Harahap built an international reputation and social media following as a visual appropriator/pasticheur and cultural provocateur. His work draws on cultural and political antinomies in postcolonial Indonesia, shifting cultural and social behaviours in contemporary networked societies, and the impact of media and celebrity culture on people and communities, using the malleability of digital photography, the fluidity of the networked image and the architecture of participation of Web 2.0. His visual hoaxes are distributed nationally and internationally taking advantage of, and at times hacking, the instrumentality of a range of different online platforms to ignite public dialogue. The audiences' participation in sharing and commenting hints at the endless realm of possibilities for how these networked images, stored in the über-archive of Google images, may be circulated, recontextualised and repurposed. The online public interaction reveals different levels of subject awareness, trust and engagement: some users are totally deceived by Harahap's skillful hoaxes; others react to his absurd scenarios by openly challenging his claims or searching the web to source the original material he appropriates. Harahap's digital interventions purposefully interrupt the authority and integrity of the archival record and challenge the authenticity of the personal snaps by calling viewers to think twice about what it is that they see while raising questions ...

This article explores how the online presence of colonial material and its postcolonial appropriation and interpretation as well as the possibilities for user interactivity and repurposing of content has opened new channels and networks for the critical examination of the colonial archive, its ontology, politics and power. The analysis focuses on the work of Indonesian photo-based artist Agan Harahap who operates within the colonial archive's mnemonic function using the language of appropriation and parody to merge the colonial past with the postcolonial present. Harahap's Mardjiker Photo Studio is presented as a fictional indigenous studio operating in the colonial era and specialising on culturally inter-mixed portraits: westerners appear in folk attire and postures and locals assume western mannerisms. This digital manipulated imagery is disseminated via different online platforms, namely Facebook, Instagram and Twitter under the name of Sejarah_X. The audiences' participation in sharing and commenting upon Harahap's seamless photographic collages of Indonesia's colonial past hints at the endless realm of possibilities for how these series may be circulated, recontextualised and rematerialised. The online public interaction reveals different levels of awareness and knowledge of colonial history among followers: some are totally deceived by Harahap's skillful hoaxes; others react to his absurd scenarios accusing the artist of trivialising colonial history. Harahap's digital interventions purposefully interrupt the authority and integrity of the archive by asking viewers to think twice about what it is that they see while questioning the authorship and ownership of the colonial archive. Recontextualised and repurposed online on different platforms, his work becomes part of an expanding post-colonial archive and proposes a reframing not only of the politics of colonial representation, but also of the validity and veracity of the photographic image as evidence and historical record.

Constituting the 'defining other' of art photography, amateur photographic practices have long been neglected or specifically excluded from official histories of photography. Even the term 'amateur' has historically been characterized by semantic ambiguity. In recent years, however, contemporary amateur photographs have been capturing the art curatorial imagination. This is often motivated by the institutional and political impetus to engage with personal, local stories, rather than official, national narratives alone. Amateur photographs, with their apparent rawness and immediacy may afford the art museum with a more credible record of 'real life' and enable the display of polyvocal narratives. Furthermore, the changing digital media landscape has opened up opportunities for art museums to reach new audiences through public-contributed content. In response to these developments, this article asks: How has amateur photography acquired a protagonist role in contemporary art museum displays? Drawing on contrasting case studies of exhibitions in the US and Europe, which have incorporated user-contributed photographic content in their displays, this article discusses how everyday photographic creativity and the raw materials of people's stories serve as a means to interact with institutionally constructed histories of photography.