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Paper short abstract

Drawing on extensive archival research and a process of visual return with colonial medical photographs, this paper reframes the British colonial archive as an ethnographic field. It discusses the afterlives of images and highlights reflexive and creative approaches to archival fieldwork.

Paper long abstract

This paper describes my approach to working with British colonial medical photographic archives by treating the archive not only as a historical source but also as an ethnographic field site. For my doctoral research, I developed an approach that situated the archive as an uncomfortable environment of human sociality, involving a diverse range of actors including archivists, researchers, and the communities to whom these materials may hold contemporary relevance.

The colonial archive is marked by marked by distinct violence, silences, and absences that continue to shape how histories are known and represented. To generate new interpretations, I undertook a process of visual return in which selected medical photographs were engaged with multiple publics through photo-elicitation interviews, workshops, and a walking tour, highlighting the afterlives of these images beyond the archive. This ethnographic-historical engagement unearthed new narratives on debates around restitution, repatriation, and interpretive authority by opening a range of creative and embodied encounters. It also enabled decolonial, subjective and ethical models for writing about historical subjects. By reframing archival fieldwork as a reflexive and generative practice, this paper argues that such work not only reveals the dynamic nature of colonial records but also provides a critical methodological framework for rethinking anthropology’s relationship to its colonial past and its contemporary practices of knowledge production.