Photographic Digital Heritage in Cultural Conflicts: A Critical Introduction

Abstract This introduction to the special issue “Photographic Digital Heritage in Cultural Conflicts” calls for the development of research into the various local and global political circumstances that have influenced the absorption of historical photographs into the realm of digital heritage, alongside the study of the digital photographic heritagization practices triggered by this very process. Opening with an exploration of the emergence of “the heritage phenomenon”, it analyses how photography, heritage, and the political arena have become interlocked. The discussion then considers how historical photographs, digital heritage and cultural conflicts have subsequently also become entangled since the post-Cold War rising prevalence of digital technology, global interconnectedness and liberal democracy. These related conditions, it is suggested, have informed the growing digital heritagization of historical photographs and the methods used for their digitization, safeguarding and dissemination. Before introducing the individual contributions to the issue, the text therefore argues that the confluence of historical photographs and digital heritage must not be understood as a mere response to technological progress but as an articulation of politically-charged aspirations to capitalize on the common association of photographs with the past, to administer approaches to differing cultural values in a time of imposing liberal-democratic politics of consensus.