Hidden Earth 2018

“Darkographies”: A photo-history of the Katafygadi cave archaeological excavation in Kythera island, Greece

30 minute Lecture|Mr Konstantinos Trimmis

Abstract

Photographing in the absolute darkness of a cave is challenging enough. Photographing an archaeological excavation of a Minoan - Bronze Age – cave can be even more challenging particularly because of specific light conditions that an archaeological excavation needs on top of the usual difficulties of cave photography. This paper presents the challenges that cave photographers faced during the excavation in Katafygadi cave in Greece were several photography modes were tested (secondary light sources on the frame, manual setting with different shutter speeds, using flashguns manually or in an automatic ttl mode) for the best recording of the cave and the archaeological process. Our project had the bi-fold aim to explore the technical aspects of the archaeological cave photography and to offer a third kind of photographic production, which occupies the space between art and ethnographic commentary of the archaeological practice follows Hamilakis (et al 2009) framework. From a theoretical perspective this “photo- history” aims to discuss photographs, as material artefacts of an excavation and part of the cultural context of the cave history. Photos work by evocation rather than representation, and as material memories of the things they have witnessed.