Photography, the Index, and the Nonexistent: Alfred Watkins’ Discovery (or Invention) of the Notorious Ley‐lines of British Archaeology

Abstract

Some current debates about the history of photography revolve around its alleged indexicality. Emphasizing this aspect plays into the “white mythology of photography” at the expense of other ways of comprehending the medium’s semiotics and epistemology. Consideration of the use of photographs by Alfred Watkins (1855–1935), the British photographer and archaeologist, offers a semiotic model for the working of photography that can answer to both ontological and epistemological questions raised by the medium in general and by Watkins’ works in particular. Watkins photographed features of British countryside and terrain that rival archaeologists have consistently alleged not to exist. It is only by not taking sides over this question that we can use the case to help understand how photography works in a situation of epistemological ambiguity. On the way, we can conclude that although their reputation for representing plain fact is precisely what is called into question, photographs continue to work persuasively on the reader, maintaining a rhetorical force in excess of their documentary value.