Post-Photographic Presences, or How to Wear a Digital Cloak

Abstract

This article explores some of the tensions that digital processing introduces to our understanding of photography by focusing on digital images of a Māori cloak from New Zealand held in the UCL Ethnography Collections. The complex, energetic/electrical networks established not only by digital communication technologies but also between Māori people and their taonga (treasured possessions) expand the understanding of both photographic indexicality and Runia’s definition of presence. The wairua, or spiritual energies, channelled in Māori relationships as they are transmitted through important cultural treasures creates a profound experience of co-presence in which objects are understood as simultaneous links to the past, present and future. The article argues that the experience of co-presence in both Māori engagements with important museum objects and the experience of networked digital communications technologies (including digital photographs) allows us to develop an expanded understanding of provenance, or where objects come from (and who they belong to) in museums.