Introduction: Photography and the Geographical Imagination

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates how photographs have operated as spatial forms, how they have represented the spaces, places and landscapes within their frame, as well as how different spatial contexts have shaped the practices of photography and the meanings of photographs. It explores some of the relationships between photographic practice and geographical inquiry, between photographic representation and the geographical imagination. The book then explores the way in which heritage preservation, collective memory and architectural photography converged in the work of the Mission Heliographique, a state-sponsored project to survey and document the state of France’s architectural patrimony. It also examines the photograph as a form of travel writing and as a device of memory and focuses on three works compiled by travellers to Rome as part of their engagement with place.