In his infamous analysis of tools, Martin Heidegger drew a distinction between the states of an object being ‘ready at hand’ and ‘present to hand’. His observation, that the ‘ready at hand’ object is one we use without a consciousness of its properties – we only notice a hammer when it fails in its duty – acutely mirrors both the photograph and the book. The technologies and supports of both image and text are things we ignore in the task of gathering information, looking at an image or reading. We might update Heidegger’s observation, however: the ‘ready at hand’ tool also emerges to us when it has been superceded by a new technology with a similar purpose. In the compulsion to see the new as superior, the properties of the old are also revealed…..

Oxford, is home to the oldest university in the English-speaking world and has long been a place of interest to image-makers. The picturesque views and architectural gems of the city and its college have provided many commercial and artistic opportunities alike. Historical precedents to photographic images of the city can be found in John Bereblock’s (1566-unknown) illustrations in Divinity School and Duke of Humfrey’s Library or David Logann, (1635-1692) engraver to the university, in his Arts End and Selden End works, made at the Bodleian Library……..

Over twenty years ago in his essay; “Phantasm, Digital Imaging and the Death of Photography” (1994), writer and critic Geoffrey Batchen (1956) stated that: Photography may indeed be on the verge of losing its privileged place within modern culture.This does not mean that photographic images will no longer be made, but it does signal the possibility of a dramatic transformation of their meaning and value, and therefore of the medium’s ongoing significance. However, it should be clear that any such shift in significancewill be an epistemological affair rather than a simple consequence of the advent of digital imaging…..

Both of the series of works that I discuss here, Ross’s Museology (1987) and Höfer’s Libraries (2005), were published in book format. Ross’s Museology (1987) series published as a monograph by Aperture in 1989, is made up of 45 colour, medium-format images, created over 12 years. In contrast, Höfer’s Libraries (2005), published as a book by Thames and Hudson is more encyclopaedic in its extent, containing 137 large format colour images. Where the space of the library is the focus of Höfer’s image making, within Ross’s Museology (1987) the natural history museum lies as his point of focus. Natural history museums throughout the world, from the Museum Nationale d’Histroire Naturelle in Paris and the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to the British Museum in London are explored…..

In The Photographing of Spaces of Learning, from Talbot to Höfer I positioned photography as an organising device through the work of Talbot, described by Russell Roberts as being an extension of the ‘museological dimension’ (Roberts, 1999). Here I move on to present the continuing desire to bring order and thereby meaning into the expanding flux of contemporary visual culture. At the core of my approach is the question of what the work depends on for meaning……