Abstract

The development of art history as an academic discipline was closely intertwined with photography. Specific research methods such as form analysis and iconography that are based on comparative studies of works of art were shaped by the medium. This paper deals firstly with the functions, advantages and shortcomings of photography as they were seen by German art historians around 1900. Secondly, it describes four different strategies of coping with these differences between original works of art and their photography and with the absence of the works of art themselves in written and performed art history: descriptions of objects, claims of having seen the original, the attempt to produce lively photographs, and the slide performance