The Mirror in the Ground is a book by Nick Shepherd on archaeology and photography in South Africa. The book covers a formative period from the 1920s to the 1950s using mainly archival images. It consists of twelve short essays, on topics as diverse as the hidden history of black co-excavators in Africa, to archaeological aesthetics and local histories of looking. The publication of The Mirror in the Ground is a project by the Centre for Curating the Archive, in the Series of Visual History.
While working on the book, I developed an online version which incorporates the entire book and additional visual material. I will update details of the publication when they are finalised.
