Interview

Maria Cardamone

Captured. 'The Materiality of the Prize Papers' - A Photography Exhibition

19 December 2022

(0:21 h)

Interview

Maria Cardamone

Captured. 'The Materiality of the Prize Papers' - A Photography Exhibition

GHIL Research Fellow for Modern History Ole Münch and PR and Events Officer Kim König speak to photographer Maria Cardamone. Maria has curated an exhibition which is currently on display at the GHIL and which is organised in cooperation with the Prize Papers Project. 

The Prize Papers are records and objects that were confiscated by British privateers and naval vessels between 1652 and 1817 – a period of time in which the seizure of ships was still a legitimate form of tactical warfare, known as ‘prize-taking’. In order to prove that captured ships belonged to the enemy, the documents as well as various objects from aboard – including the seafarers’ personal belongings and mail-in-transit – were confiscated by the captor and examined by the High Court of Admiralty, who used them as evidence to rule on whether a ship had been legally captured or not. 

The photography exhibition at the German Historical Institute London presents a curated selection of pieces from the Prize Papers collection. It features the Prize Papers Project’s special materiality approach, which has been developed in collaboration with archivists, conservators, photographers, historians, and IT-specialists. The exhibition also showcases the unique imaging formats that are used to document the collection’s materiality and cover the research potential of the collection.

The Project is part of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Göttingen. It’s based at the University of Oldenburg in Germany and the British National Archives in London. The funding is provided by the Academies Programme of the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities.

The photography exhibition is on display at the German Historical Institute London until 23 December 2022. For more information: https://materiality.prizepapers.de/exhibition/exhibition-2022/captured-the-materiality-of-the-prize-papers and https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/exhibitions-and-special-events/captured-the-materiality-of-the-prize-papers.