Reconstructing changes in the Great Barrier Reef - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 27

different individuals varied in their relevance to my research, and typically they
were not fully catalogued or indexed.
Collection of visual representations
Visual representations, in my research, included historical photographs, films,
video-recordings, maps, posters and sketches. The use of paintings did not
form a significant part of this research, despite Nordstrom and Jackson's (2001)
argument about the value of using paintings to explore interactions between
human activity and coastal change. A preliminary survey of the collections of
paintings held in the Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane) and the Cairns Art
Gallery (Cairns) did not reveal sources of relevance to the Great Barrier Reef;
hence, an extensive search for relevant paintings was not pursued. Furthermore,
paintings were not expected to reveal accurate, place-specific representations of
particular environmental changes in the Great Barrier Reef. However, a notable
exception was the work of the painter, Ray Crooke, which provided information
about the condition of Magnetic Island during the Second World War. Other
visual sources - particularly historical photographs - showed greater potential to
reveal environmental changes, although Wachenfeld (1995) has discussed the
methodological difficulties that arise in their use (see below).
Visual representations - used in conjunction with other documentary sources
and with oral sources - provided a comparatively small but unique data set.
A sketch map of the coral mining operation at Snapper Island, for example,
represents evidence of the details of an environmental change for which no other
documentary source was found. While visual data were difficult to evaluate, record
and interpret, they nevertheless gave a vivid impression of human impacts in
the Great Barrier Reef, including coral mining, coral collecting, shell collecting,
access track and channel construction, coconut palm planting, infrastructure
development on islands, commercial dugong and turtle fishing, turtle-riding and
whaling. Visual representations also suggested the various ways in which cultural
constructions of the reefs were produced - and reproduced - during the period of
European settlement. The methods used to collect data from each type of visual
source are discussed below.
Photographs
Photographs are among the earliest representations of the Great Barrier
Reef; they have been used specifically to record the condition of the reefs
and their associated species since the work of Saville-Kent in the 1890s. The
quality and abundance of historical photographs of the reefs led GBRMPA
to establish its Historical Photographs Project, which involved the collection
and analysis of photographs in search of evidence of environmental changes.
Indeed, Saville-Kent's photographs were explicitly intended to be used for
that purpose, as Wachenfeld (1995) acknowledged. However, although the