Future Anterior approaches historic preservation from a position of critical inquiry, rigorous scholarship, and theoretical analysis. Guest edited by Iñaki Bergera, this is the first of two special issues exploring new ways to understand the relationship between photography and preservation. Examining paradigmatic uses of photography within preservation, including documenting, surveying, and archiving, the essays included here map out this recent research area, seeking to enrich the discipline by theorizing photography’s ramifications within the history of preservation.

Contributors to this issue include Sabrina Hughes, C. Ian Stevenson, Miriam Paeslack, Franca Malservisi and Maria Rosaria Vitale, Sarah Rogers Morris, Ana Tostões and Ana Maria Braga, Daniel Naegele, Hélène Lipstadt, and T. John Hughes.