Broadening horizons in sport history: Films, photographs, and monuments

Sport historians, in the main, follow standard historical practice by focusing their interests on written material in their quests to relate the past in the present. This paper argues that as important as written sources are to the historical process, sport history could benefit by considering representations of the past that include visual and material culture. More specifically, this paper investigates film, photographs, and monuments and attempts to answer two key questions. How have sport historians related to these forms of visual and material culture? Secondly, how could sport historians, based on the practices developed in other fields, extend the use of films, photographs, and monuments in their work? We contend that sport historians are in a position to articulate the complex relationships between the sporting past in the present by embracing different forms of visual and material culture.