Odd Man in: The Methodist Reverend and the Photo Archive

Abstract This article examines a small sample of photographs within the context of a large-scale visual archive–the Methodist Church’s 257 mission albums. Buried inside one of the “South American” series, three photographs and a small map tell the story of Reverend Willis C. Hoover, who was forced to step down as pastor of the Valparaiso congregation (Chile) in 1910. Yet the annotations surrounding the pictures indicate that they should no longer be there. The continued presence of these photographs in the archive raises questions about the value attached to photography for institutional history on the part of the Church itself, but also for historians trying to make sense of archival collections. To what extent can discrepancies within archives be considered meaningful of the way specific collections were put together? Should they rather be treated as mere contingencies in the “serendipitous” process of assembling such large collections, to use Elizabeth Edwards’ term? This article argues that although these pictures may seem out of place in the visual repertoire of the Church’s publicity material, their lasting presence reveals deep-seated concerns about missions and history within the Church.