During the last two decades
single photographs and photograph corpora have gained in popularity as
sources for historical research. In addition to their important function
as carriers of the past, photographs also contain valuable information
about past social relations. However, to utilise this information a
researcher needs a more structured dataset, a photograph corpus
containing rich metadata, which allows us to explore and analyse
contextual information stored in alphanumeric form. My paper will
exemplify how photography corpora could be used as a source for network
analysis seeking to explore, reconstruct and visualise hidden historical
social networks. The empirical case of my paper revolves around
regional and interregional networks of East German dissident movement.
The main empirical material explored for network analysis and
visualisations consists of a large enriched photograph corpus on East
German dissident movement maintained by Robert Havemann Foundation in
Berlin. Based on this corpus my paper will explore the structure and
dynamics of regional and interregional networks of East German
opposition. The results introduce evidence that regional connectedness
based on personal mobility among the East German dissidents both changes
and increases over time, thus resulting in continuously evolving
patterns of social interaction. Further, the analysis of Roland Jahn’s
geospatial networks evidences the usefulness and power of historical
network analysis when it comes to tackling changes in patterns of social
interaction.