Josh Murfitt's photomontage, a creative act that considers the removal of the Parthenon Marbles and their current setting in the British Museum

: 09 October 2022

Josh Murfitt is a photographer based in Edinburgh, specialising in fine art and cultural heritage photography and digitisation. In 2019 for his MA in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism at the University of Westminster, Josh created a photomontage aptly entitled 'A Creative Act'. At that time, Josh had been working in a museum part-time for around 4 years, and had become interested in the discourse surrounding historic museum collections, including the restitution of some cultural artefacts held in British museums. The case of the Parthenon marbles was (and still is), one of the most publicised of these.

Josh's photomontage works are based around the Parthenon sculptures in their current display setting at the British Museum, considering the history of their removal from Athens and the political and moral issues surrounding this. To make these works, Josh combined vintage tourist postcards showing scenes from the Acropolis with his own photographs made inside the Duveen Gallery, Room 18, at the British Museum. Whilst it directly references the case of the Parthenon sculptures, the series can be related to wider debates around museum collections, restitution, and legacies of the British Empire in that context.

josh acropolis