Prologue: Extending study of the visual in the history of sport

This paper highlights the value of images and materiality associated with sport in the past, and explores the range of sociocultural practices associated with them. It provides a critique of the neglect of such sources by many historians and notes that interest is now substantially growing in visuality and visual material. It emphasises the huge breadth and depth of sports-related evidence that can now be accessed, from stamps to stadiums and from posters to sports paraphernalia. It then examines the multiplicity of methodologies that can potentially be used to exploit the visual, its sites of production and sites of reception and seeing.