Photography, History, Difference

by Tanya Sheehan (Editor)

Overview

Over the past decade, historical studies of photography have embraced a variety of cultural and disciplinary approaches to the medium, while shedding light on non-Western, vernacular, and “other” photographic practices outside the Euro-American canon. Photography, History, Difference brings together an international group of scholars to reflect on contemporary efforts to take a different approach to photography and its histories. What are the benefits and challenges of writing a consolidated, global history of photography? How do they compare with those of producing more circumscribed regional or thematic histories? In what ways does the recent emphasis on geographic and national specificity encourage or exclude attention to other forms of difference, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality? Do studies of “other” photographies ultimately necessitate the adoption of nontraditional methodologies, or are there contexts in which such differentiation can be intellectually unproductive and politically suspect? The contributors to the volume explore these and other questions through historical case studies; interpretive surveys of recent historiography, criticism, and museum practices; and creative proposals to rethink the connections between photography, history, and difference. A thought-provoking collection of essays that represents new ways of thinking about photography and its histories. It will appeal to a broad readership among those interested in art history, visual culture, media studies, and social history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611686487
Publisher:	Dartmouth College Press
Publication date:	12/02/2014
Series:	Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

TANYA SHEEHAN is associate professor in the Art Department at Colby College. She is the author of Doctored: The Medicine of Photography in Nineteenth-Century America.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments • Introduction: Questions of Difference—Tanya Sheehan • A “Geographic Fact”: Photography, History, and Ireland—Justin Carville • Richard Harrington’s Guide: Universality and Locality in a Canadian Photographic Document—Martha Langford • Royal Photographs in Qajar Iran: Writing the History of Photography between Persian Miniature Painting and Western Technology—Mirjam Brusius • Toward an Itinerant History of Photography: The Case of Lalla Essaydi—Andrés Mario Zervigón • “Last Seen Alone on the Prairie”: Migration, Photography, and the Invisibility of Women—Sigrid Lien • “Picture Taking and Picture Making”: Gender Difference and the Historiography of Photography—Harriet Riches • Beyond the “Savage Slot”: Ethnography and the National Identity Photograph—Karen Strassler • Agency and Authorship in Australian Photo Histories—Catherine De Lorenzo • Other People’s (Hi)stories: Bringing Public-Generated Photography into the Contemporary Art Museum—Areti Galani and Alexandra Moschovi • Intimate Conflicts: Foregrounding the Radical Politics of Family Photographs—Gil Pasternak • Selected Bibliography • Index • About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

“This collection engages with an impressive array of sources to propose a welcome expansion of the notion of ‘difference’ in photography. . . . Beyond the deconstruction of the white male Western gaze, what is offered here is a more radical decentering of ‘photography,’ envisioned both in its infinite historical diversity and as a global apparatus of visuality.”—François Brunet, professor of art and literature of the United States, University of Paris Diderot

“[These] essays collectively offer astute and rigorous insights into photography, its histories, and their relation to the construction of difference broadly conceived, making the volume an important and timely contribution to our evolving understanding of this global visual practice.”—Andrea Noble, professor of visual culture studies, Durham University

From the Publisher