Recommendations from our site
“The subject matter of this important book is the image. It’s about photography, the invention of the camera, and where the camera went initially, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The author captures that moment whereby travellers—whether they were colonial administrators, journalists, voyeurs or anybody who could get hold of a camera—and what they did in the context of a colonial situation. It is not about photography in general; it’s about photography in the specific context of the colonial encounter between colonial powers—their military, officers, soldiers, travellers, and journalists—and local communities in the process of being colonised, possibly terrorised, repressed, mutilated, and killed. There are horrific images that were reproduced. The book delves in greater detail into how these images were circulating towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in the metropolis, in the centres where colonialism was at its height, mainly in Britain and France.” Read more...
The 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding
Madawi Al-Rasheed, Anthropologist
