Photography as Re-Enactment Part Two When photographer Edward Curtis began his monumental twenty volume project on the Native American Tribes of North America, the term “documentary photographer,” had yet to be invented. Such was the certainty that a...
Photography as Re-Enactment Part One It is difficult to know what to do with Edward Curtis (1868-1952)–was he a photographer, an anthropologist, an ethnographer, a film director, a historian? Did he combine all of these disciplines or did Curtis participate in...
The British Look at the Chinese: The Anthropological Gaze When John Thomson (1837-1921), a native of Scotland, arrived in China, Great Britain had just militarily and politically and diplomatically defeated this huge nation, going to war, not once but twice, over the...
Japonisme and Photography The terms “Near East,” “Far East,” and “Middle East” are all Eurocentric terms because they situate the speaker in the West, assumed to be the geographically superior position, the site from which the...
Nineteenth Century Imperialism in the Middle East Part Two: Félix Bonfils and the Levant The Levant was essentially a European imaginary configuration imposed upon a certain stretch of the moribund Ottoman Empire, but more precisely, the Levant, a term derived from...
Nineteenth Century Imperialism in the Middle East Part One: James McDonald and the Ordnance Survey “It is in fact with the Bible in his hand that a traveller ought to visit the Holy Land.” Viscount François-René de Chateaubriand. Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem...
