Colonialist Photography

<p><em>Colonialist Photography </em>is an absorbing collection of essays and photographs exploring the relationship between photography and European and American colonialism. The book is packed with well over a hundred captivating images, ranging from the first experiments with photography as a documentary medium up to the decolonization of many regions after World War II.</p><p>Reinforcing a broad range of Western assumptions and prejudices, Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson argue that such images often assisted in the construction of a colonial culture.</p> 1 Introduction: Photography, “race”, and post-colonial theory 2 Laying ghosts to rest 3 Rewriting the Nubian figure in the photograph: Maxime Du Camp’s “cultural hypochondria” 4 “A pure labor of love”: A publishing history of The People of India 5 Unmasking the colonial picturesque: Samuel Bourne’s photographs of Barrackpore Park 6 Picturing alterity: Representational strategies in Victorian type photographs of Ottoman men 7 The many lives of Beato’s “beauties” 8 Colonial collecting: French women and Algerian cartes postales 9 Photography and the emergence of the Pacific cruise: Rethinking the representational crisis in colonial photography 10 Advertising paradise: Hawai‘i in art, anthropology, and commercial photography 11 Capturing race: Anthropology and photography in German and Austrian prisoner-of-war camps during World War I 12 Germaine Krull and L’Amitié noire: World War II and French colonialist film 13 “A better place to live”: Government agency photography and the transformations of the Puerto Rican Jíbaro