Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British EmpireWhen we think of the tools used to build the British Empire, we seldom include photography among them. Yet as James R. Ryan argues in Picturing Empire, photographic practices and aesthetics played a crucial role in expressing and articulating the ideologies of imperialism driving British exploration and colonization. Using detailed case studies of specific persons, places, and practices linked to broader themes and ideological frameworks, Ryan shows how Imperial Britain produced and projected its imaginative geography through photography. He begins by considering the role of photography in the exploration of "darkest Africa" by David Livingstone's Zambezi Expedition of 1858-63. Finding that other travelers used photographs as a powerful means of organizing and domesticating foreign landscapes, Ryan explores this theme through the topographical and landscape photography of Samuel Bourne in India and John Thompson in Cyprus. A detailed discussion of the Abyssinian Campaign (1867-8) reveals how photography and geography were mutually associated in imperial warfare; this collaboration, expanded to include anthropology, also served in the survey and classification of "racial types". In addition, photography allowed the British to "hunt with the camera", both for big game and for mountains to climb and conserve, and helped to teach imperial geography to British schoolchildren through the use of lantern-slides. Weaving these threads together in his final chapter, Ryan reconsiders photography's place within the imaginative geography of Empire and raises questions about the shifting status and mutable meaning of all historical photographs. |
Contents
Acknowledgements | 7 |
Exploring Darkness | 28 |
Framing the View | 45 |
The Art of Campaigning | 73 |
Hunting with the Camera | 99 |
Photographing the Natives | 137 |
Visual Instruction | 183 |
Towards a Conclusion | 214 |
Other editions - View all
Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire James R. Ryan Limited preview - 2013 |
Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire James R. Ryan No preview available - 1997 |
Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire James R. Ryan No preview available - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
Abyssinia Campaign Abyssinian Expedition Adventures aesthetic Africa London album Andamanese animals Anthropology anthropometric application of photography artist BAAS Big Game big-game Bourne's Britain British East Africa British Empire camera hunting capture century Chinese collection colonial commercial photographers COVIC cultural David Livingstone discourse display Dugmore ethnological European example exhibition exploration Fisher Fisher's photographs Francis Galton Galton geographical graphic H. J. Mackinder human hunters Ibid illus Illustrations of China images imaginative geography India indigenous John Thomson Journal Kirk landscape lantern-slide lectures London Mackinder's maps military Mount Kenya mountain Murchison Museum Narrative native natural history noted Office particularly picture picturesque popular Portman portraits PRGS Queen Queen's Empire race racial types record representation represented River Roderick Murchison Royal Engineers Royal Geographical Society Samuel Bourne scenes scientific Selous sketches Society specimens sport Stigand survey tion Topographical tribes Victorian views Visual Instruction wild Zambezi Expedition