|
Photographing Papua: Representation, Colonial Encounters and Imaging in the Public Domain
Author: Max Quanchi
Date Of Publication: Oct 2007
Isbn13: 9781847182883
Isbn: 1-84718-288-7
Photographing Papua is a study of photography in the public domain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that southeastern New Guinea, known as British New Guinea and then as Papua when it became an Australian colony, was created as a geographical place through visual representation in illustrated magazines and newspapers, lavishly illustrated travelogues and mission hagiography, serial encyclopedia, lantern slides and postcards. Readers :knew" Papua because many thousands of black and white photographs of Papuans, villages and material culture rapidly swamped the reading public once the process of halftone, newsprint reproduction became possible. In an innovative and breakthrough fashion Photographing Papua switches attention from a few well known prints in museums and archives, in some cases repeatedly reproduced, but mostly rarely seen outside of scientific and scholarly circles. It deals instead with thousands of photographs, often used in ways not intended when the photograph was taken, but which editors and publishers (and subsequent photographers) gradually made conform to an iconographic imperative, a sort of abbreviated visual gallery of "natives" and a quick-access pathway to the actual and imagined lives of Papuans in the "last Unknown" as New Guinea was titled. It is a study of representation, colonialism, cross-cultural encounters and the early world of illustrated media and photo-journalism.
Max Quanchi is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, where he teaches Pacific Island History. His recent books include Hunting the Collectors (with Susan Cochrane) and The Dictionary of Pacific Island Discovery and Exploration (with John Robson). He was guest editor of a special issue on the history of photography in the Pacific for Pacific Studies (1997) and The Journal of Pacific History (2006).
"Quanchi is well known and respected for his meticulous work in this area of study, so it is not surprising to find more than 100 pages devoted to referencing his sources.
. . . Quanchi's contribution to the study and history of early photography is clearly demonstrated by his extensive research on the dissemination of photographs via albums, books, newspapers and magazines. It is the mining of these normally ignored collections that is the strength of this book. In all, an excellent book that offers countless opportunities for further research." Carol E. Mayer, University of British Columbia, The Journal of Pacific History
Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99
Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)
|
