Main entry:

Behdad, Ali, 1961- author.

Title & Author:

Camera Orientalis : reflections on photography of the Middle East / Ali Behdad.

Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2016.
©2016

Description:

xvi, 208 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-198) and index.
Introduction: Camera Orientalis -- The Orientalist photograph -- The tourist, the collector, and the curator : on the lives and afterlives of Ottoman-era photography -- The politics of resident photography in the Middle East : reflections on Antoin Sevruguin's photographs of Qajar-era Iran -- In my grandfather's darkroom : on photographic (self- )exoticism in the Middle East -- Local representations of power : on royal portrait photography in Iran -- Afterword: On photography and Neo-orientalism today.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary:

"In the decades after its invention in 1839, photography was inextricably linked to the Middle East. Introduced as a crucial tool for Egyptologists and Orientalists who needed to document their archaeological findings, the photograph was easier and faster to produce in intense Middle Eastern light making the region one of the original sites for the practice of photography. A pioneering study of this intertwined history, Camera Orientalis traces the Middle East's influences on photography's evolution, as well as photography's effect on Europe's view of 'the Orient.' Considering a range of Western and Middle Eastern archival material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ali Behdad offers a rich account of how photography transformed Europe's distinctly Orientalist vision into what seemed objective fact, a transformation that proved central to the project of European colonialism. At the same time, Orientalism was useful for photographers from both regions, as it gave them a set of conventions by which to frame exotic Middle Eastern cultures for Western audiences. Behdad also shows how Middle Eastern audiences embraced photography as a way to foreground status and patriarchal values while also exoticizing other social classes. An important examination of previously overlooked European and Middle Eastern photographers and studios, Camera Orientalis demonstrates that, far from being a one-sided European development, Orientalist photography was the product of rich cultural contact between the East and the West"--Publisher's website.

ISBN:

9780226356372 (cloth ; alkaline paper)
022635637X (cloth ; alkaline paper)
9780226356402 (paperback ; alkaline paper)
022635640X (paperback ; alkaline paper)
(e-book)
9780226356549

Subject:

Photography Middle East History 19th century.
Photography Political aspects Middle East.
Orientalism in art.
Orientalisme dans l'art.
Photography.
Photography Political aspects.
Middle East.
1840-2015

Form/genre:

History.

Added entries:

Reflections on photography of the Middle East

Holdings:

Location: Library main 293983
Call No.: BIB 239257
Status: Available