Photography, history, difference

289 Pages·2015·3.982 MB·English

by  Sheehan, Tanya

Photography,
History,
Difference
Interfaces:
Studies in
Visual Culture
Editors Mark J. Williams
and Adrian W. B. Randolph,
Dartmouth College
This series, sponsored by Dartmouth College Press, develops and promotes
the study of visual culture from a va;priety of critical and methodological
perspectives. Its impetus derives from the increasing importance of visual
signs in everyday life, and from the rapid expansion of what are termed “new
media.” The broad cultural and social dynamics attendant to these devel-
opments present new challenges and opportunities across and within the
disciplines. These have resulted in a trans-disciplinary fascination with all
things visual, from “high” to “low,” and from esoteric to popular. This series
brings together approaches to visual culture — broadly conceived — that assess
these dynamics critically and that break new ground in understanding their
effects and implications.
For a complete list of books that are available in the series, visit www.upne.com
Tanya Sheehan, ed., Photography, Bernd Herzogenrath, ed.,
History, Difference Travels in Intermedia[lity]:
Ory Bartal, Postmodern Advertising ReBlurring the Boundaries
in Japan: Seduction, Persuasion, and Monica E. McTighe, Framed Spaces:
the Tokyo Art Directors Club Photography and Memory in
Ruth E. Iskin, The Poster: Contemporary Installation Art
Art, Advertising, Design, and Alison Trope, Stardust Monuments:
Collecting, 1860s–1900s The Saving and Selling of Hollywood
Heather Warren-Crow, Girlhood and Nancy Anderson and Michael R.
the Plastic Image Dietrich, eds., The Educated Eye:
Heidi Rae Cooley, Finding Augusta: Visual Culture and Pedagogy
Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Life Sciences
in the Digital Era Shannon Clute and Richard L.
renée c. hoogland, A Violent Edwards, The Maltese Touch of
Embrace: Art and Aesthetics Evil: Film Noir and Potential
after Representation Criticism
Alessandra Raengo, On the Sleeve of the Steve F. Anderson, Technologies
Visual: Race as Face Value of History: Visual Media and the
Frazer Ward, No Innocent Bystanders: Eccentricity of the Past
Performance Art and Audience Dorothée Brill, Shock and the Senseless
Timothy Scott Barker, Time and in Dada and Fluxus
the Digital: Connecting Technology, Janine Mileaf, Please Touch:
Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy Dada and Surrealist Objects after
of Time the Readymade
Edited by Tanya Sheehan
Photography,
History,
Difference

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Dartmouth College Press
An imprint of University Press of New England
www.upne.com
© 2015 Trustees of Dartmouth College
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill
Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro
For permission to reproduce any of the material in this
book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England,
One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit
www.upne.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Photography, history, difference / edited by Tanya Sheehan.
pages cm. — (Interfaces: studies in visual culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-61168-646-3 (cloth: alk. paper) —
isbn 978-1-61168-647-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-61168-648-7 (ebook)
1.  Photography — History. 2. Photography — Social aspects.  
I. Sheehan, Tanya, 1976–
tr15.p485 2015
770.9—dc23 2014017887
5 4 3 2 1
Frontispiece: Aniksarauyak and his wife © Library and
Archives Canada. Reproduced with the permission of Library
and Archives Canada. Richard Harrington Fonds/PA-129944.
Contents
ix Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Questions of Difference
Tanya Sheehan
11 one A “Geographic Fact”
Photography, History, and Ireland
Justin Carville
33 two Richard Harrington’s Guide
Universality and Locality in a
Canadian Photographic Document
Martha Langford
57 three Royal Photographs in Qajar Iran
Writing the History of Photography between Persian
Miniature Painting and Western Technology
Mirjam Brusius
84 four Toward an Itinerant History of Photography
The Case of Lalla Essaydi
Andrés Mario Zervigón
104 five “Last Seen Alone on the Prairie”
Migration, Photography, and the Invisibility of Women
Sigrid Lien
128 six “Picture Taking and Picture Making”
Gender Difference and the Historiography of Photography
Harriet Riches
151 seven Beyond the “Savage Slot”
Ethnography and the National Identity Photograph
Karen Strassler
172 eight Agency and Authorship in Australian Photo Histories
Catherine De Lorenzo
195 nine Other People’s (Hi)stories
Bringing Public-Generated Photography into the
Contemporary Art Museum
Areti Galani and Alexandra Moschovi

217 ten Intimate Conflicts
Foregrounding the Radical Politics of Family Photographs
Gil Pasternak
241 Selected Bibliography

257 Index
269 About the Contributors
Acknowledgments
This book began to take shape in 2011, when I organized with
Andrés Mario Zervigón a symposium on global photography and its histories
at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. That event brought together
scholars to reflect on the opportunities and challenges created by geographi-
cally and culturally expansive histories of photography. Recognizing the need
for future work in this area, I developed a session for the 2012 Association
of Art Historians conference around broader questions concerning new ap-
proaches to the medium’s historiography. Held outside London, the session
attracted the participation of academics and curators from the United States,
Europe, and Australia. I am grateful to the contributors to both events for
sharing their innovative ideas and research, which have informed the questions
taken up in the following pages. Those questions have also been shaped by
conversations with other scholars whose work has probed the relations among
photography, history, and difference, including Geoffrey Batchen, François
Brunet, and members of the Toronto Photography Seminar.
Financial assistance for this publication came from the Faculty Research
Grant program at Rutgers, where I taught from 2008 to 2013, as well as
from Colby College, where I completed the project. I would like to thank
these institutions and the University Press of New England for their com-
mitment to this work. My final acknowledgment is reserved for the editors
at UPNE — Richard Pult, Adrian Randolph, and Mark Williams — whose
thoughtfulness and critical insights made this book possible.