Camera Orientalis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East Contributor(s): Behdad, Ali (Author) |
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ISBN: 022635640X ISBN-13: 9780226356402 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $31.68 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2016 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Photography | Criticism - History | Middle East - General - Literary Criticism | Middle Eastern |
Dewey: 770.956 |
LCCN: 2015039772 |
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 6.9" W x 8.9" (1.10 lbs) 224 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Middle East |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Behdad, Ali: - Ali Behdad is the John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. |