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Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press

ISBN-10022635640X

ISBN-139780226356402

eBay Product ID (ePID)21038288602

Product Key Features

Number of Pages224 Pages

Publication NameCamera Orientalis : Reflections on Photography of the Middle East

LanguageEnglish

SubjectMiddle Eastern, General, Criticism, Middle East / General

Publication Year2016

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism, Travel, Photography, History

AuthorAli Behdad

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.1 in

Item Weight17 Oz

Item Length0.9 in

Item Width0.7 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2015-039772

ReviewsReading the book in the contemporary political moment, when (digital) technologies and visualizations continue to be deployed to stake 'truth'-claims about 'others,' Camera Orientalis , and its author's insistence that every iota of power be accounted for in unearthing the architectonics of visual knowledge, makes for an important benchmark of understanding., Finding that the Middle East served as an important site for the development of photography, Behdad traces the unequal gazes through which photography enabled Orientalist ways of seeing. But, surprisingly and powerfully, Camera Orientalis goes on to show that photographic encounters engender more than struggles for control of the visual field. They also yield multidirectional gazes and hybrid practices that borrow from and inspire one other, in sometimes troubling ways., I warmly welcome Behdad's book on the historical techniques and political protocols of photography in the realization of Orientalist visual culture. Can we make any argument about the impact of colonization on modernity--post-, contra-, or plural--without exploring the profound influence of the techne of the photograph on the affective and ethical networks that have made the Middle East a crucial hub of global knowledge? This excellent contribution provides us with a crucial resource for understanding the regional conditions and cosmopolitical implications of an art that reveals what is hidden and submerged while mirroring the social and psychic salience of surface and frame., I warmly welcome Behdad's book on the historical techniques and political protocols of photography in the realization of Orientalist visual culture. Can we make any argument about the impact of colonization on modernity--post-, contra-, or plural--without exploring the profound influence of the techne of the photograph on the affective and ethical networks that have made the Middle East a crucial hub of global knowledge? This excellent contribution provides us with a crucial resource for understanding the regional conditions and cosmopolitical implications of an art that reveals what is hidden and submerged while mirroring the social and psychic salience of surface and frame., Behdad's original achievement in Camera Orientalis is his assessment of Iranian Orientalist imagery. . . . Camera Orientalis is a stimulating text that follows networks of Orientalist photographs--how they traveled across borders and through time, shaping popular consciousness., Behdad maps an important position in debates about the political efficacy of photographs. Rightly insisting on the centrality of 'the Orient' to early practitioners, he redirects our vision to the formative role of the camera in the uneasy careers of Europe's empires. The contact zones created by the embrace of photography by local elites provide a rich counterpoint, revealing not 'resistance' but the vivid realization that the camera's 'image repertoires' were a conduit to power. This is a salutary contribution to the study of photography as a global practice, one that has always exceeded Europe and the narrow confines of nation states., Behdad maps an important position in debates about the political efficacy of photographs. Rightly insisting on the centrality of 'the Orient' to early practitioners, he redirects our vision to the formative role of the camera in the uneasy careers of Europe's empires. The contact zones created by the embrace of photography by local elites provide a rich counterpoint, revealing not 'resistance' but the vivid realization that the camera's 'image repertoires' were a conduit to power. This is a salutary contribution to the study of photography as a global practice, one that has always exceeded Europe and the narrow confines of nation-states.

Dewey Edition23

Dewey Decimal770.956

Table Of ContentList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Camera Orientalis 1 The Orientalist Photograph 2 The Tourist, the Collector, and the Curator: On the Lives and Afterlives of Ottoman-Era Photography 3 The Politics of Resident Photography in the Middle East: Reflections on Antoin Sevruguin's Photographs of Qajar-Era Iran 4 In My Grandfather's Darkroom: On Photographic (Self-) Exoticism in the Middle East 5 Local Representations of Power: On Royal Portrait Photography in Iran Afterword: On Photography and Neo-Orientalism Today Notes Bibliography Index

SynopsisIn 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., From the time of its invention in 1839, photography had a crucial link to the Middle East. When Daguerre's invention was introduced, it was immediately hailed as a boon to Egyptologists and Orientalists wanting to document their archeological findings. The Middle East also beckoned European experimenters in this new medium for a simple technological reason: early photographs were more quickly and easily made in the intense light of the desert than in gloomy Paris or London. In "Camera Orientalis," Ali Behdad examines the cultural and political implications of the emergence of photography in the Middle East. He shows that the camera proved useful to Orientalism, but so too was Orientalism useful to photographers, because it gave them a set of conventions by which to frame these exotic cultures in images for Western audiences. Behdad breaks with standard postcolonial approaches by showing that Orientalist photography was the product of contacts between the West and the East. Indeed, local photographers participated enthusiastically in exoticist representations of the region, adapting Orientalism to the taste of the local elite. Orientalist photography, we learn, was not a one-way street but rather the product of ideas and conventions that circulated between the West and the East.

LC Classification NumberTR114.B44 2016