Through a variety of case studies by global scholars from diverse academic fields, this book explores photographic-album practices of historically marginalized figures from a range of time periods, geographic locations, and socio-cultural contexts. Their albums' stories span various racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identities; nationalities; religions; and dis/abilities. The vernacular albums featured in this volume present narratives that move beyond those reflected in our existing histories. Essays examine the visual, material, and aural strategies that album-makers have used to assert control over the presentation of their histories and identities, and to direct what those narratives have to say, a point of special relevance as these albums move out of private domestic space and into public archives, institutions, and digital formats. This book does not consider photographic albums and scrapbooks as separate genres, but as a continuum of modern creative practices of photographic and mass-print collage aimed at self-expression and narrative-building that co-evolved and were readily accessible. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of photography, visual culture, material culture, media studies, and cultural studies.

By carefully conceptualising the domestic in relation to the self and the photographic, this book offers a unique contribution to both photography theory and criticism, and life-narrative studies. Jane Simon brings together two critical practices into a new conversation, arguing that artists who harness domestic photography can advance a more expansive understanding of the autobiographical. Exploring the idea that self-representation need not equate to self-portraiture or involve the human form, artists from around the globe are examined, including Rinko Kawauchi, Catherine Opie, Dayanita Singh, Moyra Davey, and Elina Brotherus, who maintain a personal gaze at domestic detail. By treating the representation of interiors, domestic objects, and the very practice of photographic seeing and framing as autobiographical gestures, this book reframes the relationship between interiors and exteriors, public and private, and insists on the importance of domestic interiors to understandings of the self and photography. The book will be of interest to scholars working in photographic history and theory, art history, and visual studies.

By analysing the philosophical lineage of notions of representation, time, being, light, exposure, image, and truth, this book argues that photography is the visual manifestation of the philosophical account of how humans encounter beings in the present. Daniel Rubinstein argues that traditional understandings of photography are determined by the notions of verisimilitude and representation, and this limits our understanding of photographic materiality. It is suggested that the photographic image must be closely read not for the objects, events and situations represented in it, but for the insights it affords into the structure of contemporary consciousness. The book will be of interest to scholars working in photography, media studies, philosophy, fine art, and art history.

By entering and critically re-activating the Zionist photographic archive established by the Division of Journalism and Propaganda of the Jewish National Fund, this research examines its rippling impact on civil landscapes prior to 1948 in Palestine, and its lasting impact on the region to date. This study argues that the Zionist movement makes particular use of the machinery of the photographic archive, aiming to constitute the boundaries of Palestine as a Jewish state, claiming ownership over the land and announcing internationally the success of its enterprise, thus substantiating the image it sought to embed as the “reality” of the land. This archive was not stand-alone, as it was functioning in relation to a vast, complicated network of organizational systems and technologies, in the Middle East and across the world. Crucially, this system functioned as a national archive in future tense, for a nation-state that was not yet in existence, seeking to substantiate its regional authority and shape its cultural repository, outlining parameters for inclusion and exclusion from its civic space. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, photography history, visual culture, Jewish studies, Israel studies and Middle East studies.

Focusing on the creation of the concept of Whiteness, this study links early photographic imagery to the development and exploitation that were common in the colonial Atlantic World of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. With the advent of the daguerreotype in the mid-nineteenth century, White European settlers could imagine themselves as a supra-national community, where the attainment of wealth was rapidly becoming accessible through colonisation. Their dispersal throughout the colonial territories made possible the advent of a new representative type of Whiteness that eventually merged with the portrayal of modernity itself. Over time, the colonisation of the Atlantic World became synonymous with fascination itself within a European mind fixated upon both a racially subordinated world and the technical media through which it was represented. In the intervening centuries, images have acted as a medium of the imaginary, allowing for ideas around classification and the measurement of value to travel and to situate themselves as universal means. Contemporary societies still grapple with the residues of race, gender, class, and sexuality first established by the contrived mores of this representational medium, and those who were racialised by the camera as objects of fascination, curiosity, or concern have remained so well into the post-digital era. The book will be of interest to scholars working in history of photography, art history, colonialism, and critical race theory.

This book illuminates the crucial role photography played from the very beginning of the Russian colonial presence in Central Asia and its entanglement with the orientalist legacy that followed. Inessa Kouteinikova examines these under-studied materials while also addressing the photographic market and reception of photography in the Russian Empire, the position of the popular press, the place of public exhibitions and emergence of the first ethnographic museums that took pace from Moscow to Tashkent during the time of the Russian conquest. This book embraces the dominant mode for representing the new colonial territories in the mid-late-19th-century Russia, by outlining the technical, commercial and artistic milieus during the Golden Age of Russian orientalism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of photography and Russian studies.

Sources and Methods in the History of Sexuality outlines some of the challenges of retracing sexual acts, identities, and desires in the past, and shows how historians have responded to these methodological challenges with ingenuity and creativity. The volume acknowledges that the history of sexuality poses particularly interesting challenges in relation to sources due the peculiar nature of sexuality. On one hand, sexuality is frequently hidden and private, its practices often unknown, denied, and evaded, its desires fleeting or obsessive, its reality confused or illuminated by fantasy; yet on the other, sexuality consistently breaks into the public sphere through moral panics, waves of persecution, taxonomizing projects, and medical/juridical interventions. With vivid case studies from renowned contributors, the chapters provide different theoretical approaches along with more practical examples of how to study the history of sexuality. The volume has a broad chronology from the ancient world to the present, an extensive geography covering not only Europe and the Americas but also Latin America and Africa, and also includes a variety of gender and sexual expressions. The book also privileges texts that offer an intersectional approach, asking how sex and sexualities were constructed alongside/against other categories of difference. With accessible writing, this volume encourages the reader to think creatively about how to find evidence of sex/sexuality in the past and will be of value to students as well as scholars interested in the history of sexuality.