Research Catalog

The Arab imago : a social history of portrait photography, 1860-1910 / Stephen Sheehi.

Title

The Arab imago : a social history of portrait photography, 1860-1910 / Stephen Sheehi.

Author

Sheehi, Stephen, 1967-

Publication

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2016]
©2016

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Not available - Please for assistance.	Text	Request in advance	TR113.5 .S54 2016	Off-site

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Details

Description

xxxix, 220 pages : illustrations; 27 cm

Summary

The birth of photography coincided with the expansion of European imperialism in the Middle East, and some of the medium's earliest images are Orientalist pictures taken by Europeans in such places as Cairo and Jerusalem--photographs that have long shaped and distorted the Western visual imagination of the region. But the Middle East had many of its own photographers, collectors, and patrons. In this book, Stephen Sheehi presents a groundbreaking new account of early photography in the Arab world. The Arab Imago concentrates primarily on studio portraits by Arab and Armenian photographers in the late Ottoman Empire. Examining previously known studios such as Abdullah Frères, Pascal Sébah, Garabed Krikorian, and Khalil Raad, the book also provides the first account of other pioneers such as Georges and Louis Saboungi, the Kova Brothers, Muhammad Sadiq Bey, and Ibrahim Rif'at Pasha--as well as the first detailed look at early photographs of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. In addition, the book explores indigenous photography manuals and albums, newspapers, scientific journals, and fiction. Featuring extensive previously unpublished images, The Arab Imago shows how native photography played an essential role in the creation of modern Arab societies in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon before the First World War. At the same time, the book overturns Eurocentric and Orientalist understandings of indigenous photography and challenges previous histories of the medium.

Alternative Title

Social history of portrait photography, 1860-1910

Subject

Genre/Form

History
History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-220) and index.

Processing Action (note)

committed to retain

Contents

An empire of photographs: Abdullah Freres and the Osmanlilik ideology -- The Arab imago: Jurji Saboungi and the Nahdah image-screen -- The carte de visite: the sociability of new men and women -- Writing photography: technomateriality and the verum factum -- Portrait paths: the sociability of the photographic portrait -- Stabilizing portraits, stabilizing modernity -- The latent and the afterimage -- The mirror of two sanctuaries and three photographers.

ISBN

9780691151328
0691151326

LCCN

^^2015030517
9780691151328
40026005295

OCLC

920469687
SCSB-10413516

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library