Traces of India: Photography, Architecture, and the Politics of Representation, 1850-1900

Language: EnglishPages: 344 (Throughout Color and B/W Illustrations)About the Book This bookinvestigates the different cultural roles played by photographs of Indianarchitecture from the latter half of the nineteenth century, an Inquirystretching from their pre-history to their migration Into book illustrations.calendar art, and religious Imagery. Beyondthe apparent purposes of these images - as picturesque views, scientificrecords of an architectural past. political memorials, travel mementos,textbook vignettes deeper considerations Influenced the way their makers workedin selecting, framing, composing, and populating their representations. Shapingthe viewers thinking about what they represented, these images remain enduringrecords of a way of seeing, of minds as well as monuments, and exist today asartefacts of the visual culture of colonialism. Twelve essays from scholars working In severaldisciplines (history, anthropology. art history, and the history ofphotography) show how photographs of architecture reveal the inescapable waysin which the practice of image making IS aligned with the purposes of power,the presumptions accompanying the encounter with strangeness, the Internalorder of the colonial and the scientific mind, and even our metaphysicaldispositions toward the world. About the Author MariaAntonella Pelizzari is Associate Curator of Photographs at the Canadian Centrefor Architecture. Montreal; Julia Ballerini is an independent scholar andl