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    The aesthetics of the negative: Orientalist portraiture in the digitised Collodion Plates of John Thomson (1837-1921)

    Willcock, Sean (2018) The aesthetics of the negative: Orientalist portraiture in the digitised Collodion Plates of John Thomson (1837-1921). Photoresearcher (30), pp. 96-110. ISSN 0958-2606.

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    Abstract

    This article probes the interrelationships between aesthetics and politics within Orientalist photography by considering the global success of the recent exhibition, 'Through the Lens of John Thomson'. It considers argues that the show’s invitation to pay sustained attention to the aesthetic, material, and thematic qualities of the photographic negatives – as opposed to the positives disseminated by Thomson over the course of his career – enables new political readings of his photography to emerge which complicate standard postcolonial readings of Orientalist portraiture.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Sean Willcock
    Date Deposited: 21 May 2019 10:21
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:51
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/27512

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