Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire

With their power to create a sense of proximity and empathy, photographs have long been a crucial means of exchanging ideas between people across the globe; this book explores the role of photography in shaping ideas about race and difference from the 1840s to the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Focusing on Australian experience in a global context, a rich selection of case studies – drawing on a range of visual genres, from portraiture to ethnographic to scientific photographs – show how photographic encounters between Aboriginals, missionaries, scientists, photographers and writers fuelled international debates about morality, law, politics and human rights.Drawing on new archival research, Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire is essential reading for students and scholars of race, visuality and the histories of empire and human rights.

1. Introduction: Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire2. One Blood: The Nucleus of the Native Church3. Veritable Apollos: Beauty, Race and Scientists4. Blind Spots or Bearing Witness: Antislavery and Frontier Violence in Australia5. Popularizing Anthropology: Elsie Masson and Baldwin Spencer6. ‘A Ray of Special Resemblance’: H. G. Wells and Colonial Embarrassment 7. Happy Families?: UNESCO’s Human Rights Exhibition in Australia, 1951NotesBibliographyIndex

Jane Lydon is the Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History at the University of Western Australia