Photo Archives and the Idea of Nation
edited by Costanza Caraffa and Tiziana Serena
The idea of nation is inseparable from its narrative forms. This book examines photo archives as containers of national narratives and photographs as purveyors of national 'truths.' With their rhetorical power and presumed 'truthfulness,' photographs, since their invention in the age of the nation building in the nineteenth century, have served in the processes of constructing narratives of nationhood. They have been employed to substantiate claims of national and collective identities, and shape hegemonic visions and colonial attitudes. Case studies, from Canada to Namibia, interpreted through different disciplinary lenses, explore how photographic archives function as control devices of the cultural and visual system of the nation.
Walter De Gruyter, Berlin 2015
354 pp., 170 fig.
Print: ISBN 978-3-11-033183-7
eBook: ISBN 978-3-11-033183-7
ePub: ISBN 978-3-11-039003-2
Print + eBook: ISBN 978-3-11-033184-4