2026-2027 proposed theme

One might well call photography the quintessential modern technology. With the invention of the photograph in the 1820s, a newly powerful tool emerged for representing people and places with an accuracy never before possible. However, this new form of imagemaking was born into a world of mounting imperialism, industrialization, and scientific rationalism. At a moment when Western nations were hungry to expand and maintain their empires for political and economic gain, the promise of the camera to supposedly depict the things in front of its lens with absolute objectivity and authenticity was quickly adapted as a tool used to dominate and control people and places by classifying, surveying, surveilling, recording, and exploiting them the world over. Photographers’ images quickly gave people in the West new insights on what foreign regions and their denizens looked like and the commercial and touristic opportunities that they held. In colonial photographs, far-flung locales are alternately represented as picturesque and exotic, distant yet readily available for consumption. This imagery soon became a powerful tool in justifying the violence and exploitation of colonial regimes. Despite these uses, over time photography also became a method for colonized people to define their own identities and even to resist imperialism. In the mid-twentieth century, it became a key element of self-expression and national identification as a growing number of colonial regimes toppled, and in recent decades it has offered new creative, commercial, and official uses in postcolonial societies. Though supposedly neutral and objective, photographs have, since their invention nearly two centuries ago, consistently been used to define and control our world and the people within it. What can learning about these images teach us today?