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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Art History @HKU
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DTSTART:20260101T000000
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Hong_Kong:20260623T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Hong_Kong:20260623T191500
DTSTAMP:20260711T001423
CREATED:20260526T103830Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260526T104353Z
UID:13593-1782237600-1782242100@arthistory.hku.hk
SUMMARY:Iran: Modernity\, Photography and the Painter’s Dilemma
DESCRIPTION:The talk is the opening keynote of  “A Cultural History of Asian Art in the Long Nineteenth Century”\nRead more about the conference here \nIran: Modernity\, Photography and the Painter’s Dilemma\nDate: 23 June 2026 (Tuesday)\nTime: 6pm-7:15pm\nVenue: Room 4.36\, 4/f\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU \nRegister here \nIt is commonly assumed\, in much of scholarship on 19th-century photography\, that the introduction of the new technology to societies outside Europe and especially those in Asia was so irresistible to have upended\, almost automatically\, the local ‘traditions’ of image making and especially of portraiture. The story of photography in Iran\, where it arrived early in the 1850s offers a cautionary example of the complexity of that transition from tradition to modernity. This talk focuses on a single painting dated to 1854-1855 which depicts a photographer in the process of taking a daguerreotype picture of a seated man. This in fact is a portrait of the making of a portrait: one is with brushes\, watercolours\, and inks on paper; the other with a camera. The two modes of representation clash over their disparate concepts of ‘reality’ and its hold onto portraiture. When photography arrived\, I argue\, there was already a movement underway towards making visible an idea of ‘likeness’ in portraiture. That idea was not of European origin but had filtered in through the tight-knit cultural worlds spanning West and South Asia\, especially through their shared linguistic and literary predilections across the Persianate sphere. Here\, I shall argue that artistic reverberations across Iran and India in the case of portraiture\, had already prepared the scene for that transition to modernity. Photography had of course immense role to play but not everything was so simply and slavishly surrendered to the new. The painting of a photographer by Mirza Riza Tabrizi asks us to rethink such facile conclusions. \nSpeaker: \nSussan Babaie is Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam at The Courtauld\, University of London. A graphic designer by training (BA\, Tehran University)\, she earned her PhD in Art History from IFA\, New York University. Among her publications are Isfahan and Its Palaces (2008\, 2018) and Persian Kingship and Architecture (2015) edited with Talinn Grigor\, as well as on modern and contemporary arts of Iran and West Asia. She is currently working collaboratively on several projects focusing on the arts across trans-Asian networks: co-editor with Stephen Whiteman and author\, Cultural History of Asian Art\, six-volume series (Bloomsbury); co-curator of an exhibition on the Arts of the Great Mongol World; and lead scholar on Mongol Connections\, a traveling seminar supported by Getty Connecting Art Histories.
URL:https://arthistory.hku.hk/index.php/event/iran-modernity-photography-and-the-painters-dilemma/
LOCATION:Faculty Room 436\, Room 4.36\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU\, Hong Kong
CATEGORIES:2025-2026,Academic Talk,Conference,Public Lecture
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ORGANIZER;CN="Department of Art History":MAILTO:art.history@hku.hk
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Hong_Kong:20260624T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Hong_Kong:20260624T191500
DTSTAMP:20260711T001423
CREATED:20260526T102919Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260526T112612Z
UID:13587-1782324000-1782328500@arthistory.hku.hk
SUMMARY:On Heroic Maps
DESCRIPTION:The talk is the ending keynote of  “A Cultural History of Asian Art in the Long Nineteenth Century”\nRead more about the conference here \nOn Heroic Maps: Imagining ‘China’ in Premodern Geo-bodies and Modern Historiography\nDate: 24 June 2026 (Wednesday)\nTime: 6pm-7:15pm\nVenue: Room 4.36\, 4/f\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU \nRegister here \nOn opposite sides of a twelfth-century stele appear two of the most famous maps in Chinese history\, the Tracks of Yu 禹跡圖 and the Map of Chinese and Foreigners 華夷圖. The two have different origins and employ very different visual and technical vocabularies in depicting ‘China’. As such\, their pairing by an unknown official in the early years of the Jin state (1115–1234)\, when the future of ‘China’ as both unified polity and coherent concept was much in doubt\, has given the maps an almost heroic status in the historiography of Chinese cartography. Beginning with this famous stone\, my talk explores the geographical imagination of ‘China’ in premodern maps and modern historiography\, considering efforts in both Asia and Europe to define Chinese society and civilization through its technical accomplishments. In so doing\, I reflect on the role of canons and icons in the construction of national histories and the potential of cultural history for articulating alternative narratives. \nSpeaker: \nStephen Whiteman 魏瑞明 is a historian whose research draws on art and architectural history\, cultural geography\, and technology studies to explore the visual and spatial cultures of early modern and modern China. Author of the award-winning Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe\, his work has been supported by the British Academy\, the Getty Foundation\, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts\, and Dumbarton Oaks\, amongst others. He is coeditor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin and a Trustee of the Association for Art History\, and currently serves as Professor of the Art and Architecture of China at the Courtauld Institute of Art\, University of London.
URL:https://arthistory.hku.hk/index.php/event/on-heroic-maps/
LOCATION:Faculty Room 436\, Room 4.36\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU\, Hong Kong
CATEGORIES:2025-2026,Academic Talk,Conference,Public Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://arthistory.hku.hk/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/202606-conference-web-poster-2sw-scaled.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Department of Art History":MAILTO:art.history@hku.hk
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