PICTURING HISTORY
1 total work
In this work, the author examines the history of European representations of non-European peoples, using as his base four case studies and a wide range of source material, including paintings, medals, murals, frescoes, monuments, engravings and contemporary photographs. Moving from an Elizabethan monument to Edmund Harman, thought to be the earliest scupltural European representation of Native Americans, to images of South American rulers, and from Georges Psalmanaazaar's depictions of Formosan islanders to the visual representations of the native peoples of Tierra del Fuego, the author explores the sometimes vexed relationship between image, source and artist. Often these depictions were based on prints or other secondary which were far from reliable: in the case of Psalmanaazaar, the artist had never been to Formosa, raising questions about the veracity of so-called "ethnographic" representation.