Download Free Picturing Paradise Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Picturing Paradise and write the review.

Coinciding with the extraordinary expansion of Britain's overseas empire under Queen Victoria, the invention of photography allowed millions to see what they thought were realistic and unbiased pictures of distant peoples and places. This supposed accuracy also helped to legitimate Victorian geography's illuminations of the "darkest" recesses of the globe with the "light" of scientific mapping techniques. But as James R. Ryan argues in Picturing Empire, Victorian photographs reveal as much about the imaginative landscapes of imperial culture as they do about the "real" subjects captured within their frames. Ryan considers the role of photography in the exploration and domestication of foreign landscapes, in imperial warfare, in the survey and classification of "racial types," in "hunting with the camera," and in teaching imperial geography to British schoolchildren. Ryan's careful exposure of the reciprocal relation between photographic image and imperial imagination will interest all those concerned with the cultural history of the British Empire.
Pictures from Paradise examines the ways in which contemporary art photography has evolved within the English-speaking Caribbean, rising beyond depictions of idyllic scenes to tackle more complex social, racial, political and gender issues. Within the past few years, regional artists have provided an increasingly searching image of the Caribbean and the people who inhabit it. The only publication on contemporary Caribbean photography, Pictures from Paradise features more than 200 images from 18 established and up-and-coming artists, including Ewan Atkinson, Marvin Bartley, Terry Boddie, Holly Bynoe, James Cooper, Renee Cox, Gerard Gaskin, Abigail Hadeed, Gerard Hanson, Nadia Huggins, Marlon James, Roshini Kempadoo, O'Neil Lawrence, Ebony Patterson, Radcliffe Roye, Alex Smailes, Stacey Tyrell and Rodell Warner.
National Geographic magazine is probably the most visible and popular expression of geography in the USA. Presenting America's World presents a critical analysis of the world portrayed by National Geographic, from its formative years in the nineteenth century, through to 1945. It situates the National Geographic Society's development within the context of a new American overseas expansionism, interrogates the magazine as America's ubiquitous source of wholesome exotica and erotica, examines the ways in which it framed the world for its millions of readers, and questions its participation in the cultural work of US global hegemony. The book argues that National Geographic successfully employed 'strategies of innocence', a contradictory stance of representation which simultaneously asserts innocence - either the innocence of 'just watching' or the innocence of altruistic behaviour - while naturalizing Western hegemony. Presenting America's World not only considers the world that National Geographic presented to its readers, but also examines the magazine’s own institutional world of writers, photographers and editors. Particular attention is paid to Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the magazine's editor for over 50 years, Maynard Owen Williams, a writer and photographer who worked on nearly 100 articles from 1919 to 1960 and Harriet Chalmers Adams, a freelancer, explorer and Pan-American activist who contributed 21 articles.
Publisher Description
The imaginary as a critical concept originated in the twentieth century and has been theorized in diverse ways. It can be understood as a register of thought; the way we interpret the world; the universe of images, signs, texts, and objects of thought. In this volume, it is explored as it manifests itself in encounters between the verbal and the visual. A number of the essays brought together here explore the transposition of the imaginary in illustrations of texts and verbal renditions of images, as well as in comic books based on paintings or on verbal narratives. Others analyze ways in which books deal with film or television and investigate the imaginary in digital media. Special attention is paid to the imaginary of places and the relationship of the imaginary with memory. Written in English and French, these contributions by European and American scholars demonstrate the various concerns and approaches characteristic of contemporary scholarship in word and image studies.
The second generation of Pacific historians, who began their careers in the 1970s and 1980s, is gradually fading from the academic scene. They have made fundamental contributions to the field of Pacific history, enduring in their impact, and the identity of the discipline is now firmly established. This volume is not so much about their individual research but, rather, their improbable journeys into Pacific history—why and how they came to it in the first place. Almost without exception, they did not choose Pacific history but rather stumbled into the field through serendipity. They came from forays into African, Indian, East Asian, French, British imperial, and other fields, and were enticed into Pacific history through chance or the efforts of kindly mentors. All this is evident in the values and understandings they bring to the subject. The one commonality that binds them is a love of the islands that have been the center of their lifetime work. Many distinguished Pacific historians of the last four to five decades are represented in this collection. Serendipity presents fourteen autobiographical chapters in which the contributors trace their paths as Pacific historians. They offer their sources of inspiration, supporters, and publications that shaped them as historians. With a significant focus on the importance of teaching and mentoring that they both received and provided, their writing not only illuminates their lives, but the state of Pacific history as an academic field. The experiences of the contributors are moving, replete with sorrows and regrets, as well as of achievements and satisfactions. Part of these careers were spent working in areas other than scholarship, such as high school teaching, consultancies, volunteering, teaching English as a second language, or doing menial jobs just to keep going. Serendipity is a pathbreaking form of historiography and essential to the Pacific history field.
The idea and ideal of "beauty" has been used to oppress women of different ages, body types, skin color, and physical ability. The theoretical discussion of aesthetics has also been conditioned by these same dynamics of power and oppression. In She Who Imagines, a diverse set of scholars challenges the exclusion and false definitions while constructing capacious ideas that discover beauty in unexpected places. In these essays, the authors draw on a variety of arts media-painting, photography, portraiture, craftwork, poetry, and hip-hop music-thereby joining beauty to truth and, in a richly defining way, to the practice of justice. In a variety of ways all the essays link women's definitions of beauty with experiences of suffering and hence with the yearning for justice. All clearly prize resistance to degradation as an essential element of thought.
Light begins at Stonehenge, where crowds cheer a solstice sunrise. After sampling myths explaining First Light, the story moves on to early philosophers' queries, then through the centuries, from Buddhist temples to Biblical scripture, when light was the soul of the divine. Battling darkness and despair, Gothic architects crafted radiant cathedrals while Dante dreamed a "heaven of pure light." Later, following Leonardo's advice, Renaissance artists learned to capture light on canvas. During the Scientific Revolution, Galileo gathered light in his telescope, Descartes measured the rainbow, and Newton used prisms to solidify the science of optics. But even after Newton, light was an enigma. Particle or wave? Did it flow through an invisible "ether"? Through the age of Edison and into the age of lasers, Light reveals how light sparked new wonders--relativity, quantum electrodynamics, fiber optics, and more. Although lasers now perform everyday miracles, light retains its eternal allure. "For the rest of my life," Einstein said, "I will reflect on what light is." Light explores and celebrates such curiosity.
Presents a collection of writings exploring the character of Satan in world literature.