VISA 1Q98 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Louis Agassiz, Daguerreotype, Power (Social And Political)
5 Aug 2016
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Lecture 7 - the gaze and the other. Below is a daguerreotype image (a daguerreotype was one of the earliest forms of photography) made by the french photographer thi sson. Thi sson produced a series of image of the residents of sofala, a town in mozambique, during the 1840s. He made many images of these residents, but recorded very few personal details about the people he photographed, often not even their names--this woman is only referred to as a. Native woman of sofala. you will note, however, that he signed his own name in the lower right corner of this image. A note accompanying the photograph gives the woman"s age. What was important to thi sson was the recording of the physical features of the people he photographed -- it was a means of documenting and studying a culture that was different than his. The power dynamic between cultures during 19th century colonialism is visualized here.
