Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: photography

Swahili Coast: Exploration by French Captain Charles Guillain, 1846-1848. Part 3, Encounters and Partnerships

The blog post, last of three, was written by Xavier Courouble, research assistant for Sailors and Daughters: Early Photography and the Indian Ocean, an online exhibition part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art’s Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa.

Charles Guillain’s three-volume work, Documents sur l’histoire, la géographie, et le commerce de l’Afrique orientale and the accompanying atlas folio of lithographs and map engravings, Voyage à la côte orientale d’Afrique give an account of travels undertaken in a pre-colonial context, where European explorers politically and logistically depended on the African inhabitants and sovereigns they encountered in Africa. The interactions experienced by Guillain and his African counterparts allowed for a reaffirmation of exploration as an encounter and a partnership rather than as an unequal confrontation constructing insurmountable otherness.

American Photography in Living Color

colorWhen working a in a library, sometimes you come across a book that demands your attention. I was recently captivated by Color: American Photography Transformed, a gorgeous catalogue from Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Nearly every page features large plates of snapshots, advertisements, and artworks. Each seems as fresh and vibrant as they must have appeared to their first viewers.

Women’s History Month: An American in Paris, Thérèse Bonney

Thérèse Bonney. Paris, France, 1925-30. Scissor shop sign, denoting the business of a seamstress or tailor.
Thérèse Bonney. Paris, France, 1925-30. Scissor shop sign, denoting the business of a seamstress or tailor.

Born in upstate New York, Thérèse Bonney(1897-1978), was a photojournalist whose work reflected a wide variety of interests and subjects. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Radcliffe College in the 1910s. Bonney immigrated to France in 1919 where she became one of the first ten women to graduate from the Sorbonne and founded the first American illustrated press service in Europe, the Bonney Service, in 1924.