The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography
Encounters in Scotland, Canada, and China
Tracing the global reach of early photography and the camera's part in cultural encounters across three continents.
Description
Almost immediately after the invention of photography, Scottish photographers took their clunky cameras on the road to capture the stories of peoples and communities touched by the forces of British imperialism. For the next thirty years, their journeys would take them far from their homes in the Lowlands to the Canadian wilderness and the treaty ports and rivers of China. The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography is about the interplay between these photographers' ambitions and the needs and desires of the people they met. Anthony Lee tracks the work of several famous innovators of the art form, including the pioneering team of D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson in Edinburgh; Canada's first great photographers, the Scottish immigrants William Notman and Alexander Henderson in Montreal; the globetrotting John Thomson in Hong Kong; and Lai Afong, the first widely known Chinese photographer. Lee reveals their pictures in the context of migration and the social impact wrought by worldwide trade and competing nationalisms. A timely book, it tells of an era when cameras emerged to give shape and meaning to some of the most defining moments brought about by globalization in the nineteenth century. Beautifully written and richly illustrated in full colour, The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography weaves stories together to show that even the earliest pictures were sites of fierce historical struggle.
Reviews
"This organizational trajectory from Scotland across the "imperial trail" is neatly conceived and allows Lee to establish how these photographers negotiated an identity for themselves through their cameras – in relation to the British Empire and amid global encounters. Throughout, the book benefits greatly from the author's attention to the social forces that shape the migrant experience, a topic that he has explored previously with great nuance … ." CAA Reviews
"A much-needed history of the emergence of Scottish pastoralism, The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography stands out not least because it is the first book to take up in a sustained way the relationship between the camera and globalization." Thy Phu, University of Western Ontario
"Remarkably thorough in the way he outlines the commercial and socio-political developments of the locales he discusses, Lee has made valuable contribution to the history of the relationship between photography and European colonialism." The Burlington Magazine
"An insightful, beautifully crafted, and enjoyable read. Lee writes with consummate command of the materials and manages with commendable skill to narrate both personal lives – of the photographers and their subjects alike – and the changing socio-economic pressures on them with equal measure and sophistication." Luke Gartlan, University of St Andrews
"The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography is handsomely produced, richly visual and engagingly written. Lee … narrates plausible tales of photographic 'encounters in Scotland, Canada, and China' with energy and a flare for words. Captivating." History of Photography
"Anthony Lee's new book is a beautifully written, richly engaging account of three sets of early Scottish photographers and their relations to the globalizing forces of modernity and imperialism. [...] Lee's richly researched and deeply considered study offers a thought-provoking contribution to critical thinking on the forefront of studies in photographic history and visual culture of the global nineteenth-century world." RACAR