Category: Photography
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The Counter-Archive of Alfonso Ongpin: A Methodological Essay
Binondo Church, Chinatown, Manila, 1902. Photo: University of Michigan Abstract This essay defines the methods I am using to examine a selection of Real Photo Postcards (RPPC) from two sets of archives. Both sets were taken in the Philippines during the early years of American colonial rule (1898-1946). One consists of ethnological portraits of tribesmen…
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Grupos Filipinos Ilustres, 1911
Photo: Grupos Filipinos Ilustres, NCCA/ National Museum Collection This lithograph called Grupos Filipinos Ilustres by Guillermo Tolentino from 1911, created the National Pantheon according to historian Resil Mojares. It imagined heroes, intellectuals, artists, activists and politicians together in a studio portrait. It was a popular fixture in homes during the American occupation of the Philippines,…
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On Visual Sovereignty
Tuscarora artist and scholar Jolene Rickard called for art historians to recognize the visualization of multiple systems of governance in studies which employ “indigenous methodology”.[1] The Art historian’s ability to “synthesize between multiple worldviews ” is indeed crucial in revisiting the role of images (in Rickard’s case, photographs) as a powerful tool of colonization. Demonstrating…
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Archive Style (Robin Kelsey, 2007)
Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American, born Ireland, 1840–1882), Black Cañon, From Camp 8, Looking Above, 1871, Albumen silver print from glass negative, 20 x 28.1 cm (7 7/8 x 11 1/16 in. ) Photo: Public Domain/ Metropolitan Museum of New York Survey photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan, is known for depicting the atrocities of the American Civil…
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The Case of Daniel Folkmar
This is a digest of Campomanes, Oscar V. “Images of Filipino Racialization in the Anthropological Laboratories of the American Empire: The Case of Daniel Folkmar.” PMLA 123, no. 5 (2008): 1692-699. Accessed November 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25501971 American Studies scholar Oscar Campomanes brought my attention to the work in physical anthropology of Daniel Folkmar (1861–1932). Like…
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From the Archive: Dean C. Worcester Photographic Collection
The counter-gaze in the Real Photo Postcard (RPPC) of an “Igorote group” “Igorote Group”, Photo: Dean Worcester Collection- No names provided Among the recently digitized photographs from the Dean C. Worcester Photographic Collection is an RPPC of a group of six young Igorots. Nothing much is written about the Igorots on the front or verso of…
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Visual Sovereignty and the Counter-archive
The dominance of official photography and the silencing effect of public history on indigenous groups have led First Peoples movements to establish “counter-archives” presenting their visual sovereignty. Amy Lonetree recounts a powerful encounter with images taken by Charles Van Schaickof of her ancestors just a few short years after what she describes as, “the darkest,…
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A decent photo of Montauk Point
Over the summer break, I visited Montauk Point on the easternmost end of Long Island and I was intrigued by the information written on a tourist pamphlet that lighthouses were the very first public works project undertaken by the United States. The lighthouse along with the one at Camp Henry, as pointed out in “Conjuring…
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Heaven in a wildflower
Miguel Abreu Gallery’s first post-COVID quarantine exhibition pits painting versus photography. Brooklyn-based photographer Eileen Quinlan captures the nightmare of being marooned in isolation while Cheyney Thompson’s stenciled paintings complement the same sensibility by approximating the waves imprinted on driftwood. Quinlan’s snapshot of a wilderness glade, entitled Curtain Call, contemplates death and regeneration with an austere…
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Villem Flusser on Artistic Freedom
With his statements in Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Vilém Flusser opened a new understanding of photography, and gave the term a new meaning. While he describes the photograph as a “flyer-like image distributed by the apparatus,” the Photographer for Flusser was a critic; a gadfly: “a person who attempts to place within the image,…
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Protected: The war of images
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Geronimo Cristobal 