Photography, Natural History and the Nineteenth-Century Museum: Exchanging Views of Empire

The Victorian era heralded an age of transformation in which momentous changes in the field of natural history coincided with the rise of new visual technologies. Concurrently, different parts of the British Empire began to more actively claim their right to being acknowledged as indispensable contributors to knowledge and the progress of empire. This book addresses the complex relationship between natural history and photography from the 1850s to the 1880s in Britain and its colonies: Australia, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, India. Coinciding with the rise of the modern museum, photography’s arrival was timely, and it rapidly became an essential technology for recording and publicising rare objects and valuable collections. Also during this period, the medium assumed a more significant role in the professional practices and reputations of naturalists than has been previously recognized, and it figured increasingly within the expanding specialized networks that were central to the production and dissemination of new knowledge. In an interrogation that ranges from the first forays into museum photography and early attempts to document collecting expeditions to the importance of traditional and photographic portraiture for the recognition of scientific discoveries, this book not only recasts the parameters of what we actually identify as natural history photography in the Victorian era but also how we understand the very structure of empire in relation to this genre at that time.

About the Author

Kathleen Davidson teaches art history at the University of Sydney. Her recent publications include ‘Colonial Science and Photographic Portraits’ in Judy Annear (ed.), The Photograph and Australia (AGNSW Press, 2015); ‘Connecting the Senses: Natural History and the British Museum in the Stereoscopic Magazine ’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (2014); ‘Speculative Viewing: Victorians’ Encounters with Coral Reefs’ in Grace Moore and Michelle Smith (eds.), Victorian Environments (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming); and ‘Photography and the Triumph of Science in European Vision and the South Pacific ’ in Jaynie Anderson and Christopher Marshall (eds.), The Multiple Legacies of Bernard Smith (Power Publications & AGNSW Press, 2016). Previously, she was Curator of International Photography at the National Gallery of Australia.