Artistic Occupation: Camouflaging Difference in Photographic Imagery of the Middle East

Abstract

In this invited presentation I looked into processes of cultural exchange and hybridisation carried out in and through photographic practices and images. It focused on nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first century visual negotiations of social identities in the Middle East, in the light of colonialist expansion and military conquest. I demonstrated that these inform the visual vocabularies and subjectivities in question, complicating normative narratives about, and the perception of the peoples living in this geographical terrain.