Staged Photography and Mimesis | Museo d'Arte Orientale Venezia

Staged Photography and Mimesis: Caneva’s 1850s Images of China

(in inglese)

Conferenza di Sarah E. Fraser

Giovedì 23 aprile 2026, ore 15.30

One of the challenges of researching East Asia is the legacy of colonial photography and extracting historical data. This talk will explore different types of staged photography and stereotypes, ethnographic references and construction, and how to use early photography as a reference tool for research. How do we assess personal, individual, and geographic data presented in colonial photographs? Further, Giacomo Caneva’s photographs of 1850s China suggest different forms of staging that allow us to interrogate the role of mimesis in nineteenth and twentieth-century East Asian visual culture. In what ways do these materials offering seemingly objective views relate to curated photos from the early history of photography of China? Later, how did Chinese photographers subvert and reinvent photographic regimes?

Sarah E. Fraser è professoressa e direttrice dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Arte dell'Asia Orientale presso l'Università di Heidelberg. Le sue pubblicazioni includono il volume Women Cross Media: East Asian Photography, Prints, and Porcelain in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2022) e Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia, 618-960 (2004).

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