"Imperial Exposure: Early Photography and Royal Portraits across Asia"

Symposium announcement from H-ASIA:

Coinciding with the Sackler exhibition Power/Play: China’s Empress Dowager, this symposium examines imperial portraiture during the advent of photography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

While Power/Play addresses the unique circumstances and intentions behind photographs of Empress Dowager Cixi, the symposium is an opportunity for a broader comparative analysis of the engagement with photography in ruling courts across Asia. Among other topics, scholars consider how photographs of court figures were used to create images of power, to establish a sense of nationhood, and to express a religious identity, as well as the relationship between early photographic representations and more recent imperial images from the region.

Freer Gallery of Art
Meyer Auditorium
Monday, December 5–Tuesday, December 6, 2011

For more information: http://www.asia.si.edu/events/IESymposium/