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FOGG ART MUSEUM Harvard University Art Museums 32 Quincy Street Cambridge, Massachusetts 01238 tel: (617) 495-9400 internet: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu | ||||
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Sight-seeing: Photography of the Middle East and its Audiences, 1840-1940 December 8, 2000 April 22, 2001 | ||||
| Featuring approximately 90 works, this exhibition explores the ways in which the medium of photography provided encounters with the landscapes, monuments, and peoples of the Middle East to a broad public during photography¹s first century. Drawing its examples from the Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archive, other Harvard collections, and the Boston Public Library, the exhibit examines how images of the Middle East functioned as surrogates for travel in the region. It highlights the distinctive patterns that emerged in the construction and presentation of photographs of the Middle East for Western consumption. The exhibition features typical and unusual views of the region that were produced through amateur, institutional, and commercial efforts for a range of audiences. Artistic, missionary, scholarly, commercial, and strategic military concerns were advanced through photography using a variety of presentation forms‹albums, published works, stereo views, lantern slides, panoramas, postcards‹that allowed photographs to function as surrogates for sight or as souvenirs of travel experience, thereby shaping attitudes about the Middle East. | ||||
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