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2002
| 112
pages
7 X 10” | 65 b/w tritones | 1 map
ISBN
1-931707-41-3
978-1-931707-41-1
$29.95
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Adventures
in Photography
Alessandro
Pezzati
Since
1887, the University of Pennsylvania Museum has been one
of the leading archaeology and anthropology museums in
the world and has sponsored research in every corner of
the globe. The Museum’s research has resulted in
more than a million material pieces that reveal the incredibly
diverse accomplishments of people the world over. Another
key outcome of the Museum’s fieldwork, from its
first expedition to Nippur in modern-day Iraq to its current
research in fifteen countries throughout the world, has
been a wealth of photographs of archaeological explorations
and excavations, as well as images of modern peoples in
every inhabited continent of our planet. These photographs,
numbering in the hundreds of thousands, range from mundane
record-keeping photos to glorious aesthetic treats. One
of the most powerful forms of median to convey information
about and to advance understanding of foreign peoples
and places is photography. Soldiers, missionaries, merchants,
and other travelers carried out early anthropological
photography in distant lands. Field photography was extremely
difficult when the Museum began its research program in
the late 1880s, requiring the transport of a complete
dark room and other heavy equipment. The Museum’s
intrepid adventurers sought scientific accuracy, with
no artifice that may have obscured the realism of the
image. An engaging narrative essay highlighting the Museum’s
fieldwork explains the contexts of the range of photographs
from the Museum’s Archives and the role of photography
in studying human cultures.
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