Abstract

This masterclass will explore the photograph as a site of cultural contact in the Arctic—ranging from visualized colonial authority to assertions of Inuit agency. The session will take place in collaboration with the Scott Polar Research Institute’s Picture Library, one of the most comprehensive collections of historic photographs depicting Polar Regions. We will view and discuss a selection of Arctic expedition photographs and other graphic works dating from the 1845 to 1931. This will allow us to engage with photographs in material terms (Edwards 2022). Our viewing of works from the Picture Library will be illuminated through a wide-ranging body of literature. This reading list includes historical discussions of Arctic exploration, theoretical analyses of the remediation of historical photographs (particularly by Indigenous peoples) as well as the materiality of the photograph. It also includes work by contemporary Inuit artists Asinnajaq and Robert Kautuk, and a discussion of the late Inuk artist Pia Arke’s response to exploration photographs of Greenland. There is a limited number of places for this event. Please email the convenors if you are interested. A reading list will be distributed to all participants in advance, closer to the date.