MA Asian Art Histories Forum
Itinerancy, Identity & Citizenship: 19th Century Photography in Southeast Asia

Speakers
Dr Susie Protschky (Senior Lecturer, Monash University)
Peter Lee (Independent art and heritage consultant)
Gilles Massot (Lecturer, LASALLE College of the Arts)

Thur, 4 April 2019, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Lecture Theatre, Block F Level 2 #F202, LASALLE. Free admission.
RSVP: theresa.tan@mylasalle.edu.sg

This forum will examine the various ‘lives’ of photographers and photographs in 19th century Southeast Asia. How do the circulations of people, objects and technology problematise nationally-based histories? And how did photographers and their subjects negotiate questions of identity and citizenship in the context of colonisation? This forum will reveal new insights into the significance of Southeast Asia to ‘global’ histories of photography, and the relevance of photography to Southeast Asian art histories.

Dr Susie Protschky is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Monash University. She specialises in histories of visual culture and photography, and her current major project, funded by the Australian Research Council, is on ‘Disaster, human suffering and colonial photography’ in Indonesia.

Peter Lee is an independent art and heritage consultant, and the Honorary Curator of the NUS Baba House – a historical house museum managed by the National University of Singapore.  In 2018 he was the guest curator of Amek Gambar: Peranakans and Photography (2018), an exhibition at the Peranakan Museum.

Gilles Massot’s multidisciplinary process looks beyond disciplines to establish links between narratives, occurrences and parts of the world. He recently completed research on Jules Itier and the first photographs of Asia completed in the 1840s, and is currently exploring the relations between the history of photography and that of quantum mechanics.