Light on Darkness?: Missionary Photography of Africa in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

In its earliest days, photography was seen as depicting its subjects with such objectivity as to be inherently free of ideological bias. Today we are rightly more skeptical -- at least most of the time. When it comes to photography from the past, we tend to set some of our skepticism aside. But should we?

In Light on Darkness? T. Jack Thompson, a leading historian of African Christianity, revisits the body of photography generated by British missionaries to sub-Saharan Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and demonstrates that much more is going on in these images than meets the eye. This volume offers a careful reassessment of missionary photographers, their photographs, and their African and European audiences. Several dozen fascinating photographs from the period are included.

Author: T. Jack Thompson
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: 04/20/2012
Pages: 286
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780802865243

About the Author
Thompson, T. Jack: - T. Jack Thompson (1943-2017) was a distinguished historian of Malawian and African Christianity. He served in many leadership roles at the University of Edinburgh's School of Divinity, including director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World from 2005 to 2008. His other books include Images of Africa and Christianity in Northern Malawi.

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