Divesting the Picturesque: Bourke-White's Partition Photographs from Above.
Peterson, Shauna.
2013
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Abstract: In 1947-48, while on assignment for
Life magazine, the American photojournalist Margaret
Bourke-White documented the displacement and mass-migration of Partition refugees in India.
Within art historical scholarship, discussion of these photographs remains limited to
biographical analysis of the groundbreaking photographer. This thesis intervenes in this
historical marginalization of ... read morethe artist and her work by examining the photographs in a
relation to the political and literary context of Halfway to
Freedom, Bourke-White's 243-page report on the state of India. An
investigation of the foreign narrator's role in the construction of a knowable landscape in
Halfway to Freedom and E. M. Forster's A Passage
to India, suggests that a dialogue with the colonial picturesque aesthetic
offers an alternative view of a peripheral India, independent from European frameworks, and
creates a space in which the subaltern subject may speak. In words and photographs,
Bourke-White describes an anti-picturesque India seen from above.
Thesis (M.A.)--Tufts University, 2013.
Submitted to the Dept. of Art and Art History.
Advisor: Eric Rosenberg.
Committee: Christina Maranci, and John Lurz.
Keywords: Art history, and Literature.read less - ID:
- z029ph59n
- Component ID:
- tufts:21978
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
