Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire

Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire by Jane Lydon marks a significant contribution to both the scholarship on imperial humanitarian photography and the burgeoning body of new work, which seeks to historicize and give specificity to human rights. In this rich study Lydon offers a nuanced and critical analysis of humanitarian photography in Australia and its central role in shaping ideas about race, rights, and colonization from the 1840s to the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.