Within just a few years of its invention in 1839 in Europe, photography had spread around the globe - and everywhere it went, it radically transformed the practice of portrait-making. Affordable, efficient and reproducible, photography made portraiture accessible to people for whom it had never been before; it also made it easy for the resultant images to be used in many different ways, in both good faith and in bad. The history of photographic portraiture in the nineteenth century is a history of cultural exchange, of colonization and also of hybridity; of armchair traveling and exoticization, but also of self-realization and self-possession. It is also the very modern history of human mobility and migration, and of very easily carried and reproduced objects that meant extremely different things to different audiences.In this class, we will be exploring some of the richness and complexity of the history of photographic portraiture in the nineteenth century: its influence on preexisting artistic practices; its potential as a tool for exploitation; its potential for self-definition and the expression of intimacy; and its capacity as a tool for empowerment. We will read a wide variety of sources, using many different scholarly methods, about photographs from all around the globe. 

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