Giulia Paoletti
Giulia Paoletti is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the histories of modern art and photography in Africa. Her book "Portrait and Place: Photography in Senegal, 1840-1960" was published with Princeton University Press (March, 2024).
Her work has appeared in edited volumes and journals including Art History, Cahiers d'études africaines, the Metropolitan Museum Journal, Art in Translation, Journal of African History, and Troubles dans les collections and African Arts.
Support for her research and writing include awards and fellowships from American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/Getty; The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA); the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
She has taught and lectured at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, the University of Kansas, the Barnes Foundation, and the University of Bologna.
She has co-curated three exhibitions on historical and contemporary photography from Africa at the Metropolitan Museum, the Wallach Gallery and Dak’art Biennial OFF 2018.
Profile Picture: Photo Antoine Tempé
Supervisors: Prof. Z.S. Strother
Her work has appeared in edited volumes and journals including Art History, Cahiers d'études africaines, the Metropolitan Museum Journal, Art in Translation, Journal of African History, and Troubles dans les collections and African Arts.
Support for her research and writing include awards and fellowships from American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/Getty; The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA); the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
She has taught and lectured at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, the University of Kansas, the Barnes Foundation, and the University of Bologna.
She has co-curated three exhibitions on historical and contemporary photography from Africa at the Metropolitan Museum, the Wallach Gallery and Dak’art Biennial OFF 2018.
Profile Picture: Photo Antoine Tempé
Supervisors: Prof. Z.S. Strother
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Books by Giulia Paoletti
Giulia Paoletti takes readers on a visual journey from the 1840s, when the oldest-surviving daguerreotype from West Africa was made, to the 1960s, when photography became the most popular medium as Senegal achieved its independence. She discusses some of Africa’s most celebrated modernists, such as Mama Casset, and also offers insights into lesser-known photographers like Oumar Ka and once-anonymous figures such as Macky Kane. Paoletti examines both professional and amateur artists in genres ranging from portraiture to landscape and across media such as glass painting and lithography.
Featuring a wealth of breathtaking images published here for the first time, Portrait and Place brings to life the important histories of photography on the African continent.
Articles & Book Chapters by Giulia Paoletti
Other by Giulia Paoletti
Papers & Lectures by Giulia Paoletti
Giulia Paoletti takes readers on a visual journey from the 1840s, when the oldest-surviving daguerreotype from West Africa was made, to the 1960s, when photography became the most popular medium as Senegal achieved its independence. She discusses some of Africa’s most celebrated modernists, such as Mama Casset, and also offers insights into lesser-known photographers like Oumar Ka and once-anonymous figures such as Macky Kane. Paoletti examines both professional and amateur artists in genres ranging from portraiture to landscape and across media such as glass painting and lithography.
Featuring a wealth of breathtaking images published here for the first time, Portrait and Place brings to life the important histories of photography on the African continent.
Speakers:
Dr. Christine Checinska (V&A Museum)
Sasha Huber
Mónica de Miranda
Zohra Opoku
Organized and moderated by:
Dr. Sandrine Colard (Rutgers-Newark University)
Dr. Giulia Paoletti (UVA)
What rights do photographers have? In today's age of hypervisibility, can sitters claim their “right to opacity,” to use Édouard Glissant's term? What is the future of collecting and curating photographs that originate in family and colonial archives on the continent? Can viewers embody “the active struggle of looking with,” in Tina Campt’s words—rather than observe passively—and can this engender new ways of seeing?
The Full conference is now available online with English subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaHCzaL-ex1Z0s3901JS6RF5HVE4XEt_p
Photography Network sponsored session
Co-Chairs:
Sandrine Colard, Assistant Professor of Art History/ACM Department/Rutgers University-Newark
Giulia Paoletti, Assistant Professor of Art, University of Virginia
One of the earliest and most famous instances of photography’s intimacy with textile is Secondo Pia’s 1898 image of the Shroud of Turin (Geimer, 2018). But even in less exceptional occasions than Christ’s own portrait, photography’s relation to fabric has been, and continues to be, substantial and transformative across time and space. The inclusion of pieces of fabric in women’s albums has been well-documented (Higonnet, 1992 ; Di Bello, 2007). The frequent doubling of tailors as photographers across the African continent has been long noted, as well as the commemoration of newly created outfits as a usual motive for a trip to the studio (Pinther, 2007; Rabine 2010). The vibrant juxtaposition of patterned textiles in the works of Seydou Keïta and the likes has been recognized as participating to an aesthetic of “surfacism” that enacts a visual decolonization (Oguibe, 1996; Pinney, 2003; Thompson 2009; Agbo 2019). Finally, a movement in recent contemporary art has seen practitioners literally embroider or weave their prints, or infuse a “photographic aesthetic” into their fabrics like in the works of Joanna Choumali, Kyle Meyer, Monica de Miranda, Billie Zangewa among others (Dewan, 2012). This panel seeks to reflect upon some of the following questions : Is there a world history of photography to be written from the point of view of the medium’s relation to textile, as medium, surface, aesthetic and haptic perception? What are the shared properties of both media, and how have they influenced each other ? Also, is there a gendered, female specific engagement of textile within photography ?
Submit by August 6th