The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–1910 - Hardcover

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Stephen Sheehi is the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Chair of Middle East Studies at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of Foundations of Modern Arab Identity and Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign against Muslims.

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"We have been waiting for effective global histories of photography to disturb and decenter the questions we ask--not globalized histories, radiating out in a familiar narrative of export, influence, and derivation, but histories that start elsewhere. Stephen Sheehi's The Arab Imago, a social history of indigenous photography in the Ottoman Arab world, is a model for this. It provincializes the history we have and irrevocably pluralizes both photographies and the interwoven modernities of which they were part."--John Tagg, Binghamton University, author of The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning

"Hugely original, both empirically and theoretically, this is a superbly ambitious book. Sheehi helps the reader escape from the familiar landscape of colonial representation into the complex terrain of indigenous photography, which is filled with images and practices that will provoke new kinds of debates. The Arab Imago disorders a world we thought we knew in ways that will be highly productive."--Christopher Pinney, University College London, author of Photography and Anthropology

"The Arab Imago is a remarkable and timely book that will make a significant contribution to Middle East studies and to the theory and history of photography. Sheehi's discussion of indigenous photography in the Arab world sheds new and much-needed light on photography's other histories."--Ali Behdad, UCLA, author of Camera Orientalis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East

"The Arab Imago successfully presents us with an alternative history of photography in the Arab world during the late Ottoman Empire. This original and informative book will be an important source for scholars and students of photography and Middle Eastern modernity."--Issam Nassar, Illinois State University, author of European Portrayals of Jerusalem