Leisure travel can be traced back to the “Grand Tour” starting from the 17th century, however more widespread tourism flourished shortly after the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Steamships did not only transport people and goods across the sea; images both as objects and as visual ideas were sent back and forth. From images showing architectural and historical sites to the exoticised and staged photographs of certain “types” of peoples, this array of visuals helped shape an overall image of foreign cultures and territories that would otherwise have not been comprehensible to the so-called “armchair traveller”. Visual representations of foreign regions acted as souvenirs and were also vital when identifying one’s home or nationality. Photographs of colonised territories had a profound effect on how occupied places were perceived and understood; they served as a connecting tie between the foreign and the familiar.
The workshop serves as an open platform for doctoral and postdoctoral candidates to exchange thoughts on how to approach the topic of travelling images. We want to initiate ties between and across universities and disciplines to help encourage our understanding of complex transnational travel routes of images. The goal is to thoroughly investigate the changing interpretations and meanings of images, both through a media specific and art historical lens, and in a wider cultural, historical and social realm.

Public Lecture by Luke Gartlan: Photography’s History in Meiji Japan: New Approaches and Challenges:
In the book A Career of Japan (Brill, 2016), Luke Gartlan sought to present the first detailed account of one of the major photographers and personalities of nineteenth-century Japan—the Austrian aristocrat Baron Raimund von Stillfried (1839–1911). In this talk, Gartlan will reflect on the historiographical challenges that were encountered in the writing of this book and the potential avenues that it opened to further research and the challenges that remain. He will present a brief overview of von Stillfried’s career, stepping back from the details of his activities to ask broader questions about the relevance of such close studies to Meiji-period visual culture as a whole. In what ways do the careers of such long-term foreign expatriates re-orient current understandings of nineteenth-century photography in Japan? What was their role in Meiji Japan and how are we to understand their contribution to photography in their adopted country? This talk will argue that the historiographical division between ‘Japanese’ and ‘non-Japanese’ photographers misrepresents the entangled nature of Meiji Japan’s photographic industry. It calls for a much more inclusive approach to the writing of photography’s history at the coalface of cultural exchange, which emphasizes current, ongoing efforts to write shared histories of overlooked photographs and photographers.

The evening lecture is free and open to the public. In order to participate in the workshop, please register via e-mail until October 1, 2017 by contacting Stella Jungmann, Center for Studies in the Theory and History of Photography at the Institute of Art History: stella.jungmann@khist.uzh.ch
For more information, visit: http://www.travellingimageszurich.wordpress.com