Sean Willcock
Biographic Data
| ID | 4690210 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sean Willcock |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sean |
| FAMILY NAME | Willcock |
| SIGNATURE | WILLCOCK S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Working with Grievous Images’, a special issue of History of Photography
1. Pierre Schill: My research on the 1911 visual coverage of the war in Tripolitania stems from a chance encounter. I was working on a different topic and came across some old and damaged positive
Grievous Images
The way we look or decline to look at photographs of violence matters. In her influential 1977 essays on photography, Susan Sontag discerned a process of desensitisation operating within modern cul
Developing Orientalism
Histories of Orientalist photography focus predominately on the form and content of positive prints. This article argues that more attention should be paid to the distinctive visual qualities and associated meanings of photographic negatives within the colonial visual encounter. Paper and glass-plate negatives were the objects of frequent spectatorship and discussion for travelling British photographers working ‘in the field’ in the early years o…
Guilt in the Archive
What role should photographic evidence play in current debates about whether or not Britain should apologise for the historic crimes of empire? This article examines the photographs that emerged from the Amritsar Massacre of 13 April 1919, considering what such documents can tell us about the relationship between atrocity and the imperial project. Colonials working in both official and unofficial capacities turned to photography in their attempt …
Composing the Spectacle
For one critic, the work 'suffers terribly from its discordancy with everything in the exhibition, while it ruins the effects of every other picture, not only in its vicinity, but while the glare of its colouring haunts the vitiated eye.' ii It seemed to launch an aggressive ocular assault against the show's visitors: 'its high colour shrieks at us in other rooms,' leaving 'the eye dazzled and the sense confounded.' iii This article argues that t…
Insurgent Citizenship
Sean Wilcock explores photography’s agency in depicting the complex social fabric of the colonial station of Cawnpore, India, which in 1857 was the site of a brutal massacre of colonial men, women and children by insurgents
Aesthetic Bodies
This article looks at how aesthetic concerns inflected the dynamic of imperial relations during the 1857 Indian Uprising and its aftermath. The invention of photography inaugurated a period in which aesthetic imperatives increasingly came to structure the engagement of colonial bodies with the traumas of warfare in British India. The formal conventions of image-making practices were not consigned to a discreet virtual sphere; they were channelled…
A Neutered Beast? Representations of the Sons of Tipu Sultan –‘The Tiger of Mysore’– as Hostages in the 1790s
In 1792 the British took two young Indian princes as hostages to guarantee that their father, Tipu Sultan, would meet the terms of his surrender. This article analyses the art works that emerged in response to that event, arguing that this seemingly triumphal imagery was an ambivalent phenomenon in which can be found significant undercurrents of anxiety over the morality of the capture of children. I suggest that the hostage imagery's recourse to…
Aesthetic Bodies
This article looks at how aesthetic concerns inflected the dynamic of imperial relations during the 1857 Indian Uprising and its aftermath. The invention of photography inaugurated a period in which aesthetic imperatives increasingly came to structure the engagement of colonial bodies with the traumas of warfare in British India. The formal conventions of image-making practices were not consigned to a discreet virtual sphere; they were channelled…
A Neutered Beast? Representations of the Sons of Tipu Sultan –‘The Tiger of Mysore’– as Hostages in the 1790s
In 1792 the British took two young Indian princes as hostages to guarantee that their father, Tipu Sultan, would meet the terms of his surrender. This article analyses the art works that emerged in response to that event, arguing that this seemingly triumphal imagery was an ambivalent phenomenon in which can be found significant undercurrents of anxiety over the morality of the capture of children. I suggest that the hostage imagery's recourse to…
Aesthetic Bodies
This article looks at how aesthetic concerns inflected the dynamic of imperial relations during the 1857 Indian Uprising and its aftermath. The invention of photography inaugurated a period in which aesthetic imperatives increasingly came to structure the engagement of colonial bodies with the traumas of warfare in British India. The formal conventions of image-making practices were not consigned to a discreet virtual sphere; they were channelled…
Insurgent Citizenship
Sean Wilcock explores photography’s agency in depicting the complex social fabric of the colonial station of Cawnpore, India, which in 1857 was the site of a brutal massacre of colonial men, women and children by insurgents
Composing the Spectacle
For one critic, the work 'suffers terribly from its discordancy with everything in the exhibition, while it ruins the effects of every other picture, not only in its vicinity, but while the glare of its colouring haunts the vitiated eye.' ii It seemed to launch an aggressive ocular assault against the show's visitors: 'its high colour shrieks at us in other rooms,' leaving 'the eye dazzled and the sense confounded.' iii This article argues that t…
Guilt in the Archive
What role should photographic evidence play in current debates about whether or not Britain should apologise for the historic crimes of empire? This article examines the photographs that emerged from the Amritsar Massacre of 13 April 1919, considering what such documents can tell us about the relationship between atrocity and the imperial project. Colonials working in both official and unofficial capacities turned to photography in their attempt …
Working with Grievous Images’, a special issue of History of Photography
1. Pierre Schill: My research on the 1911 visual coverage of the war in Tripolitania stems from a chance encounter. I was working on a different topic and came across some old and damaged positive
Grievous Images
The way we look or decline to look at photographs of violence matters. In her influential 1977 essays on photography, Susan Sontag discerned a process of desensitisation operating within modern cul
Developing Orientalism
Histories of Orientalist photography focus predominately on the form and content of positive prints. This article argues that more attention should be paid to the distinctive visual qualities and associated meanings of photographic negatives within the colonial visual encounter. Paper and glass-plate negatives were the objects of frequent spectatorship and discussion for travelling British photographers working ‘in the field’ in the early years o…
Art (6 works) · History (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Ancient history (4 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Colonialism (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Photography (4 works) · Political science (4 works)