Photography and Cyprus: Time, Place & Identity

Abstract

Formerly a British colony, the island of Cyprus is now a divided country, where histories of political and cultural conflicts, as well as competing identities, remain contested. Cyprus provides the ideal case study for this innovative exploration, extensively illustrated, of how the practice of photography in relation to its political, cultural and economic contexts both contributes and responds to the formation of identity. International contributors, representing diverse disciplines, draw from photography theory, art history, anthropology and sociology to explore how the island and its people have been represented photographically. They reveal how the different gazes - colonial, political, gendered and within art photography - contribute to the creation of individual and national identities and, by extension, to the creation and re-creation of imagery of Cyprus as place.

The questions this book asks and the themes and arguments it follows apply also to other places characterized by their colonial heritage. The intriguing example of Cyprus thus serves as a fitting test-ground for current debates relating to photography, place and identity.