Description
Book SynopsisAnn Elias traces the history of two explorers whose photographs and films of tropical reefs in the 1920s cast corals and the sea as an unexplored territory to be exploited in ways that tied the tropics and reefs to colonialism, racism, and the human domination of nature.
Trade Review"
Coral Empire’s postcolonial jeremiad also registers the joyful endurance of surrealist visions of the submarine as a deliriously consciousness-altering realm." -- James Delbourgo * TLS *
"[This] book shows that interdisciplinarity is possible. Elias combines the history of underwater cinematography and diving with attention to the surrealist art movement, natural history collecting, colonialism, and the history of tourism, and through this rich patchwork traces shifting popular interpretations of coral imagery in the early twentieth century." -- Antony Adler * Environmental History *
"Ann Elias’ fascinating book couldn’t come at a better time. . . . Elias focuses on long neglected images from cinema, dioramas from museums, and illustrations from the press. She cleverly articulates them through a set of unexpected global connections that powerfully mobilise all the transforming ideas of empire, race, technology and nature at the time." -- Martyn Jolly * Australian Historical Studies *
"This book is well written and the short chapters make it extremely readable. In addition, the book is beautifully printed, with black-and-white images embedded in chapters and their color counterparts inserted in the middle of the book. It is refreshing to see a book that relies on the reading of images paying such close attention to their reproduction in the text." -- Samantha Muka * H-Net Reviews *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I. The Coral Uncanny
1. Coral Empire 15
2.
Mad Love 29
Part II. John Ernest Williamson and the Bahamas
3. Williamson and the Photosphere 49
4. The Field Museum—Williamson Undersea Expedition 68
5.
Under the Sea 83
6. Williamson in Australia 97
Part III. Frank Hurley and the Great Barrier Reef
7. Hurley and the Floor of the Sea 117
8. Hurley and the Australian Museum Expedition 131
9.
Pearls and Savages 147
10. Hurley and the Torres Strait Diver 165
Part IV. Hurley and Williamson
11. Explorers and Modern Media 185
12. Color and Tourism 199
Part V. The Great Acceleration
13. The Anthropocene 217
Conclusion 230
Notes 235
Bibliography 261
Index 277
