Imagining the Self as Other

With the expansion of the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fascination with the world beyond England grew as well. People were not only interested by exotic artifacts, but by the opportunity to reimagine themselves in a radically different life. In painting, and later in early photography, it was fashionable to represent the subject dressed in exotic costume.

Click here to see a painting by Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Captain John Foote in Indian Costume, 1761-65.

Click here to see an 1868 photo by Julia Margaret Cameron,which pictures "Captain Speedy," a public figure of the time, dressed as an Abyssinian warrior, in a staged scene.