The course will critically examine the history and theory of photography in Asia (Except Japan that is a separate case), while emphasizing and scrutinizing trans-cultural relations concerned with the entry of photographic language into the Asian Sphere during the latter half of the 19^th c. to the mid-20^th c. We shall examine photography during the great Asian Wars – The Korea and Vietnam Wars. Topics to be discussed concern questions local representation, the representation of the Other, exoticisation of the past, modernisation, Western culture and its influence on representational models, colonial power relations, independence and globalization, photographer/ photographed. During the course, we shall analyse photography from China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and India. Special attention will be paid to the cross-cultural encounter: the translation of photographic terminology into Asian languages; Ways in which Asia was portrayed in European imagination; Experimental photography in varying places; the use of "scientific" tools to articulate the image of the Asian Other; War imagery; Funerary imagery; Photographs created by local practitioners versus foreign ones; representations of Asia in Contemporary photography, and Asian photographers currently living in the West, hybrid relations in photography, and more.

We shall study the work of researchers such as Ali Behdad, Christopher Pinney, Gu Yi, Wu Hung, Ellen Takata, Young Min Moon, Rosalind Morris among other researchers.