With their power to create a sense of proximity and empathy, photographs have long been a crucial means of exchanging ideas between people across the globe; this book explores the role of photography in shaping ideas about race and difference from the 1840s to the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Focusing on Australian experience in a global context, a rich selection of case studies – drawing on a range of visual genres, from portraiture to ethnographic to scientific photographs – show how photographic encounters between Aboriginals, missionaries, scientists, photographers and writers fuelled international debates about morality, law, politics and human rights.

Drawing on new archival research, Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire is essential reading for students and scholars of race, visuality and the histories of empire and human rights.