Learning-by-looking: For example, at Peoples of all Nations; European education and serial encyclopaedia
Photographically illustrated serial encyclopaedia, a boom publishing phenomenon in the early 1900s, had a huge impact of readers and viewers understanding of the world. These monthly instalments, later bound into volumes, were prolifically illustrated and the epitome of learning-by-looking, self-education and modernity, and part of an expanding visual archive available to the European public wanting to know about distant lands and peoples, strange customs, travel and new colonies. As serial encyclopaedia and their barrage of photographs have been largely overlooked by scholars, this essay draws attention to the phenomenon for its role in visuality as well as the context of Imperial expansion, entertainment and European fascination with others
Downloadable Article, 2016