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Sara Hannant

Artist and Photographer

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Magic Lantern

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Magic Lantern

18th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, Alternative Processes: 'Celestial' Single, Honourable Mention

18th Pollux Awards: Fine Art Series, Honourable Mention and Portrait Series, Honourable Mention

The magic lantern is an early type of slide projector. Missionaries used magic lanterns to show images for religious education, lecture on history and ethnography and illustrate Christian involvement in cocoa-growing and other industries. By combining digital with analogue technology, I disrupt and reconfigure a discarded collection of anonymous magic lantern slides (circa 1890-1930), which re-present a British missionary’s portrayal of West Nigeria. Using the collection as a site of critical enquiry, I unravel the archaeology of processes hidden within each image. I expose and amplify stages of transformations and translation that examine the Western storytelling tropes and Enlightenment ideologies inherent in constructing the ‘Other’. The photographic medium itself is also revealed through its breakdown and decay, showing how the material creates illusions of reality.

Sara Hannant

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