ICM NEW BOOKS SERIES
SPRING 2026
PRITA MEIER (Associate Professor, Department of Art History & Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
THE SURFACE OF THINGS: A HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE SWAHILI COAST
Monday, April 20, 2026
A.D. White House, Guerlac Room
4:45 P.M.– 6:15 P.M.
Co-sponsored by Department of History of Art and Society for the Humanities
The ports of the Swahili coast—Zanzibar and Mombasa among them—have long been dynamic centers of trade where diverse peoples, ideas, and materials converge. With the arrival of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, these predominantly Muslim coastal communities cultivated and transformed the medium. The Surface of Things (Princeton UP, 2024)examines the complex maritime dynamics that shaped the photography of coastal Africa, exploring the pleasure and power of beautiful things and the ways people and their pictures transcended the boundaries of the colonial world.
Immersing readers in the globally interconnected networks of eastern Africa’s port cities, Prita Meier demonstrates how photographs are not static images but mobile objects with remarkable shape-shifting qualities. Beginning with the earliest photographs introduced through seaborne commerce, the medium’s integration into the cultural landscape was swift. Photographs functioned as objects of decoration, good taste, and cosmopolitanism, but were also used by local elites and foreigners to coerce and objectify enslaved people. Meier uncovers the oppressive agenda behind postcards and other popular images while describing African strategies of subversion and rebellion, revealing the performative authority that individuals exerted over their photographic likenesses (Publisher).
Prita Meier is associate professor of African art history at New York University. She is the author of Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere and the coeditor of World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts across the Indian Ocean. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Senior Fellow, The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2017-2018; The National Humanities Center Fellowship, Durham, North Carolina, 2017-2018 (declined); NEH Implementation Grant for “World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean” exhibition and book project, 2016-17 (with Allyson Purpura); Mellon-funded Global Architectural History and Theory Collaborative Grant, 2015-17 (with Kenny Cupers; Clark Art Institute Residential Fellowship, Williamstown, MA, 2014-2015. In 2009-2010, Professor Meier was a Fellow at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities, and we are delighted to welcome her back to A.D. White House.
