ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains how photography has been used to define humanity, in shaping ideas about race and difference, but also in helping to argue for humanitarian ideals and, ultimately, human rights. It examines the Australian experience during photography's first century, where discussion of colonization and nation-building often centred upon views of the humanity and capacity of the continent's Indigenous peoples. The book maps the complex ways that photography has made arguments about who counts as human, and whom one should feel for or with.
