Coral Empire

“Ann Elias's Coral Empire is as intoxicating as a plunge into a reef lagoon: a refreshingly original and compelling analysis of how the underwater coral realm has evolved from a planetary space of fathomless mysteries and alien terrors to become a complex technology-driven spectacle that feeds the rampant imaginations, pleasures, vices, and curiosities of modern humans.” - Iain McCalman, author of The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change

“Coral Empires is a brilliantly researched, aesthetically nuanced study of early photographic and film imagery representing coral reefs, one of the most gorgeous areas of the undersea, which is the least explored dimension of the blue humanities. Focusing on how coral came to be captured and exhibited in visual media of the twentieth century, and expanding to coral's transformed presence in museological displays, Ann Elias shows the power of imagery and exhibition to create our imagination and relation to the inaccessible undersea. In the process, Coral Empire tracks changing human interactions with the environment of the coral reef that became a tourist destination in the early twentieth century and that is at the forefront of exhibiting the devastating impact of climate change today.” - Margaret Cohen, author of The Novel and the Sea

"Coral Empire’s postcolonial jeremiad also registers the joyful endurance of surrealist visions of the submarine as a deliriously consciousness-altering realm." - James Delbourgo, TLS

"[This] book shows that interdisciplinarity is possible. Elias combines the history of underwater cinematography and diving with attention to the surrealist art movement, natural history collecting, colonialism, and the history of tourism, and through this rich patchwork traces shifting popular interpretations of coral imagery in the early twentieth century." - Antony Adler, Environmental History

"Ann Elias’ fascinating book couldn’t come at a better time. . . . Elias focuses on long neglected images from cinema, dioramas from museums, and illustrations from the press. She cleverly articulates them through a set of unexpected global connections that powerfully mobilise all the transforming ideas of empire, race, technology and nature at the time." - Martyn Jolly, Australian Historical Studies

"This book is well written and the short chapters make it extremely readable. In addition, the book is beautifully printed, with black-and-white images embedded in chapters and their color counterparts inserted in the middle of the book. It is refreshing to see a book that relies on the reading of images paying such close attention to their reproduction in the text." - Samantha Muka, H-Net Reviews

"By examining the history of visual modernity through Williamson and Hurley’s photographs and films of the coral reefs, Elias shows just how important it is to interrogate the past in order to understand the present, and hopefully, empower us to change our future and embrace more receptive and open-minded relationships with our planetary environments." - Erica Seccombe, Australian Humanities Review

“Ann Elias can be commended for helping her readers to understand the extent to which the Western mental image of coral reefs remains profoundly culturally constructed. Hopefully that understanding will help inspire a more historically conscious approach to combating climate change.” - Simon Foale, Journal of Pacific History

“Elias critiques the colonial impulses behind the visual culture of coral reefs in the 1920s.... While focused on the past, this is a timely examination.” - Lisa Yin Han, Journal of Environmental Media