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Home | Arts & Entertainment | Photography In this paper I'll try to take a look at the photography in the colonial era, representations of other cultures with the aid of a photographic camera and the issues of objectivity and whether the colonial images can be considered documents or not. Invention of photography in the 19th century occurred at the same time with other technical innovations that came to revolutionize the whole way of life in the Western society. Technical innovations have led not only to the rise of science, but the invention of railroads led to the growing travel and allowed for the transportation of cumbersome photographic equipment to the places far from home. In science photography seemed to penetrate almost every area and became especially popular in studying human movement in anatomy and picturing objects and classifying them in zoology and archeology. In travel, in the first half of the 19th century visiting Eastern countries was especially popular. Before the 1840's there were numerous attempts to make daguerreotypes of the oriental voyages, but the business of producing daguerreotypes proved to extremely difficult while on the move. Not only the equipment was incredibly cumbersome, but the process of producing images on glass plates was time-consuming and demanded huge resources. It was after the 1840's when the photographic paper was invented that travel photography increased rapidly. Landscapes of Egypt, India and the Mediterranean became truly popular among both professional and amateur photographers. Later half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century was the time of empires and colonial expansion. On the photography of this period and especially early 1900's I'm going to concentrate. Colonial conquest attracted numbers of people seeking money and adventure into exploration of Asian and African countries. Some of those taking photographic equipment along were colonial administrators or workers, others included scientists like archeologists and anthropologists. The science of anthropology became established in the colonial era and was in a way a consequence of the colonial encounter. Anthropologists maintained close ties with colonial administration and back home anthropological exhibitions were organized displaying both the photographs and cultural artifacts gathered by anthropologists. Anthropology of that period tried to show that humans gradually evolved from nature to civilization and while the Western civilization was on top of the evolutionary ladder, "primitive" societies were more or less in their natural state. The concept of race and classification of human kind into racial categories needed visual illustration. Anthropologists argue that anthropology of the period was visually oriented that the ability to visualize a culture or society becomes synonymous for understanding it. Photographs played an important part not only as objects of exhibitions, but there were means to bring the images of colonial reality to the homes of European bourgeoisie to provide with information about areas under colonial government and reassure once again of the supremacy of Western culture and inferiority of the Other. Lang's eugenic anthropology photographs where concerned with the correct identification of racial types of the Congo Pygmies. In his writings Lang describes his concerns with whether the Mbuti were a degenerate type of Negroes and his search for the truly typical members of the tribe. "Scientific" procedures in choosing the subjects of photographs were typical examples of colonialists' treatment of the colonized characterized by disrespect and treatment of people somewhat like in the procedure of cattle selection. According to the description to select the typical, Lang lined his subjects up and pulled every 3rd, 5th, or 7th person from the line. This procedure resembling photographing prisoners without any respect for their identity was justified by methods of science where elimination of any personal preference was needed. As with other colonial districts photographers traveled to bring images of the colonized peoples to the Europeans. In Baum there were different kinds of photographers involved in producing the photographic portrayal of the region. Every one of them was motivated by own motives and rewards. Missionary photographers sought to produce images of those conversed into Christian faith, that served as a means of colonial propaganda back at home. One of the favorite ways of portrayal was showing the Africans as "unenlightened savages” compared with their later descriptions as educated, proper Christians. Another group of photographers in Baum included amateurs seeking financial rewards for the pictures produced for ethnographic museums and private collections. Colonial officials also took photographs for the purpose of showing the advance of civilization into the dark Africa. Yet another group of photographers consisted of anthropologists using photography as a means of producing records of their scientific research. In both colonial photographs of Lang and Bamum images, the photographers tried to depict the image of the other confirming the already existent stereotypes. The images are quite different with the former presenting the backward and primitive people while the latter show fascination with the exotic. Colonial photographs intended as objective documentations of colonial reality are in fact the product of photographers' own preconceptions about the photographed and fulfillment of own prejudices combined with the complex relation between the colonisers and colonised. As colonial images show , however the colonisers tried to objectify the colonised, their project has failed with colonised often representing the colonial reality either by means of parodying it or appearing exactly as the colonisers wanted them to be. If the photographs have to be used as historical records, than the condition in which they were taken has to be considered and their subjectivety has got to be considered. Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com
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