Abstract
More than 2000 human beings were brought to the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition of 1904 in St. Louis, MO, as human exhibits. Having travelled to the universal exposition from across the globe, the people lived in villages that also functioned as anthropological displays. While they have been correctly constructed as marking the divide between modern and primitive so central to the fair's meanings, this essay argues further that, within the over‐determined photographic and performative spectacle of Expo 1904, sites of resistant insubordination were located by the anthropological subjects, whereby they asserted agency over their own representation by shifting their living performances in often subtle and complex manners. At this moment, when photography itself expanded dramatically, the photographic archive has captured a layer of meaning at universal expositions that is significant and has yet to be fully articulated.
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