Socio-Spatial Distances at the Grenfell Mission: The Louise and Edith Hegan Photograph Collection, 1909

Abstract

Using select photographs from a 1909 collection taken at a colonial mission in Labrador (Canada), I argue that settlers’ use of the camera and photographs intentionally created socio-spatial distances from colonial subjects. I demonstrate how cameras and photographs re-enacted colonial regimes and pictured gendered and Indigenous bodies in socio-spatial fields to enact proximity as social and physical distance and closeness. The creation of socio-spatial distances is examined through photographs that establish distance between Indigeneity and settlers and emphasize ordered social relations, including visual displays of professional status, but that challenge the superficiality of differences in dress and appearance.