Staging the White Colonial Explorer – Visual Representations of Science and the Scientist on the Vanadis Expedition 1883–1885

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Anne Murray at the Museum of Ethnography (Stockholm) for her support and knowledge about the Vanadis expedition. Many thanks to Åsa Henningsson, chief librarian at Uppsala University Library Carolina Rediviva (Uppsala), who first introduced me to the subject and gave me many insights to the Vanadis material. I owe a debt of gratitude to Princeton University Library, especially Charles E. Greene, Permissions Coordinator, Gabriel Swift, Reference Librarian for Special Collections, and AnnaLee Pauls, Photoduplication Coordinator. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank art historian Mårten Snickare and my anonymous peer-reviewers, my anonymous peer-reviewers, who contributed substantially to new understandings of the material.SummaryThis article investigates visual representations of science and scientists at the end of the 19th century. The main focus is the photographic documentation of the Swedish–Norwegian Vanadis expedition of 1883–1885. The ‘white colonial explorer’ was a popular trope in the photographs taken on the journey and visualised both the sciences and the colonial world in which the Scandinavian countries wished to take part.Åsa Bharathi LarssonKonstvetenskapliga institutionen/Department of Art HistoryUppsala universitetEngelska parken, Humanistiskt centrum, Thunbergsvägen 3H Box 630751 26 UppsalaSwedenE-mail: asa.larsson@konstvet.uu.se