The “Heritage-isation” of Photographs: The Ethel John Lindgren Collection and the Orochen Ethnic Minority in Northeast China

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper I present a case of visual repatriation amongst the Orochen ethnic minority in Northeast China. I describe what happens when a photo collection - the Ethel John Lindgren Collection at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge - is returned to a host community who are an officially-recognised ethnic minority in China and, as a result, are subject to particular policies, discourses, and funding strategies associated with cultural heritage (wenhua yichan). My main argument is that visual repatriation always has an “after-life” - or “after-lives” - and that there is a never case of pure visual or photoreturn. Instead, as I will show in the case of the Orochen, it is always mediated through an existing context of social relations, including particular hierarchies of authority and expertise, and refracted through culturally-specific notions of tradition, modernity, and value. While my ethnographic focus is on China and one specific ethnic minority, I suggest this has implications for other cases of visual repatriation and photo-return, particularly in minority, subaltern, and postcolonial contexts.