Colonial Photography Research Articles

Nomadic Savages, Ochre People and Heroic Herders: Visual Presentations of the Himba of Namibia's Kaokoland

The pastoral Himba of Namibia's semiarid northwest have been objects of colonizing and globalizing cameras over the last century. They have been presented as isolated, subsistence-oriented herders, savage beauties, polygamous patriarchs, and persistent desert dwellers. Timelessness and marginality have been salient topics of the visual presentations of herders in Namibia's semiarid northwest. Today, Namibia's discourse on "the indigenous" is frequently pictured with images of the Himba. Especially Himba women were made the focus of the media gaze. Visual images of Himba women seemingly fill the need for esthetic presentation and offer a platform for imaginations and desires. This article seeks to describe how and why the Himba, and Himba women especially, became icons of a romanticized and estheticized Africa within a global discourse. After discussing early maps and early colonial photography, the heydays of the "Colonizing Camera" are outlined. The colonial "visual attack" was three-pronged: colonial officials seeking assertion for their ideas of indirect rule and of white supremacy, the settler elite looking for pleasure in an undisturbed natural world and frequently conflating nature and people in their photographic presentations, and finally scientists seeking for answers to various "scientific enigmas" and ethnographic descriptions before an "ancient culture" would finally fade away. Finally, visual representations after 1990--Namibia's year of Independence--are analyzed. Three visual themes are dominating discourses at the turn of the millennium: the endangered indigenous world, the esthetic and erotic appeal of indigenous women, and the many attractions of cultural tourism targeting an authentic indigenous lifestyle.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Robert M. Ariss with Gary Dowsett. Against Death: The Practice of Living with HIV. Thomas Barfield. (ed.). The Dictionary of Anthropology. Donna Birdwell‐Pheasant and D. Lawrence‐Zuñiga. (eds.). House Life‐Space, Place and Family in Europe. Jan van Bremen and Akitoshi Shimizu. (eds). Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania: Reflections on the Japanese, Dutch, Chinese and Indian Experiences. Donald L. Donham. History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology. Derek Freeman. The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of her Samoan Research. Michael W. Young. Malinowski's Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography 1915–1918. Susan F. Hirsch. Pronouncing and Preserving Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court. Michael Humphrey. Islam, Multiculturalism and Transnationalism: from the Lebanese Diaspora. Richard Jenkins, (ed.). Questions of Competence: Culture, Classification and Intellectual Disability. Sarah Joseph. Interrogating Culture: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Social Theory. Thousand Oaks Verena Keck. (ed.). Common Worlds and Single Lives: Constituting Knowledge in Pacific Societies. Andrew B. Kipnis. Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self and Subculture in a North China Village. George E. Marcus. (ed.). Critical Anthropology Now: Unexpected Contexts, Shifting Constituencies, Changing Agendas. Anne Maxwell. Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the ‘Native’ and the Making of European Identities. Lise McKean. Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement. Virginia D. Nazarea. (ed.). Ethnoecology: Situated Knowledge/Located Lives. Mark Nuttall. Protecting the Arctic: Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Survival. Rowena Robinson. Conversion, Continuity and Change: Lived Christianity in Southern Goa. Mena Roces. Women, Power, and Kinship Politics: Female Power in Post‐War Philippines. Dorothy Shineberg. The People Trade: Pacific Islander Laborers and New Caledonia, 1865–1930. Daya Somasundaram. Scarred Minds: The Psychological Impact of War on Sri Lankan Tamils. Mandy Thomas. Dreams in the Shadows: Vietnamese‐Australian Lives in Transition. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 1999. 220pp., index, bibliog., $A38.43 (Hc.), ISBN 1–86448‐862‐X. Andrew Walker. The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma.

Invention, Memory, and Place

Over the past decade, there has been a burgeoning interest in two overlapping areas of the humanities and social sciences: memory and geography or, more specifically, the study of human space. Both of them have spawned an extraordinary amount of interesting work, work that has in effect created new fields of study and inquiry. The concern with memory, for example, has branched out to include such increasingly prevalent forms of writing as personal memoirs and autobiography, which nearly every fiction writer of note has attempted, to say nothing of the outpourings of academics, scientists, public figures, and so forth. The national fixation on recollection, confession, and witness has run the whole gamut from public confession-as in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal-to various studies of the meaning of collective memory, extended reflection and analyses of instances of it, plus numerous chronicles embodying it. I shall have more to say about that later. In addition, and somewhat on the margins, has been a serious, sometimes bitter inquiry into the authenticity of certain memories, as well as, at the other, calmer end of the spectrum, a remarkable academic analysis of the role of invention in such matters as tradition and collective historical experience. Some examples of intense and even anguished controversy are the following: Was Anne Frank's diary really hers, or was it so altered by publishers, members of her family, or others in its published form so as to conceal the disturbances in her domestic life? In Europe there has been a great and often acerbic debate over the meaning of the Holocaust, with a whole range of opinions as to what happened, why it happened, and

Colonial Photography

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The Intercolonial Exhibition (1866): Representing the colony of Victoria

The Victorian colonial experience was one of disruption where settlers, who uprooted themselves from Europe and other parts of the globe, found themselves in unsettled circumstances. By contrast, nineteenth-century Europe conceived itself in terms of settled traditions.1 If photography depicted the colonial and the European in terms of the foreign and the familiar, both colonial and European photography reflect the disruption which was part of modernity. However, colonial photography presents a different representation of modernity from Europe where the new erased the old, as with Charles Marville's photographic portrayal of the ‘Haussmannisation’ of 1860s' Paris.2 In colonial circumstances, the photographic view works on a number of levels. Colonial photography, while sharing a sense of progress conceived of in terms of European time and space, simultaneously figures displacement from Europe. It is these intersections between European and colonial discourse that this paper will examine.

Colonial photography of Samoa

Colonial photography of Samoa

Art in Small-Scale Societies: Contemporary Readings

1. Introductory Issues. Patrick R. McNaughton, In the Field: Mande Blacksmiths. John Miller Chernoff,A Fieldworker Initiation: African Rhythm and African Sensibilty. Charles Keil, On Inter-cultural Translation. Christian Kaufmann,Art and Artists in Kwoma Society. 2.The Functions of Art in Small-Scale Societies. Kay Bauman, Shell Ornaments of Malaitia. Kenneth W. Smith, The Kites of Santiago Sacatepequez. Donald H. Rubinstein, The Social Fabric: Micronesian Textile Patterns and Social Order. Christraud M. Geary,Art and Political Process in the Cameroon Grassfields. 3.Symbolism. Aldona Jonaitis,Hierarchy in the Art of the Northern Tlingit. Stacy B. Schaefer, The Loom as a Sacred Power Object in Huichol Culture. Barbara DeMott, Form and Meaning in Dogon Art. David M. Guss, Yekuana Myths of the Origins of Artifacts. Paula Girshick Ben Amos, Humans and Animals in Benin Art. 4. Artists. Louana M. Lackey, Learning to Be a Potter in Acatlan. Paul F. Berliner, The Relationship Between the Mbira Player and the Mbira. Sidney M. Mead, Artmanship in the Star Harbour Region. Lila Abu-Lughod, The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power through Bedouin Women. Nancy J. Parezo, Navajo Sandpaintings: The Importance of Sex Roles in Craft Production. Margaret Blackman, Master Carpenters Daughters: Women Artists of the Northwest Coast. Peter G. Roe, Marginal Men: Male Artists Among the Shipibo Indians of Peru. 5.The Psychology and Philosophy of Art. Joan D. Koss, Artistic Expression and Creativity in Puerto Rican Possession Cults. Philip L. Ravenhill, Baule Statuary Art: Meaning and Modernization. Sylvia Ardyn Boone, Radiance from the Waters: Mende Feminine Beauty. Babatunde Lawal, Some Aspects of Yoruba Aesthetics. Gary Witherspoon, The Semiotical Geometry of Navajo Weaving. 6.Art in Transition. Joann W. Kealiinohomoku, Music and Dance of the Hawaiian and Hopi Peoples. J.J. Brody,Modern Hopi Painting. Robert Farris Thompson, Round Houses: Mande-related Architecture in the Americas. Toby Alice Volkman, Visions and Revisions: Tarajo Culture and the Tourist Gaze. Richard L. Anderson, Two Sorts of Aesthetic Contrast: Small-scale Versus Complex and Indigenous Versus Post-contact. 7.New Directions: The Beholder Share. Karen L. Field, Artists in Liberia and the United States: A Comparative View. Christraud M. Geary, Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography in Cameroon. Suzanne Preston Blier, Melville J. Herskovits and the Art of Ancient Dahomey. Richard L. Anderson, Art that Really Matters.

The Camera at Court - Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902–1915. By Christraub M. Geary. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, for National Museum of African Art, 1988. Pp. 151. $15.95

The Camera at Court - Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902–1915. By Christraub M. Geary. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, for National Museum of African Art, 1988. Pp. 151. $15.95

Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915

Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915

Christraud M. Geary, Images from Bamum: German colonial photography at the court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa 1902–1915. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985, 150 pp., $15.95.

Christraud M. Geary, Images from Bamum: German colonial photography at the court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa 1902–1915. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985, 150 pp., $15.95.

Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915

Images from Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915

Images of Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915

Images of Bamum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915