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Photography's Other Histories

Edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson
Duke University Press, 2003
296 pages:  128 halftones, 1 table
ISBN 0-8223-3126-8 Cloth - $69.95
ISBN 0-8223-3113-6 Paperback - $22.95

Reviewed by Amy Ione
The Diatrope Institute
PO Box 12748
Berkeley, CA 94712-3748 USA

ione@diatrope.com

When nineteenth century experiments made it possible to combine light and chemicals to record images on a sensitive material, what we now call photography was born.  Relatively new in the scheme of things, photographic replication has nonetheless had a powerful impact on global communication from its inception. Photography's Other Histories introduces several geographies often left out of the academic accounts and expands historical critical debate beyond what the authors see as a Euro-American bias.  This approach allows the 12 essays in this publication to successfully convey that the cultural experience of this new technology was not homogenous.  Chapters devoted to Australian Aborigines, American Navajo, Papua New Guinea, China, Japan, Peru, Kenya, India, and Nigeria convey photography's influence on global development and cross-cultural communication.  Each point is doubly articulated by the use of the forceful images that the writers reference.  As a result, selections offer a lens on worldwide geopolitical histories as well as reminders of the degree to which many traditions found the Western use of this tool invasive.

Overall these case-centered contributions work in elaborating photography's reach and underscore the multifaceted issues that have arisen as our world has grown smaller.  Indeed, several authors presented research that was so powerful I found my mind circling back to the details repeatedly for days after the reading.  In part the impact was no doubt due to my unfamiliarity with the subject matter.  Given that much of the research was new to me, it was particularly useful to find the textual descriptions enhanced by the camera's ability to present the faces and topography from various perspectives.  I particularly valued the way the publication presented alternatives.  For example, James Faris' astute comparison of a published and an unpublished image of one woman often depicted by Edward S. Curtis aided immensely in presenting the thesis that the Curtis photographs were frequently contrived and misleading. In this case, Faris includes a Curtis picture showing that this woman had a rich, warm, beaming smile that remained unknown to us due to Curtis' decision to never share her expressive face with the outside world.   Instead, all of the images this well-known photographer published of her depict a somber native who, as Faris relates, was apparently "dressed up" for the camera.

Organizationally, the book shows that choices determine how a story is told.  The editors favored portraying the histories in a postmodern fashion and through anthropological eyes.  Bracketing the book into three parts -Personal Archives," "Visual Economies," and "Self-Fashioning and Vernacular Modernism" -led to the mixing of traditions within parts.  While the global feel of this mixture was a positive, the approach often separated related essays.  It was not a major problem, but I did find that the placement of contributions undermined the bookęs ability to connect articles that shared historical crosscurrents.  For example, I would have liked the four essays on the Australian Aborigines to have been placed together.  As an alternative the tone moves from personal reactions to issues that relate more to practices

The initial chapters set the stage with three first-person accounts by two indigenous Australians and a Seminole/Muskogee/Diné artist.  After reading through Christopher Pinney's quite academic introduction, Jo-Anne Driessens' essay, "Relating to Photographs" was notably refreshing. Using a human voice, she eschews dry jargon in favor of clear presentation of her poignant story.  Adopted at two weeks of age, Driessens explains that she discovered her Aboriginal background through photographs in the Tindale Collection.  I was immediately won over by the sincerity expressed in this piece.  Although the shortest in the book, in my opinion, it was the best. 

The next two sections might be characterized as a mix of anthropology and visual culture. Roslyn Poignant's exposé of misused photography was presented in the  "The Making of Professional 'Savages': From P.T. Barnum".  As Pinney explains, she "inserts photographic representations of abducted indigenous Australians in the context of a history of earlier depictions."  A fragment of forthcoming work, this author raises important questions regarding the well-known historical trend of demeaning others and stereotyping.  Also of interest is Morris Low's essay on the documentation demonstrating Japanese colonialism in Manchuria. Nicolas Peterson's treatment in "The Changing Photographic Contract: Aborigines and Image Ethics" was the best in this section, in my opinion, due to its scope.  Dividing the topic into three periods (1840s-1920s, 1920s-1971, 1971-present), Peterson successfully communicates how photography registered in relation to Aboriginal culture.  Here we see that the tool opened a dialogue as issues were identified, misunderstandings were clarified, and differences about the role of photography matured over time.  To his credit, Peterson writes with an even hand in conveying how difficult it is to reconcile the Aboriginal right to protect their heritage with the desire of anthropologists to document this culture.  Placing the subject in a broad framework allowed him to illuminate heart-felt positions.  His presentation also reinforced the impressions I formed after a recent visit to Australia, where I was struck by the population's struggle to come to terms with the range of viewpoints regarding these issues and the historical record.

The third section raises important questions about how other practices relate to photography.  To oversimplify, this section was more like life: both rich and diffuse.  I was enthralled by Deborah Poole's "Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas: Photography and Modernism in Early-Twentieth-Century Peru".  Poole suggests that Figueroa, a painter and photographer, borrowed heavily from the literature and art of European Romanticism.  Subsequently he created an approach to both photography and modernity that intentionally departed from European Modernism. Poole's expansive piece demonstrates that this artist's tangentially modernist style was shaped by Peruvian understandings of photography and art.  Also of note was the final essay, by Stephen F. Sprague, "Yoruba Photography". Sprague explains that daguerreotyping came to Africa only three months after it was invented and, in doing so, conveys the degree to which the Yoruba integrated the technology into their own culture.  His analysis also underscores that the history of photography propagated throughout the globe almost immediately.

Although far-reaching and ambitious, Photography's Other Histories is not flawless.  The essays too often seemed to dichotomize cultures.  This simplistification to some degree stems from the decision to highlight the "Other", which is so ingrained in anthropology's essentially Euro-American methodology.  The concept, to my mind, seems to defy the intention to broaden cross-cultural awareness.  While it is widely accepted, I continue to believe that the "Other" characterization definitionally undermines that each culture has a history to those who live through its events and to present these episodes in terms of "Other" language is to write-up the research from what is at times an inappropriate vantage point.  The problem of "otherness" was especially noticeable in some of the early, personal essays, where it seemed that some writers editorialized on the 'other' in a way that initially gave me the impression that the book was too heavily weighted toward presenting Fourth World points of view.  As it turned out, it is a balanced publication overall. 

One dramatically evident oversight related to this approach was that the emphasis on the 'other' here failed to consider that the traditional canon equally ignores Euro-American contributions that are not easily fit into the well-developed story of photography.  Including some of these overlooked histories would have strengthened the contributions by demonstrating the Euro-American tradition has excluded many we would define as Euro-Amercian.  For example, the California nature photographers (e.g,. Carleton Watkins) of the nineteenth century are similarly hard to fit into the traditional historical discourse.  They, too, could have easily been presented in terms of "photography's other histories" to accentuate that the narrow photographic discourse generally adopted excludes all kinds of trajectories.  Although quite American, these Californian photographers are difficult to conceive in terms of the "spectacle society " so often used assess the nineteenth century photography. Navajo history, too, is surely American history.  Yet, in the structure provided by this book it seems that indigenous histories are basically termed non-Western and crosscurrents tend to be read in increasingly prescribed ways as a result.  Clearly, the way in which the Euro-American versus non-Western terminology infers a colonial dimension is worthy of discussion.  Still, in my opinion, the complexity of communication is too real to characterize lightly.  How local histories develop can be needlessly over-simplified and is exacerbated when characterizations are inaccurately presented in terms of an artificial dichotomy.

In summary, this book is an excellent reminder of how much all cultures have to learn about others.  At times the essays too strongly project opposing cultural views.  Still, its scope and structure suggest Photography's Other Histories would be a good choice for a textbook.  General readers will also find the book appealing.  Well-researched, these essays concisely bring to mind the reality of the photographic experience.

 

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