Significance of Photography in Development of Racism during the Colonial Era

* This is an essay I wrote for my Visual Culture of China class, in response to essays we read detailing the application of photography by colonial powers during the era of Imperialism. Halfway through the planning phase of the writing, I realized this was something highly relevant in today's world and thought it appropriate to post on my blog, in hopes to inspire reflection and possible discussion. I would greatly enjoy any feedback. *

“Analysis of the Role of Photography in the Growth of Racism and Objectification of Indigenous People and Women during the Colonial Era”

When the series of theories, observations and technical discoveries dealing with light, lenses and chemicals came together to allow the creation of the first permanent photograph in 1826, a new chapter in human development began with the age of photographic documentation. No longer was it necessary for contemporary events to be recreated and shared through literary and illustrated means. Instead, moments and events could be captured and documented in a way that is both visually and technically identical to the way it would be observed with one’s own eyes. The ability of a photograph to capture in exactitude the image made up of the various elements presented before the camera allowed an inherent ability to pass nearly anything it produced off as an absolutely accurate representation of the subject portrayed. In the eyes and minds of those who were so privileged to experience the early days of photography (predominantly European and American), photographs were virtually accepted as utter truth. Due to its infancy as a technological and scientific tool, it was even less questioned than it is by today’s viewers, whom still display a surprising lack of skepticism.

The growing prominence of photography coincided with the increasingly popular trend of expansion on the part of Western superpowers, including America, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and the overwhelmingly dominant British Empire. These colonizers were driven by the desire to explore, understand and document their wanted lands, with the prime goal being the discovery of resources for cultivation. These resources included a vast range of economically inspired objects, but also many whose acquisition was inspired by something else – something that didn’t contribute so much economically to the advancement of the colonial empire, but more symbolically and heroically. Of these, some of the more important include scientific and cartographic advancement, knowledge, exotic artifacts and eventually even humans.

Each expedition party had significant figures to create a well-rounded team capable of surviving, expanding and conquering. Amongst the leaders, soldiers, navigators, scientists and doctors were the exceedingly important photographers. The photographer was the sole source of visual communication of the conquests and fruits of colonial endeavors to the people back at home in the West. They were the eye of those who remained in Europe and America, those who were reaping the benefits of non-western exploitation. Combined with the aforementioned Western public’s acceptance of photograph as absolute truth, the photographers unknowingly had insurmountable control and power over the impression held by the rest of the West of the acts of expansion and artifacts encountered.

It is this power and blind acceptance of photography as a scientific tool that the colonial photographer was able to so significantly fashion the image of imperialism and it’s exploits to the people back at home. It was the shaping of this understanding of imperialism that caused imperialism to become something that could eventually allow for the completely impersonal objectification of non-western humans and culture.

What was not, at the time, realized about photography, is that it is not completely factual. A photograph is made up of all of the experiences, observations and opinions that have shaped the individual behind the lens, and culminating in the specific way that they see, understand and portray that which they are photographing. To accept a photograph to be assumed as absolute truth is to lose touch with the individual who created the photograph and the intent with which they produced it in the manner they did. The truth in a photograph is highly subjective and entirely dependent on the viewer as an individual. What they “learn” from a photograph, or, rather, the impression they get from it is all of the thoughts, knowledge and personal memories that surface when sparked by the viewing of the photograph ₁. When a photograph is constructed in a manner that is influenced by an intentional implication of bias on the part of the photographer, a certain impression will likely be inferred by the viewer. Without careful thought about intention, or attempts to objectively avoid bias and opinionated implications, a very narrow minded perception of things can even be unintentionally conveyed from photographer to viewer.

The photographers who were at the forefront of colonial advances had a personality and approach that mimicked the approach of the Empire they represented – one of superiority. The empire that was the vanguard in economics, trade, expansion and scientific advancement had such an Anglo-centric nature that it even created Anglo-centric maps with visual adornments that all speak of its superiority through conquest. The men who represented this Empire felt backed by “Mother Britain”, God and a sense of entitlement that can be attributed to their technological dominance. They went out and photographed various cultural artifacts, exotic landscapes, plants and animals to impress the audience they had back in Britain and Europe. Objectively and scientifically, only occasionally drawing reference from still life paintings, they portrayed these subjects in a consistent and comparative manner, collecting photographic trophies from their conquest. This method gained a new, sinister significance when the camera turned away from cultural artifacts towards the source of culture itself – the people.

When explorers and photographers such as Joseph Thomson and John Thomson discovered that the presence of their cameras created a feeling of fear within the people, they immediately denounced the intellectual capability of the people ₂. They saw them not as a society that has been able to sustain themselves without advanced technology, but as a group of less civilized and underdeveloped people who weren’t capable of technological advancement. They looked down on them for their inability to comprehend a camera and its purpose. John Thomson himself, as I assume many other photographers, even went as far as to gloat about it, feeding their own superiority complex and brandishing their self-importance as many of their peers brandished guns and weaponry. This created an imbalanced dichotomy between the colonizers and the colonized. Unlike the phenomena of mutual accommodation that occurred between the Italian Jesuits and the Chinese Confucian scholars in the 16th-17th centuries ₃, this was a phenomena of submission and dominance, with each party involved – both Western and non-Western – falling into the roles of superiority and inferiority that this dichotomy created.

When the camera lens swung towards the people, the roles had been set firmly in place, and the photographic approach didn’t change. The photographers took their structured scientific method and applied it to the human subjects. Making standardized sets of photographs that document the indigenous peoples not in a cultural sense, but in a scientific sense, the photographers succeeded in showing not the human in a personal sense, but the human in an animalistic sense. Replacing the plants, animals and artifacts they had once photographed with the humans that occupied they land they were conquering, they further denounced the significance of the indigenous people as cultural entities. When these photographs were seen by the viewers in Europe and America, the photographers’ feelings of superiority towards the subjects carried through and were inferred by those who looked at the photographs. Just as the Westerners had been wowed by the exotic allure of trophy artifacts, they were equally wowed by the exotic allure of these foreign human beings. The connotation with humanity was lost as objectification of these indigenous people took over. The concept of “Orientalism” now was applied to humans. Orientalism, in this case, refers to the depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures and, as described in Orientalism, a critical analysis of Western and non-Western interactions written by Edward Said and published in 1978, the fascination held by westerners for non-western artifacts because of their outsider nature, having been created by something that is neither a part of, nor grown from Western influence.

The Western view of indigenous peoples was shaped by this photographic portrayal as an object, rather than a human of equal significance. This understanding spread and grew, and when combined with the fascination with Systema Naturae, a hierarchical classification of the natural world, outlining an organization of species published by Swedish zoologist and physician Carolus Linnaeus in 1735, fed the scientific desire to classify humans within the animal kingdom ₄. The concepts of “race” and “type” began to grow, further separating those of Anglo descent from those from the Far East or Africa. Photography then became a tool to document race and type in an effort to classify the humans that occupied the lands acquired by the colonial powers, and find differences in speciation between humans of Anglo descent in order to justify the exploitation and violent effects that Western expansion had on aboriginal people in colonized regions.
The most appalling commercially significant export of this growing racist phenomenon was the sexual objectification of aboriginal women. It was here that, most likely through erotic fascination, scientists began to study the female figure. Using measurements and feats of trigonometry, they identified and exaggerated differences in the human form to additionally expand the rift between Westerners and aboriginal people. With photography, they crossed the borders of ethnography and wandered into the field of pornography, disrespecting not only the significance of humans, but of females in particular, displaying sensual photographs of exotic women, naked in bizarre lands ₅. Tapping into the bestial nature of mankind, this export objectified not just the colonized people, but also women in particular.

This series of events and cyclical progression of established prejudice turned to racism allowed the justification of absolute exploitation of once established civilizations and cultures. It popularized and “scientifically” explained the stigmatic understanding of non-westerners as subhuman, and created the social atmosphere that led to human trafficking, slavery and the entire concept of racial inequality that has shaped the current state of the world. The effects of slavery, segregation and social injustice have trickled down to today’s society and still play a significant role in the contemporary societal atmosphere. The impact that photography had on building this phenomena speaks to the importance of photography and the heavy consequence it holds. It is a tool that can potentially misconstrue that which it is intended to document, and for it to be a successful addition to the sharing of information and historical documentation, it must be viewed with nothing less than a critical eye. To look at a photograph without consideration of the creator and their intention is as ignorant as the superiority complex of the photographers who allowed this image to spread and grow in the first place.

Footnotes

₁ James Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) 16
₂ James: 143.
₃ Paola Dematte, Christ and Confucius: Accommodating Christian and Chinese Beliefs,” China On Paper: European and Chinese Works from the late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century. (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007) 29 - 48
₄ James: 146.
₅ James: 144-145.

Cited Works

Ryan, James. Picture Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997

1. Introduction, pages 11-27

2. Chapter five, “Photographing the Natives”, pp. 140-148


Dematte, Paola. “Christ and Confucius: Accommodating Christian and Chinese Beliefs,” Marcia Reed and Paola Dematte, ed., China On Paper: European and Chinese Works from the late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008, pp. 29-51