Camera and Colonialism
Since the invention of the camera, colonialism and photography have been closely associated. Ryan notes, ‘A triumph of Euro-American technology; controlled by whites; able to capture – and at the same time to rearrange – the appearance of exotic environments and peoples: the camera played many roles’.[1] As he demonstrates, the camera manipulated the images and reinforced the otherness of the subject culture. However, this authoritative attitude was not limited to Western rulers. Along with establishing new technologies and Anthropology as a discipline, it was also propagated worldwide. For instance, regarding the ethnographic photographs of Taiwanese aboriginals taken by Ryūzō Torii (鳥居 龍蔵) (1870 - 1953), who pioneered Japanese Anthropology and is known as the first person who used photographic documentation for the fieldwork, Wang discusses that his photographs are not mere scientific documentation but his personal and political agendas.[2] Based on this argument, I will look at one image from the Lafayette Digital Repository (LDR) to explore power dynamics in ethnographic photographs, reflecting my learning from the recent Art History module, ‘Art History and Anthropology: Torii Ryūzō’s ethnographic photography’.
‘Woman with Feather Headdress’ from the Lafayette Digital Repository (LDR)
Taken in 1940, the year the Japanese government installed an assimilation policy in Taiwan[3], this photograph, titled ‘Woman with Feather Headdress’ (Fig. 1), was circulated as postcards. With tropical trees in the background, the ‘fifteen-year-old girl’ wears characteristic clothing and a striking feather headdress that indicates that she is the ‘Chief’s daughter’.[4] Her body did not entirely turn towards the photographer; only her eyes looked at the camera as if to emphasise her headdress. From her frowned eyes and folded fingers, it is unlikely to assume that she was happy to be filmed by a camera, which she had presumably never seen before. By framing this girl as a symbol of the exotic indigenous group, this photograph encouraged the idea of primitivism as a counter-concept to modernism. This cropped image of her was then consumed as content through its dissemination as postcards, which served as ‘the dominant source of photographic imagery from the colony’[5].
The identical girl can be also found in another picture published in a Taiwanese online news article, ‘Aboriginal Thao Girls in Sun Moon Lake, Treasure Island, the 1930s (三十年代宝岛日月潭，原住民邵族姑娘)’ on ‘Daily Bulletin (每日头条)’, in 2019. (Fig. 2)
In this image, two girls, identified from the group of ‘The Thao (邵族)*’[6], are standing barefoot in front of a Japanese official bulletin board called Kōsatsu (高札) while holding up their pounders. This board indicates the announcement was made in January 1939. Although it was unclear what the board intended, those pictures would have been deliberately taken in parallel with implementing the policy.
These images suggest that ethnographic photographs, often rationalised as valuable research material of the time, demonstrate how Western-derived techniques and perspectives were digested and introduced under the authority of academism. Furthermore, as in the post-war works of Toyoko Tokiwa, they reveal their latent capacity to reflect the gaze and desires behind the relationship of ‘taking and being taken’ through the lens.
Notes:
* The Thao (邵族) is an ethnic group living in Nantou County (南投県) and were recognised by the government as an independent ethnic group in 2001 after the Central Taiwan Earthquake in 1999. [3]
Reference:
[1] Terence Ranger, ‘Colonialism, Consciousness and the Camera’, Past & Present 171, no. 1 (January 2001): 203, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/171.1.203.
[2] Ka F. Wong, ‘Entanglements of Ethnographic Images: Torii Ryūzō's Photographic Record of Taiwan Aborigines (1896–1900)’, Japanese Studies 24, no. 3 (2004): 297-298, https://doi.org/10.1080/10371390412331331546.
[3] Hiroko Ueno, Taiwan ni okeru Namae no Nihon-ka – Nihon Tōchika no ‘Kaiseimei’ to ‘Naichi-shiki-meimei’ ‘台湾における名前の日本化 -日本統治下の「改姓名」と「内地式命名」’ [The Japanisation of Taiwanese Names – ‘Changing Surnames’ and ‘Installing Internal Naming’ under Japanese Rule], Annual Journal of the Asian Cultures Research Institute 42 (2007), 97.
[4] Lafayette Digital Repository (LDR), ‘[WW0002] [Woman with Feathered Headdress]’, Lafayette Digital Repository, accessed February 15, 2023, https://ldr.lafayette.edu/concern/images/qn59q460p.
[5] Paul D. Barclay, ‘Peddling Postcards and Selling Empire: Image-Making in Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule’, Japanese Studies 30, no. 1 (2010): 82, https://doi.org/10.1080/10371391003639138.
[6] Yoshimi Yamamoto, Sao, Taiwan Genjūmin towa, Taiwan Genjūmin tono Kōryūkai ‘サオ（邵族）、台湾原住民族とは、台湾原住民族との交流会’ [The Thao, About Taiwan Indigenous Peoples, Friends of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples], Friends of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples (Friends of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples, 2012), https://www.ftip-japan.org/people/p10.
Related Links:
・East Asia Image Collection, the Lafayette Digital Repository (LDR): https://ldr.lafayette.edu/collections/east-asia-image-collection
・‘Torii Ryuzo and his World, a Forerunner in Ethnographic Fieldwork (民俗学フィールドワークの先覚者 鳥居龍蔵とその世界)’: http://torii.akazawa-project.jp/cms/index.html
・‘Friends of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples (台湾原住民属との交流会)’: https://www.ftip-japan.org/