Tag Archives: anthropology

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew. An Indian from India.

Postdate

Note: This originally posted on NJWV.

Pushpamala N. Toda (after late 19th century British anthropometric photograph). From the photo-performance project Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs , 2000-2004.
Pushpamala N. Toda (after late 19th century British anthropometric photograph). From the photo-performance project Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs , 2000-2004.
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew. An Indian from India.
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew. An Indian from India.
Gauri Gill. Urma and Nimli, Lunkaransar, from the series Notes from the Desert, 1999-2010.
Gauri Gill. Urma and Nimli, Lunkaransar, from the series Notes from the Desert, 1999-2010.
Nandan Ghiya. Download Error, DSC02065, 2012.
Nandan Ghiya. Download Error, DSC02065, 2012.

As has become somewhat standard*, the San José Museum of Art put together a show featuring non-white modern artists in a way which works as both an introduction to another culture while being tremendously relevant to the existing San José community. In this case, it’s their Postdate show of Indian photography.

*Off the top of my head, Rising Dragon’s Chinese photography and Mexicanismo’s Latino art are both relevant here.

Walking through this show reminded me a lot of Princeton’s Itinerant Languages of Photography show in how it features a highly visual culture which is using and remixing old images into new artwork, creating pieces that not only reference the old meanings but also evolve the imagery into something that’s currently relevant. In this case, a lot of the old imagery references India’s colonial past and got me thinking a lot about photography as it applies post-colonial cultures dealing with the legacy of colonialism and colonial images.

Despite photography’s (correct) description as being a democratic medium, there’s also its history of tropes and power dynamics which still informs a lot of the way we approach and react to images. As point of view gathers historical momentum that it’s good or noteworthy, it becomes increasingly difficult to break away from it and see other points of view. This isn’t a function of copying as much as there’s momentum built up in the idea of “good” that most people can’t escape or don’t know how to break. It’s one thing to be able to represent yourself. It’s quite another to do so in a way which breaks free from all of what you’ve learned is the “correct” way to view yourself.*

*Something I explore a bit in an older post on self representation, this time involving American Indians. 

Postdate breaks out of the traditional views. While none of the photos at San José explicitly reference The People of India, they reference similar works, or works which grew out of the stereotypes in there, or the stereotypes themselves which have become the face of India in the West. This isn’t just photography as self-representation, it’s reappropriation of non-representative works. Which is very cool to see.

Pushpamala N.’s photography in particular is relevant and notable here in how, similar to Cindy Sherman and Carrie Mae Weems, she’s actually performing a lot of the cultural baggage which she absorbed and grew up with. But these themes are in a lot of the photography on display. I especially liked Guari Gill’s work and how, in addition to addressing the representation issues in how India and Indians have been photographed by the west by showing non-trope images and collaborating with her subjects, a lot of her work is also evoking the physical history of photography by being printed on glass and becoming a physical object which feels more like an ambrotype or glass plate than a photographic print.

I also really liked Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya’s work of photographs of the National Instruments factory and how, while it looks like ruin porn, it explicitly looks at the history and infrastructure behind producing cameras made by, and made for, Indians.* It’s not just seductive aging textures. What was made here, who it was made for, and the implications of the manufacturing (and its cessation) matter. In this case, these photos ask what it means to produce your own tools of self-representation as well as what it means to no longer have those tools available in the modern globalized world. Does it matter where a camera is made?

*That the National 35 appears to actually be a King Regula Sprinty because National Instruments purchased the production equipment from the original German manufacturer adds a whole new layer of interesting complications and food for thought here.

I saved Annu Palakunnathu Matthew for last. Partly because her work was very funny. But mainly because she loops in Native Americans and tries to deal with what it means to be Indian in a culture which defaults to a very different image of what “Indian” means. Her reenactments of the Edward Curtis photos work on so many different levels. When displayed in an American museum, they remind us of our own colonial history while also calling out the falseness of the supposed truth in those images. They also draw parallels between how elements of both cultures are appropriated by progressive white Americans. And they capture the humor that results in trying to distinguish which kind of Indian we’re talking about.

shea_blisner

Tropes, gaze, and objectification

Note: This originally posted in a slightly different form on NJWV.

Kukkurovaca and I have had an on-again, off-again discussion about doing a photographic Aarne-Thompson or photography version of TV Tropes. It’s a super interesting and often quite amusing idea since photography is incredibly trope-driven to the point where many times the appeal of a photograph is actually in the execution of the trope. I don’t see this as a bad thing most of the time* but tropes can be a double-edged sword.

*I think that the idea that good photography has to always be something new, or of something that’s never been photographed, is dangerously misguided.

If we ever did do a photographic Aarne-Thompson, a significant portion of it would have to be dedicated to racist or damaging tropes in the depiction of people—including how these tropes are typically created by white culture as a way of representing non-white culture.

I’ve recently taken to listening to Floyd Westerman’s Here Come the Anthros—mentally substituting “anthros” with “photogs” in the lyrics. It’s a much more fun description of the kind of photography which bores me and really gets at issues of representation and tropes and how people resent always being studied and depicted by outsiders. It’s why self-representation is so interesting to me and why I side with the ability for anyone to take a photo as being more democratizing than the ability of anyone to have a photo.

The history of black liberation movements in the United States could be characterized as a struggle over images as much as it has also been a struggle for rights, for equal access.

—bell hooks
(read John Edwin Mason’s post for more info)

A lot of self-representation goes right at the tropes: Carrie Mae Weems, John Edmonds, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Zun Lee, etc. all show black women, men, families, fathers, bodies, etc. in ways that both differ from and explicitly call out the representational tropes in art photography. They’re filling in gaps in the way they have been represented and taking control over those representations. It shouldn’t be novel or noteworthy to see gentle portraits, working families, or caring fathers, but many of these projects still get picked up in a semi-viral “as you’ve never seen them” way.

There’s so much historical baggage and objectification going on that it’s difficult to subtly critique things here. Tropes gain strength through repetition and riffs, so getting close to a trope tends to result in getting subsumed by that trope. This blunts most intended critiques. It’s not that people don’t understand the point a subtle critique is trying to make, it’s that they’re triggered by the trope and decide that the critique failed to make its point effectively.

I’ve been thinking about this again because of a series of exchanges on tumblr last month over an image by Daniel Shea.

Daniel Shea. Untitled (Fishing Diptych) from Blisner, IL, 2013.
Daniel Shea. Untitled (Fishing Diptych) from Blisner, IL, 2013.

The initial exchange involves a response by Je Suis Perdu to the image and then a response from Shea to Je Suis Perdu. There was some pile-on after this which I found distasteful* but the initial back-and-forth got me thinking.

*Mostly tone policing of the “we’re on the same liberal team so stop being such a bully” type which directly dismisses the validity of Je Suis Perdu’s original reaction and tries to silence him for some kind of liberal solidarity.

I read the initial response as a gut-level reaction rather than a fully-realized critique. Tumblr, like twitter and any other stream-based media, encourages quick reactions where responding first is often preferable to responding best. So I tend to give responses I see on there the benefit of the doubt of being an opening statement in a conversation rather than a complete critique. The statement in this case indicates that something in Shea’s images triggered Je Suis Perdu’s white-gaze spidey sense.

It’s a perfectly legitimate response. One of photography’s racist tropes is the dehumanizing gaze with which it treats black bodies—especially young, fit black men—as objects to be admired and/or feared. This photo, without any additional context, can easily be read this way. If you’re a white guy and toss a portrait of a young, fit, shirtless, black male on tumblr without much additional context? You shouldn’t be surprised that it’ll raise a few hackles.

I like most of Shea’s response. He starts well by acknowledging his gaze and trying to deal with it. Unfortunately he also tries to claim he doesn’t have white gaze and is instead trying to be engaging and neutral. While he goes on to say that he doesn’t believe photographs can be neutral, it’s reads to me like he’s trying to have it both ways in saying “I have white gaze and am trying to critique it” while also saying “white gaze is evil of course I don’t have that.”

I don’t think the white gaze is inherently evil. My major problem is that it gets conflated with neutral—implying that everyone else’s gaze is non-neutral. It’s not, it’s merely the most dominant gaze, which is why it, and its tropes, are worth thinking about. The issue isn’t “white gaze or not” but rather “damaging trope or not.”

This isn’t about the idea that white guys should only photograph white guys or that they shouldn’t be “allowed” to photograph non-whites.* It’s about acknowledging your gaze, owning your point of view and the fact that it’s inherently non-neutral, and being willing to listen to the way other people react to your work—especially if the reaction is critical.

*Heck, all too often, instead of listening to why someone may have been upset, the immediate response is to paint the offended party as trying to censor free speech by using the “not allowed” language coupled with the “you’ve offended us by calling us racist when we’re not” claim.

When I say “own” it’s in the sense of not running from the label (or criticizing the reaction) if it gets thrown out there. It’s entirely possible to be both enlightened and racist—or both feminist and misogynist. It’s nearly impossible to grow up in this society without absorbing any of that bias and working on correcting that stuff is not an overnight process. Learning the tropes that we’ve internalized, understanding how they’re triggering, and figuring out how they work is the only way we can actually critique this kind of stuff.

cp2

Bons baisers des colonies

Ici, les femmes n’ont pas de nom, elles ne sont que des «types». Le corps est une marchandise comme une autre, soumise à une exigence d’exotisme.

[Here, women do not have names, they are only “types.” The body is a commodity like any other, subject to the requirement of exoticism.]

Safia Belmenouar

Sure enough, colonial postcards were often a kind of soft core porn.

John Edwin Mason

CP1

cp2

CP3

An exhibition of colonial postcards. It’s a shame more of these aren’t online (the featured image seems to change though) but even the three I’ve seen posted serve to remind us of the kind of baggage that comes with the colonial gaze.

It’s very clear what kind of appeal is being sold here. And what it means to be “exotic” and female. And why images of a mixed-race future when centered around whiteness makes a lot of non-white people uncomfortable. And why appropriation of native clothing for fashion photoshoots or sexy photoshoots perpetuates more than just the male gaze.

http://imageonpaper.com/2014/04/24/the-people-of-india/

The People of India | Image on Paper

From Volume I “Mishimi Hill Tribe, Assam”
From Volume I “Mishimi Hill Tribe, Assam”

At its worst the classification system sought to announce a theory of racial types. Certain groups were categorized as criminal tribes or castes.

At its best, the project was a formative compendium of ethnographic detail completed by sympathetic and intelligent observers who sought to understand the cultures they were living among.

via The People of India | Image on Paper.

Not ethnic mixing but a timely reminder of how the colonial viewpoint and racial-type photography and the documentation of otherness, no matter how well-intentioned, is problematic and often ends up saying more about the photographer than the cultures depicted.