Anthropology is the study of humans which seeks to produce knowledge about people and their behavior, both what make people different and similar. This field of study emerged around the late 18th century and early 19th century, established by Westerners, mostly Europeans in a way to understand more about them. "Photography has been a witness to the interaction of human beings in an uncertain venture - the attempt to know ourselves through studying others." At the time, anthropologists were more concerned about the differences rather than the similarities. During the early days of anthropology, photography was also in its early stages but the equipment was developed enough to be used by amateur photographers and carried in travel. Early anthropologists used photography to acquire photographs of non-Westerners or "the Others" and use them as research data for their fieldwork. Many issues surround the early anthropological photographs around the 18th and early 19th century and are subject to critical analysis of the validity of the practice of using photography as scientific evidence in anthropology and the there are questions of ideologies and oppositional readings of the photographs.

Most theorists criticize anthropological photography being not innocent, containing hidden ideologies and categorizing the field, ironically, as a type of categorical photography as well as subject to accusations of photo-colonialism. French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan's theory of the gaze can be applied to the analysis of these photographs. The gaze is the act of looking that is caught up in power and desire. Lacan's gaze also states that the act of looking at an image creates a sense of alienation, the realization and the separation of the self from an image through seeing a mirror image. Through categorical photography, the West is able to separate them from "the Rest" by colonial social relations which are "enacted largely through a regime of visibility in which the look is crucial both for identifying the other and for raising questions of how racist discourse can enclose the mirrored self as well as the other within itself." The subject of the photograph and the photograph itself is subject to several kinds of gazes but according to Laura Mulvey and John Berger, mostly to a patriarchal gaze. The majority of anthropological photographs consists of non-Westerners looking away from the photographer, who were mostly white, upper class males, or posed to be in action as to appear candid and natural. There are also photographs of exotic women that are obviously posed seductively and looking away from the camera exhibiting the same male voyeuristic and exotic gaze as in Paul Gaugin's works. By not acknowledging the gaze of the camera, and also the audience viewing the photograph, objectifies the non-Westerner. The non- Westerner is subject to an unreturnable gaze that extracts knowledge that is unbeknownst to the subject.

Anthropological photography functions to acquire knowledge through vision - "wisdom has been accepted in the West in illusions of and allusions to vision- knowing is insight, seeing is believing". According to philosopher Michel Foucault, power and knowledge reinforce each other. Anthropologists wield power over non-Westerners through ways of photo-colonialism. The camera can be seen as analogous to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon but non-monolithic. Foucault believed that the structure itself is not what holds the power but the visibility that is made possible by that structure. Photography enables anthropologists to in a sense, "capture" non-Westerners and make them visible for closer inspection and study. It also allows for discourses to be established on the human body. "Power is realized only by the subjection of the body as the object of knowledge, and the function of this power lies in its ability to extract knowledge, not pain, from the body." The subject is rendered completely visible with the lens of the camera while the photographer is hidden behind it, reflecting fundamental Foucauldian idea of the institutional gaze with the camera in place of the Panopticon. Photographs show what can be said about the differences between peoples in a kind of binary opposition: marked/unmarked, West/the rest, privilege/depravity, normal/abnormal.

Discourses of the body gives power to the anthropologist who judges, classify, catalogue and applies a normalizing gaze on the subject. The Other have little control over how they are visually presented and anthropologists have the ability to create, place the photograph in different context, place captions, and disseminate information about the Other in their own intentions, interpretation and presentation. Photo-colonialism is to gain control over the visibility of a people through gaining control over images, meanings and classification of those images. Non-Westerners are objectified into primitive , deviant barbaric, and savages and were in many cases, measured and recorded. Photographing people "violate them, seeing them as they can never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed." Photographs are widely believed to pose as a mimetic view of the world but the "objectivity of the anthropological photograph is further compromised by the fact that photographic technology remains bound to the constraints of human intervention." The photographer in producing a photograph manipulates many factors: cropping, framing, adjustment of light, exposure. Whether intended or not, anthropological photography will always reflect the anthropologists' subjective opinion, ideologies and agendas.

In the late 18th Century and early 19th century, photography was also a new frontier like anthropology and any people considered images produced by the camera as the truth and evidence of the reality but according to Charles Peirce, it only serves as an indexical sign consisting of traces of the subject's existence. Similar to this is the problem of Roland Barthes' theory of the myth. People mistakenly immediately connect the denotation of the photograph with the connotation instead of it being an arbitrary attachment. "The photograph itself becomes a signifier." These connotation or expectations of seeing are verified by anthropologists' representation of non-Westerners in photographs and undermines the possibility of reinterpretation, making the "other" body emit signs of a certain discourse.

Discourses are formed from physical measurement of the body in addition to other acts of looking at non-Westerners. In anthropometrical anthropology, photography was employed as a systematic method of classification to produce hierarchical evolution models, most of the time, using grids and rulers to measure the subjects physically within the photograph. The usage of such technique to classify non-Westerners further reinforces the idea of Foucault's normalizing gaze. Anthropometrics was devised by Henry Huxley, who proposed an anthropometrical (normalizing) pose of the subject next to rulers and John Lamprey, both sought to quantify measurement of differences. John Lamprey used a wooden frame with silk threads hung behind the subject forming a methodological grid system, a normalizing grid, for measurement that can be compared with other subjects. In John Lamprey's photograph "The Malayan Male", the "metrological" grid system is seen in the background and the subject is holding a measuring stick, which were used to solve the problem of accurately depictions of body proportions. The photograph undertakes codes of dominance and subjugation in that it can be read as the Other not measuring up to Western standards. The text that accompanies the photograph further objectifies the subject as being a mere part of a species by giving it a generalized title.

There are many ways to read anthropological categorical photography and the apparent racial discourse emitted by the subjects increases the inclination to produce an oppositional reading of the photographs in today's world. The goal of anthropology is "prompted by the pervasive fear among anthropologists of the period that many human races are slowly being annihilated with the spread of Western civilization." Anthropology seeks to educate the self as well as other people of other civilizations to better understand the self. Photographs can "render the exotic familiar, enhance the commonplace, capture movement in time… provide important information for fuller understanding." It also seeks to function as a discipline that studies humankind in order to arrive at theories of human behavior that are objective and as minimally culture bound as possible. It is evident in 18th and 19th century categorical photography, for example Lamprey's works, that there is an attempt to remain as objective as possible by employing scientific devises. Although scientific data often means the truth and establishing discourse, anthropological photography claims to "remain an ever-changing mirror, reflect different realities at each viewing" as opposed to a mimetic representation. Anthropologists do not seek to impose their culture onto other cultures but instead to have a better understanding, dispel myths and be accepting of other people by "illustrating the richness of human diversity… to promote a more profound understanding of and respect for all peoples and cultures." Anthropologists frequently conduct fieldwork and this consists of living with the tribe to observe behavior in natural settings. Although some anthropologists have genuine purpose of providing knowledge to the world about humankind, 18th and 19th century categorical photography fail to represent the humanitarian purposes of anthropology.

Anthropological photography in the 18th and 19th century are right to be subject to accusations of photo-colonialism because of the means by which non-Westerners or the Other is represented through these photographs. At the same time, anthropology was an emerging science that needed a way to provide information about the study of man and the simultaneous dawn of photography provided anthropology that possibility. Photography will always be because of its inevitability to manipulation and this undermines its validity as a tool for anthropological evidence. According to Lacan, the gaze is something that is distinct from the eye of the beholder in today's post-modern world, the ultimate reading of these photographs lies not in the photographer but in the reinterpretation by the audience.

FOOTNOTES

note: images are not included in the web version of the essay. pls disregard "see images" footnotes.

1. Haviland, Crawford and Fedorak 2002, 5
2. Banta and Hinsley 1986.
3. Sturken and Cartwright 2001, 355
4. Lutz and Collins 1993, 191
5. Lutz and Collins 1993, 188-189
6. see Appendix A, fig. 1
7. see Appendix A, fig. 2 and fig. 3
8. see Appendix A, fig. 4
9. Faris 1992, 254
10. Green 1997, 121
11. Lutz and Collins 1993, 192
12. Foucault 1980, 148
13. Green 1997, 126
14. Pinney 1992, 76
15. Lutz and Collins 1993, 24
16. see Appendix A, fig. 5
17. see Appendix A, fig. 6
18. Sontag 1979
19. Lutz and Collins 1993, 24
20. Sturken and Cartwright 2001, 360
21. Edwards 1992, 9
22. Spencer 1992, 100 and see Appendix A, fig. 7
23. Pinney 1992, 77
24. see Appendix A, fig. 8
25. Edwards 1992, 5
26. Lutz and Collins 1993, 25
27. Lutz and Collins 1993, 25
28. Lutz and Collins 1993, 26
29. see Appendix A, fig. 9
    

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© May 2003 Joyce Tanjuakio