Session One: Seeing Historically: Photography, Knowledge, and Power.

I selected this particular picture: Group of Moorish Women, Algeria, Africa, Antique African Photograph, 1893.

Possible observations:

• A group of women are positioned together.
• Their bodies/clothing are visible.
• The women appear to be deliberately positioned for the photograph.
• Their clothing and bodily presentation are significant visual elements.
• The photograph appears posed rather than being a spontaneous moment.
• The framing draws attention to the women as a group.
• The image is identified through a geographical/ethnic designation: “Moorish Women.”
• The date places the photograph in the nineteenth-century colonial era. What I cannot know from the image:
• I cannot know what the women were thinking or feeling.
• I cannot know whether they wanted to be photographed.
• I cannot know what happened immediately before or after the photograph.
• I cannot know how the women themselves understood their identities.
• I cannot know the photographer’s intentions simply by looking at the image.

The image leaves me with the following questions:

• Who took the photograph?
• Why did they photograph these women?
• What did the photographer want the viewer to see?
• Did the photographer instruct them how to pose?
• Did the women know why they were being photographed?
• Did they have any control over how they were represented?
• What power relationship existed between photographer and subjects?
• Is the image participating in a colonial way of looking?
• Who was the intended audience?
• Was it sold or circulated commercially?
• Was it used for ethnographic purposes?
• Where did it travel?
• How did it eventually enter an archive/collection?

• This reply was modified 3 weeks ago by  Nikhil. Reason: Edited to fix styling issues