Niharika Saikia
Niharika Saikia
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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:
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- 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:
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- 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?
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Hello everybody, I’m Niharika. I’m a doctoral research scholar in the Department of Women’s Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University. I’m also an Assistant Professor and hence the main objective of pursuing this course is to get more insights is to the concept of visual sociology by way of images and the everyday . Hope to have some meaningful discussions these 8 weeks!