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Photography and Colonialism

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By Shikha

Photographs are often seen as representing reality; especially historical photographs are thought of as authentic glimpses of the past. James Borchert, writing in the 1980s, challenged the objectivity of photographs and highlighted the significance of analysing them within the context of their subjectivities and the larger socio-political and cultural systems in which they are produced.[1]

In the postcolonial scholarship, photography has been studied within the discourse of power. Mark Sealy argues that since its invention in 1839, photography has been tainted with imperial and racist ideologies and Western photographic practices have been used as a tool to create Eurocentric “visual regimes.”[2] Scholars have scrutinised the intertwined relationship between photography and European colonial interests in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. 

Palestine as a case study
The Middle East had been one of the most prominent grounds where the European colonial theatrics were staged from the late 18th century onwards. The decline of the Ottoman régime which had held the dominion for centuries not only led to colossal transformations in the society and politics of the region but also paved the way for European powers to fiercely fight over the biggest chunk of the broken piece. In the wake of the First World War, the lucky star was on the side of the British and the French who became lords of the new Mandate system, created over much of the Arab world. Legitimised by the League of the Nations, the colonial masters were to rule over the Arabs until the time they could be considered good enough to stand alone. It was in the context of this post-war settlement that Palestine became a British Mandate in 1923. Owing to its biblical associations and strategic geo-political location, Palestine had always been a prized possession. However, its status was significantly distinct as compared to other colonised lands because of the political claims of another group over Palestine–the Zionist Jews.

The 19th century Palestine had been an extensively photographed territory. Building upon Edward Said’s notion of the Orient as an “imagined geography” constructed by the West, it can be said that Palestine played a central role in the photographic imaginations of Europe[3], and so, images played a key role in the development and maintenance of Europe’s orientalist vision of the Holy Land. 

Palestine was “witnessed” by the camera as soon as the device was discovered by Daguerre. Horace Vernet and Frederic Fesquet had arrived there in 1839 to capture the “reality” of the Holy Land using both daguerreotype and paper print technique.[4] They were followed by a swarm of European and American photographers, incessantly creating images of the biblical heritage of Palestine, which were in great demand in the West. Ethnographic photographs, containing orientalised depictions of “natives” and their lifestyles, were also cherished. Thus, photography made it possible to visualise this distant land whose existence had hitherto belonged to the realm of imagination. In the context of 19th century Empiricism, “photographic witnessing,” as Schwartz observes, became a way of knowing the world, its people and places, from afar.[5]

Invisibilizing the people
Fig. 1: “Mount of Olives, Jerusalem, showing olive and cedar trees, the Basilica of Gethsemane, and Russian Othodox Church of the Magdalene in the distance,” Library of Congress

Entrenched in the colonial politics of the time, photographs of the period portray the intellectual, cultural and imperial assumptions that the West made about Palestine.[6] Nassar, studying the European depictions of Jerusalem, points out that although the city began to feature in the European imagination through the photographs, the people largely remained absent from this imagination.[7] “They are repulsive and entirely out of harmony with the character of the land,” one photographer had conceitedly remarked.[8] In some representations, the locals were subordinated to the landscape while in others they were presented as living proofs of the biblical heritage. The photographers’ eyes often captured Palestine as a timeless ruin bereft of any habitation, thus, laying claims to the land and invisibilizing the people who resided there, as illustrated in Fig. 1. As Rashid Khalidi says, “the surest way to eradicate a people’s right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it.”[9]

Othering the colonised and showing superiority over them
Anglo-American representations of Palestine produced in the colonial context often “othered” the indigenous populations while simultaneously showing unequal power relations between the colonisers and the colonised. Such visual depictions were especially useful and important when the colonial rule was challenged by the colonised population, as was the case in Palestine during the Great Revolt of 1936-39. The revolt was the most fervent and organised Palestinian challenge to British and Zionist colonialisms during the British rule in Palestine. To quash the revolt, the British brought in several “paraphernalia of repression,” resulting in a bloody war which left 10 percent of the adult male Palestinian population dead, injured, imprisoned or exiled.[10]

Fig. 2: Illustrated London News, 13 June 1936, p.7

The front page of the Illustrated London News dated to 13 June 1936 shows two photographs showing the British forces dispersing the crowd of “Arab rioters.” By representing the Arabs as unruly savages who have to be brought under the control of the British forces, the British not only assert their superiority but also seem to invoke public sympathy and admiration for all the troubles the troops had to go through to bring the enemy under control. 

Fig. 3: “British troops parading Jerusalem street, taken inside Jaffa Gate,” Library of Congress.

The British sense of superiority over the “native” people is also visible in the photographic representations of their manoeuvrings, which were extensively photographed. Fig.3 shows the British troops parading with the architecture of the Old City of Jerusalem forming the background. Some local men are seen to be standing on the side as spectators. The marching troop seems to be bringing order to the chaos and establishing their control both over space and people. The photograph seems to have been intended to establish a sense of awe and superiority in the viewer’s eye. It also seems to invoke the British might and the preparedness of their forces in crushing the uprising. As James Ryan observes, photography had been instrumental for the British empire to record its progress and achievements.[11] Thus, linked to the ideologies of imperialism, these images would have played an important role in creating a grand spectacle. 

Gartlan and Behdad, however, problematise the approach of looking at photographs produced in the colonial context either as the hegemony of the West or as the resistance of the Orient and, rather, bring out the complex interactions between the two domains and multifaceted realities that shaped photographic productions.[12]

Sources

[1] James Borchert, “Historical Photo-Analysis: A Research Method,” Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 15, no. 2 (1982): 35-38; Jennifer Tucker, et.al.,”Entwined Practices: Engagements with Photography in Historical Inquiry,” History and Theory 48, no. 4 (2009): 3.

[2] Amber Videos, “Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time-Dr Mark Sealy,” Vimeo, accessed 3/10/20 https://vimeo.com/366503036.

[3] Ali Behdad, Camera Orientalis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East (University of Chicago Press, 2016): 1-15.

[4] Issam Nassar, European Portrayals of Jerusalem: Religious Fascinations and Colonialist Imaginations (Edwin Mellen Press, 2006) 123-4.

[5] JoanSchwartz, “”Records of Simple Truth and Precision”: Photography, Archives, and the Illusion of Control,” Archivaria 50 (2000):  6-11.

[6] Gregg Wilson, et.al., Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine, (University of California Press, 1997) 44.

[7] Nassar, Jerusalem, 132-134.

[8] ibid., 136.

[9] Khalidi, War on Palestine, 44. 

[10] Ibid.,

[11] James Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (University of Chicago Press, 1997): 11-27.

[12]Ali Behdad, et.al., “Introduction,” in Photography’s Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation, eds. Ali Behdad, et.al. (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2013): 1-9.

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