Contenu du sommaire : “The Right to Look Back” : l'archive photographique et la construction de l'image de l'Autre

In the visual data collected and amassed by anthropologist Franz Boas are a vast number of photographs that correspond to the codes of the “type-portrait.” The production of such photographs accompanied the rise of physical anthropology at the end of the 19th century and its classification of human types. Throughout his career, American anthropologist Franz Boas also used anthropometrical portraits. However, he wrote extensively against the racist and evolutionist conclusions drawn from the same data by his contemporaries. This article therefore aims at contextualizing these portraits within Boas's visual production and the visual culture of anthropology. While Boas insisted on the fact that anthropometric images could not reflect human variety, which was his true object, he never completely dismissed the use of such type-portraits.

This article aims at highlighting the dynamic link between the photographs of Native Americans taken by Edward S. Curtis between 1898 and 1927, published in his work The North American Indian , and the colonial discourse about the figure of the Indian, particularly the myth of the “Vanishing Indian.” Indeed, Curtis's primary objective was to “preserve” the culture of an “Indian” whom he considered to be “authentic,” “primitive,” and “intact,” which is to say spared from the effects of colonization and Americanization. In this manner, he hoped to portray an Indian from the past, a product of colonial imagery. The study conducted in this article borrows from Michel Foucault's concept of networks of knowledge and power, to examine how Curtis's undertaking was fed by colonial discourse and then in turn fed it, thus popularizing the myth of the “Vanishing Indian.” At the intersection between colonial studies and photographic studies, we will see how Curtis's photographs are plagued with inherent contradictions, similarly to the discourse on the colonized Other.

This paper questions the anthropological use of photographic portraits of Indigenous peoples from Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, and their engagements with their subjects, from objectification to agency. The reach of ethnographic portraits extends beyond their primary temporal, geographical and ideological scope, inspiring re-imaginings which flourish on the contemporary Indigenous artistic scene, shedding light on a reappropriation of Indigenous sovereignty and visually claiming its temporal and cultural continuity. Two figures of authority emblematic of Indigenous power in 19th century European fantasies have been selected: that of the mighty warrior, and the wise and benevolent elder or chief. Both will be studied in the course of the article, as well as the positioning of the photographers and the intercultural relations that took place during the photographic process. After considering the construction of anthropological knowledge in relation to widely circulated portraits of Indigenous peoples, the first part of this paper will dwell on the careful creation of a visual archive of popular representations of the Other. The second part will then demonstrate that the photographed subjects were never merely passive or objectified, but sometimes took a participative role in their portraits, which are notable for their diversity. Finally, the reinterpretation of photographic portraits by contemporary artists Michael Cook and Greg Semu, respectively of Indigenous Australian and Samoan heritage, will support the idea that the connection between self-representation and sovereignty cannot be dismissed, as artists relentlessly re-use and re-interpret the European epistemological tools of ethnographic portraits.

The Staying Power project was conducted by the Black Cultural Archives and the Victoria and Albert Museum, from 2008 to 2015 so that the museum could acquire photographs of the “Black British experience” produced in Britain between 1950 and 1990, thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. After showing how the two institutions came to collaborate, encouraged by public funding policies geared towards a better representation of the cultural and ethnic diversity of the UK, this article chooses to analyse the outcome of the project rather than focusing on the process of collaboration itself. It argues that the 118 Staying Power images eventually acquired and displayed form a dialogical space, where issues of symbolic violence and identities are addressed. Examining the acquisitions from the angle of reconciliation allows to critically discuss the curators' choices and strategies on the disputed terrain of visual culture and collective memory, namely, how they document physical racist violence, clarify symbolic violence, and remedy it through recognition and visibility, and possibly, re-build trust.

This interview followed the first career retrospective of Bradford-born social documentary photographer Ian Beesley which was shown at Salts Mill in Saltaire, West Yorkshire, in 2022.1 Through his photographic documentation of the North of England's social and industrial history, Ian Beesley has recorded places of work and the working lives of people and industrial communities in a rapidly changing urban and social environment, where industry was central to regional identity. Having started photography in the 1970s—he was awarded a Kodak Scholarship for Social Documentation in 1977—Beesley captured irrevocable change caused by the decline of industry in the North of England, such as the demolition of textile mills, the closures of heavy industries—mines, foundries, steelworks—and slum clearances. Ian Beesley has worked as an artist in residence at several places, including industrial sites, and was also course leader of the Photography MA at the University of Bolton and Associate Professor at the University of Central Lancashire. In 2012, he was awarded the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society and in 2019 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford for his outstanding contribution to arts and culture. His latest book Life: Ian Beesley. A Career Retrospective, which features 300 photos—mostly black and white images—taken across and beyond the Bradford district since the 1970s, was published by the British Journal of Photography and Bluecoat Press, and officially launched at Salts Mill in July 2023.

When asked about the cause of the Prince's madness—“Upon what ground?”—the gravedigger understands Hamlet's words literally and answers, “Why, here in Denmark” (5.1.136-37). Hamlet's question invites us to think spatially about Hamlet. Leaving aside the religious and political mappings in the play, this essay examines mobilities, spatial practices and the materiality of the ground with a geographical and ecological lens and proposes to see Hamlet as a “journeying play”: though strictly speaking neither travel nor voyage drama, Hamlet calls attention to the complexity of its “country matters” (3.2.103) by means of its plot and characters' peregrinations. Hamlet, the grieving son and withdrawn melancholy student, is also a thwarted traveller. As the play transports its spectators to a fully fleshed-out Denmark, it develops a double perspective and relies on a cartographic imaginary. Its elemental poetry focusing on ground and water also emphasizes the island topography of Denmark. Seeing Hamlet as an example of the early modern journeying play acknowledges the play's engagement with the early modern audience's interest in foreign matters; it also shows how such worldly preoccupations prompt a reflection on what attaches us to the land and the precariousness of this attachment.