Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan, Ph.D.
New York University
Abstract
The appearance of photography in 1839 as a medium of mass imagery coincided with the emergence of anthropology as a new discipline focused on human variation, and social, political, and technological change, past and present. The subject matter of anthropologists was the study of man, and in its generic sense included women. The peoples studied then were on the periphery of a Western world engaged in the pursuit of power over “others,” their labor, resources, and markets, under an aegis of colonial administration. The progress of that pursuit was recorded and captured mostly by 19th-century European photographers and travelers abroad who titilated their audiences with accounts and images of “others” whose customs and cultures intrigued and scandalized the folks at home. Anthropologists collected both images and artifacts of peoples to salvage and illustrate the past and make sense of difference. Against these beginnings, nowhere was the female body more profoundly misrepresented to the world at large than those of Black Africa. This paper contrasts an indigenous perspective of the black female body as seen at the Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria with classic portrayals in photography under colonial rule.