“But they were never only the master’s tools”

The use of photography in de-colonial praxis

Bibliographic Data

ID19004422
AuthorsCeleste Pedri-Spade (Laurentian University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume13
Issue2
Pages106-113
Publication date2017-03-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAlterNative An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1177-1801 • E-ISSN: 1174-1740
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1177180117700796
OpenAlexW2600313855
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited37

The majority of anthropological literature around photography of Indigenous peoples has privileged the actions, agency, and intent of the Western photographer. While one cannot ignore the significant colonizing influences that photographs have had on Indigenous peoples, one cannot presume that these individuals were solely the silenced subject or victim in a one-sided, inferior relationship with the camera and its operator. Recent scholarship is now re-examining the relationship Indigenous peoples have had with photography as a culturally productive technology since its development. In this article, I will address the role of photography in a global context as an object and a method of decolonization in two ways: (a) through archived collections of colonial photography and (b) in the production of contemporary photographs by peoples who experience contemporary colonialism. In both of these contexts, I will explore how various populations or communities with a colonial history use photography to confront ongoing legacies of colonialism, particularly in agendas aimed at repairing and reconfiguring relationships with self, family and kin, colonizer, community, and the natural world. Drawing on examples from several countries and locales, I will address the potentials and challenges of reframing Indigenous peoples’ experience of, and relationship with, photography within the context of de-colonial praxis

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · Archaeology · Art · Cognitive reframing · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Decolonization · Indigenous · Photography · Political science · Praxis · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Ecology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Photography and Visual Culture · Psychology

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