1 Rewriting Ethnographic Photography Reuse Of
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REWRITING ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY REUSE OF ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS ARTISTS by Marina Amber Eldh Tyquiengco Bachelor of Arts, University of Virginia, 2011 Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2016 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of History of Art and Architecture Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Pittsburgh 2016 1 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences This thesis was presented by Marina Tyquiengco It was defended on January 2015 and approved by Dr. Joshua Ellenbogen, Director of Graduate Studies, History of Art and Architecture Thesis Director: Dr. Terence Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professr of Contemporary Art History and Theory, History of Art and Architecture 2 Copyright © by Marina Tyquiengco 2016 3 REWRITING ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY Marina Tyquiengco, M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 2016 For over thirty years, artists from all over the world have recycled, reworked and repurposed visual imagery from popular and commercial cultures, both those contemporary with them, and those from past periods. The postmodern practice was known as “appropriation,” and attracted controversy from those who expected art to be original, and those who valued the temporal authenticity of imagery. Within this context, particular Indigenous artists have used this approach as a means to articulate the complexities of Indigenous identity-formation. They deliberately reuse images of their people, or of their direct ancestors, that were taken by non- Indigenous anthropologists, official recorders, or commercial photographers. Through these processes of artistic transformation, they inflect them with new connotations, above all those that attribute agency to the person or people depicted, or those that manifest the contemporary artist’s own agency. In this study, I focus on works made between 1996 and 2014 by three Indigenous Australian Artists: Brook Andrew, Vernon Ah Kee, and Daniel Boyd. I draw on concepts of Aboriginality offered by Indigenous scholars such as Marcia Langton to show how these three artists problematize the expectation that Aboriginality can be captured in fixed forms, and thus reveal the fluidity and adaptability of the concept and of its lived reality. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………8 I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….…….8 II. BRIEF BACKGROUND ON ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN HISTORY…………………………………………………………………….………..14 III. ANTHROPOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN AUSTRALIA…………………………………………………………………………..18 IV. CONCEPTUALIZING ABORIGINALITY…………………………………………25 V. SEXY AND DANGEROUS ABORIGINALITY……………………………............30 VI. BLACKFELLA PRIDE: ABORIGINALITY AS FAMILY MEMORY AND HISTORY ……………………………………………………………………………...38 VII. ABORIGINALITY AMONG OTHER IDENTITIES……………………………..48 VII. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………….58 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………...61 ILLUSTRATED FIGURES…………………………………………………………………...68 5 ILLUSTRATED LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Carrie Mae Weems, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995-1996, Chromogenic color prints with sand-blasted text on glass, 3 of 36 Toned Prints 28 works: 26 3/4 x 22 in, 4 works: 22 x 26¾ in, 2 works: 43 1/2 x 33 ½ in……………………………………….67 Figure 2. Leah King-Smith, Untitled 11 from Patterns of Connection, 1991-1992, Stereotype photograph, 131.4 x 105 cm……………………………………………………………………..67 Figure 3. Rover Thomas, Aboriginal Flag, 1971………………………………………………..68 Figure 4. Brook Andrew, Sexy and Dangerous, 1996, Computer generated image on synthetic polymer resin, 146 x 95.6 cm…………………………………………………………………....68 Figure 5. Charles Kerry, Aboriginal Chief, 1888, Carte de visite……………………………….69 Figure 6. Vernon Ah Kee, Ideas of Barak, 2011, Acrylic, charcoal, and crayon on canvas, 180 x 240 cm…………………………………………………………………………………………...69 Figure 7. Talma & Co. Barak preparing his corroboree painting for the Governor Sir Henry Loch, 1895, Photograph, 16.6 x 12.1 cm……..…………………………………………………70 Figure 8. Vernon Ah Kee, Neither Courage nor Pride, 2006, Acrylic, charcoal, crayon on canvas, each 180 x 240 cm.....…………………………………………………………………...70 Figure 9. Vernon Ah Kee, See Me, 2006, Acrylic, charcoal, and crayon on canvas, each 180 x 240 cm……………………………………………………………………………………………71 Figure 10. Norman Tindale, George Sibley, Palm Island, 25 October 1938, 1938, Photograph, Courtesy of the Tindale Genealogical Collection………………………………………………..71 Figure 11. Daniel Boyd, Untitled, 2014, Oil, pastel, and archival glue on linen, 315 x 223.5 cm…………………………………………………………………………………….………….72 Figure 12. Daniel Boyd, We Call Them Pirates Out Here, 2006, Oil on canvas, 226 x 276 x3.5 cm………………………………………………………………………………………………..73 6 Figure 13. E. Fox Phillips, Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay,1770, 1902, Oil on Canvas, 192.2 × 265.4 cm..………………………………………………………………………………73 Figure 14. Daniel Boyd, Untitled (HM), 2013, Oil and archival glue on linen, 245 x 167.5cm…………………………………………………………………………………………74 Figure 15. J.W. Beattie, The beach at Lamalan̈ a, Raga - New Hebrides from series The scenery and peoples of the islands in the South and Western Pacific, 1906, Sepia Toned Photograph, 15.2 x 20.1 cm………………………………………………………………………………………...74 Figure 16. Daniel Boyd, Untitled (Detail), 2014, Oil, pastel, and archival glue on linen, 315 x 223.5cm………………………………………………………………………………………….75 7 I. INTRODUCTION Since the 1980s, artists throughout the world have appropriated photographic images from past periods and adapted them to their present purposes. Brook Andrew, Vernon Ah Kee, and Daniel Boyd are outstanding among the contemporary Aboriginal artists who have reused archival or ethnographic photography as a means of establishing identity and of articulating their particular conceptions of Aboriginality. These practices constitute a “reuse” rather than a use or appropriation based on the definition, “to use again especially in a different way or after reclaiming or reprocessing.”1 By changing the context of already existing photographs, these artists fundamentally alter the purposes and meaning of these images. From the advent of photography in 1839 up until the second half of the 20th century, the medium was incorporated into the practice of ethnography and anthropology in many geographic regions.2 In 19th century Australia, Aboriginal peoples were widely believed to be a “dying race,” and photography was one means to preserve or document their images before their eventual extinction.3 Photographs of non-European peoples share similarities with contemporaneous European portrait practices. However, these photographs of non-European peoples have a particular resonance with 1 Merriam Webster Dictionary, “Reuse,” Accessed January 7, 2016. http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/reuse. 2 Christopher Pinney, “The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography,” in Anthropology and Photography: 1860-1920, edited by Elizabeth Edwards, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 76. 3 Jane Lydon, “Introduction,” in Calling the Shots, edited by Jane Lydon, (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2014), 6. 8 ethnography—and the documentation of ethnic peoples—to contemporary viewers, regardless of the original intent.4 There was a great discrepancy of power between Indigenous sitters and European photographers. European photographers’ intentions could be scientific or commercial, but share ends in the documentation and typecasting of racial or ethnic difference. Viewing these 19th and early 20th century photographs, one is struck by a series of questions: Is this image faithful to the sitter in terms of how he or she wished to be presented? Was this image posed to represent some sort of staged authenticity? What can or should the contemporary viewer or artist gain from viewing or reusing this type of photograph? The global archive of ethnographic or ethnographic-looking photography thus provides artists with a broad body of source material. The challenge of the original images and the questions they raise for contemporary readers makes them fruitful for reuse.5 In the United States, the African American artist Carrie Mae Weems reworked slave photographs with text and color her 1996 series, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (Figure 1). Weems was commissioned to create a work in response to the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of African American photographs.6 She re-inscribed a sense of personhood and self-ownership to the people in the original photographs, who were referenced only as slaves in the archives of the collection and, thus, remained nameless.7 Brook Andrew, Vernon Ah Kee, and Daniel Boyd, working in Australia, have used ethnographic photography as source material for their diverse bodies of 4 I will use ‘peoples’ rather than ‘people’ throughout this paper especially in reference to Aboriginal peoples to reflect the diversity of Aboriginal Australians. They are not one people but many diverse peoples. 5 I use the term reuse rather than appropriation as there is a history of appropriation and re-appropriation specific to Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. As my subject is outside of this dialogue, the word reuse is better suited for my discussion. See Rex Butler What is Appropriation? (Brisbane: IMA & Power Publications, 1996), for a consideration of appropriation and re-appropriation in Australia. 6 Thelma Golden, “Some Thoughts on Carrie Mae Weems,” in Carrie Mae Weems: recent work 1992-1998/ with essays by Thomas Piché and Thelma Golden, edited by Carrie Mae Weems, (New York: George Braziller,