New Perspectives on Photography in Ethnological Exhibitions. Potentials and Limits of Contemporary Artistic Interventions in the Museum Space
Photographic images and the so-called ethnological museum have been intertwined since the establishment of these institutions. The medium found its way into the collections of these museum in various forms: Photographic images were paradigmatic of the colonial system as a whole, since they were not only part of the knowledge system, which maintained and legitimized colonial agencies, but were also an integral part of the colonial administrative system. Anthropometric photographs as a hegemonic form of power were used to install racial categorizations and classifications. Through object or landscape photography, the medium was used to appropriate geographical spaces and cultures and to make the images of the “faraway” tangible in nearby museum spaces. The photographs, like what they showed, were ascribed a commodity value within the logic of colonial economies. For a long time, museums mainly used these photographs as an illustrative tool to lend objects or visualizations "authenticity" or to underline colonial ideologies and narratives.
Looking at this extensive and problematic use of photographic practices, photography by no means can be seen as an “innocent” medium when it comes to ethnological exhibition practice and the visual languages that it produces. Nonetheless, in recent years the medium has been used increasingly in artistic interventions that aim to disrupt the dominant historiography mediated in ethnological museums. This raises the question of the extent to which the medium itself, historically permeated by colonial power, can formulate and produce new perspectives and points of view. Can the medium even generate a scepticism towards itself?
The project revolves around the question of how photography can be revealed as a colonial power technique and how the specific characteristics of photographic media can be used to destabilize the very colonial narratives to whose consolidation the medium has contributed significantly in the first place. Through individual case studies, a systematic look will be taken at the complex entanglements of photographic media and colonial power strategies in the museum. From this starting point, the potential that the use of photographic images can have today for the deconstruction of still dominant colonial narratives in the museum space will be illuminated.
