Observations From the Interface: Photography, Ethnography and Digital Projects at the Pitt Rivers...

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mChapter 14

Observations from the Interface: Photography, Ethnography, and Digital

Projects at the Pitt Rivers MuseumChristopher Morton

This chapter looks back over 10 years of putting photograph collections online at the Pitt Rivers Museum (hereafter PRM), the University of Oxford’s museum of anthropology and world archaeology. This has been a period of intense activity on externally funded research projects, digitization, and website and database development. Through a series of case studies, I will discuss ways in which images of historical photography have been ‘translated’ online, and the strategies HPSOR\HG�E\�WKH�350¶V�FXUDWRUV�DQG�SURMHFW�VWDII��LQFOXGLQJ��UHÀH[LYHO\��P\VHOI��in negotiating interactions with collections within a digital environment. External expectations of online access to museum collections by the PRM’s many different audiences have risen rapidly over this period, and yet the institution has continued to rely on short-term project funding to deliver online resources, none of which build capacity within the Museum to update or sustain such resources. Although the PRM was an early leader in digital research projects relating to ethnographic collections, important questions now arise about the long-term relevance and sustainability of these early projects. These concerns are coeval with a dramatic shift in Internet trends in recent years, which have taken a decided turn away from a curated and authoritative, yet static, web delivery of museum collections, towards a more open and collaborative set of possibilities characteristic of social media, in which participatory information sharing and interoperability have become standard features of a more devolved set of digital connections to heritage. This chapter also explores in detail the PRM’s distinctive and deliberate curatorial decision to foreground the materiality of photographs in its online research spaces, a policy intended to reinforce the intellectual point that online images are not coextensive with photographic objects, and that questions of materiality might still be usefully communicated.

Photographs in the Pitt Rivers Museum

Photographs have always been collected, accumulated, and disseminated by museums in a number of different ways, all of which point to their uncertain

© Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien and the contributors (2014)From Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien (eds), Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs,

published by Ashgate Publishing. See: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409464891



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Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs244

status within the museum as artefact, art object, and document. But perhaps more important than the differing status of images within museums is the historical slippage between such categories that images have been subject to, when their biographies are examined in detail. Photographs originally taken by commercial photographers for the tourist or collector market, for instance, frequently found themselves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed into ethnographic documents through the disciplinary framework of the museum archive. Examples of this include studio photographs of Aboriginal subjects taken by John William Lindt in Grafton, New South Wales, in the 1870s; some of these images, aimed at the collector market, found their way into the PRM collections up until the 1930s, where they were archived alongside other images of Aboriginal people taken in a wide variety of contexts. The images were brought into direct comparison as part of an intentional archival project at the Museum in 1931–32 E\�LWV�¿UVW�FXUDWRU�+HQU\�%DOIRXU��(GZDUGV�DQG�+DUW��0RUWRQ��,Q�PRUH�recent years, however, these photographs have been individuated once again, and exhibited in contexts outside the ethnographic, including the exhibitions Stories of Australian Art (1988) and Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts (2009).

+LVWRULFDOO\�� LW� LV� WKH� SKRWRJUDSK� DV� YLVXDO� GRFXPHQW� WKDW� KDV� GULYHQ� WKH�collection of photographs in the ethnographic museum, a mobilization of the image to illustrate the contextual usage of objects, as well as cultural activities. Interestingly, the concept of the supportive visual document in the museum has always drawn on both indexical and iconic aspects of an image’s semiotics. With the former, the document draws much of its communicative meaning from the fact that it is a record of something in a particular place and time and so evidence of its existence, whereas with the latter, the photograph is mostly mobilized to stand for its referent, its subject matter, and to be a good representation of it (Peirce 1998[1909]: 460–61). The photograph as likeness (icon) also drove the early practice of photographing museum objects within the institution (see Edwards 2001: 51–79). In the later nineteenth century this was usually done for exchange with other curators, for publication, or for lantern slide illustration, rather than as a record of objects within the museum. Such photographs produced by other museums then found their way into the PRM photograph collection, where they were open to comparison with photographs showing similar objects in their original cultural contexts. At the PRM, object photography became a specialist task in the mid twentieth century, and a full-time photographer is employed to this day, mostly working on new acquisitions, publication-quality images of artefacts, DV�ZHOO�DV�PRUH�GLI¿FXOW�SKRWRJUDSKV�RI�PXVHXP�H[KLELWLRQV�DQG�GLVSOD\V��,Q�WKH�1980s the PRM established a distinct curatorial department for its photograph collections in response to the hugely increased interest in historical photography among historians, anthropologists and scholars in other disciplines, as well as a recognition of the specialist knowledge required in the care of photograph FROOHFWLRQV��7KH�¿UVW� LVVXH�RI� WKH�Journal of Museum Ethnography in 1989 for instance was devoted to papers arising from the 1987 Museum Ethnographers

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Observations from the Interface 245

Group conference ‘A Question of Image’ which was itself a response to ‘the growing interest in the visual image as historical document in ethnography, both from the descriptive and semiological angles’ (Edwards 1989: 1).

Photographs have likewise historically been used in a number of different ways in the PRM displays. Recent research (Morton 2014) has suggested that the donor RI�WKH�350¶V�IRXQGLQJ�FROOHFWLRQ��$+/)�3LWW�5LYHUV��SUHVHQWHG�SKRWRJUDSK\�LQ�KLV�collection before he gifted it to the University of Oxford in a manner quite distinct IURP�WKH�ZD\� LWV� VXEVHTXHQW�FXUDWRU�+HQU\�%DOIRXU�GLG��:KHUHDV�%DOIRXU¶V�XVH�of images in displays up until the 1930s included both photographs and drawings to illustrate the use of objects, for instance how tools or weapons were held, and were inserted into vitrines next to objects to facilitate contextualization, Pitt-Rivers used photographs as part of a mass display of portraits when his collection was on display at the South Kensington Museum from 1879 to 1884. Sceptical of selective anthropometric studies, Pitt-Rivers’s own approach was to collect numerous examples of commercially available cartes-de-visite. In more recent times the PRM has focused its acquisition policy on contemporary photography, especially by indigenous artists reworking the archive, and well-documented ¿HOG�FROOHFWLRQV��PRVWO\�DV�D�UHVXOW�RI�DQWKURSRORJLFDO�¿HOGZRUN��DQG�IUHTXHQWO\�with an Oxford connection. In 2011 the PRM established an initiative within the photograph collections department – called the Centre for Anthropology and 3KRWRJUDSK\�±�ZLWK� WKH� LQWHQWLRQ�RI�UDLVLQJ� WKH�SUR¿OH�RI� WKLV�FROOHFWLQJ�SROLF\��as well as presenting case studies of how the Museum works with donors on the GLJLWL]DWLRQ��GRFXPHQWDWLRQ�DQG�RQOLQH�GLVVHPLQDWLRQ�RI�WKHLU�¿HOG�FROOHFWLRQV�

Southern Sudan project (http://southernsudan.prm.ox.ac.uk)

The inexorable growth of the World Wide Web throughout the 1990s presented museums with both a set of new possibilities and also challenges. Yet although the potential of communicating about collections and providing better research access was apparent, early evaluations of museum web activity indicated that it remained a marginal concern, and little attention was given to potential users, their needs, or HYHQ�D�VHQVH�RI�DXGLHQFH��+HUW]XP��$OWKRXJK�E\��DOO�PDMRU�PXVHXPV�LQ� WKH� GHYHORSHG�ZRUOG�� DQG�PRVW�PHGLXP�VL]HG� RQHV�� KDG� D� VLJQL¿FDQW� RQOLQH�presence, one commentator still noted that ‘despite heavy investments in digital KHULWDJH�SURJUDPV��PXVHXPV�DUH�VWLOO�VWUXJJOLQJ�WR�¿QG�WKH�FRQQHFWLRQV�EHWZHHQ�the reality of an artefact and its virtual representation’ (Müller 2002: 22, emphasis LQ�RULJLQDO��3DUW�RI�WKH�VWDVLV�LGHQWL¿HG�E\�0�OOHU�RQ�WKH�SDUW�RI�PXVHXPV�ZDV�DQ�inability to embrace the alternative interpretation of objects offered by virtuality, and a tendency to approach projects as electronic scholarly publications. I shall return to this crucial question later.

The huge potential of the web to provide online research access to the resources held by libraries, archives, and museums for the higher education sector, as well





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DV�ZLGHU�DXGLHQFHV��OHG�WR�WKH�FUHDWLRQ�E\�WKH�8.¶V�$UWV�DQG�+XPDQLWLHV�5HVHDUFK�Board (now Council) of a dedicated funding stream, the Resource Enhancement Scheme, in November 2000. Responding to this funding opportunity, two curators at the PRM, Jeremy Coote and Elizabeth Edwards, applied for a two-year project to catalogue, digitize, and present online the PRM’s collections relating to southern Sudan,1 a rich area of research for Oxford anthropology in particular from the 1920s onwards, including extensive object and photograph collections by such LPSRUWDQW�WZHQWLHWK�FHQWXU\�DQWKURSRORJLFDO�¿JXUHV�DV�(�(��(YDQV�3ULWFKDUG�DQG�Godfrey Lienhardt. The application did not just emerge from a desire to make these collections available online. As they stated in their 2002 application, there were also intellectual imperatives in the digital enhancement of such a resource:

New thinking in relation to the material and visual within anthropology and cross-cultural histories presents an extraordinary opportunity to revisit the classic writings and re-examine them in the light of the material and visual records that exist in museum collections.2

The presentation of the collections online was therefore framed as allowing previously unthinkable types of analysis of the material, such as ‘evidence of otherwise unrecognized external relationships’, evidence of ‘otherwise submerged RU�PDVNHG�DVSHFWV�RI�WKH�DQWKURSRORJLVW¶V�¿HOG�VLWXDWLRQ¶�DQG�µHYLGHQFH�RI�FKDQJH¶��In order to facilitate such research, a searchable online database was proposed, ZKLFK�ZRXOG�EH�XSGDWHG�DV�DQG�ZKHQ�QHZ�UHVHDUFK�¿QGLQJV�ZHUH�JHQHUDWHG�E\�users. The object collections would have new photographs taken of them, and the historic photographs were to be scanned. Such scanning, argued the applicants, ZRXOG�DOVR�KDYH�FRQVHUYDWLRQ�EHQH¿WV��VLQFH�LW�ZRXOG�UHGXFH�IXWXUH�KDQGOLQJ�RI�the originals. The concern with materiality also arose in the intellectual approach to digitization in the project application:

it is crucial to the project that the photographs themselves are studied in detail as objects. The images that will be digitized and available over the web will be mere ‘images’ of the photographic objects. Researchers will wish to have full details of the physical basis of the images to which they have access. Particular attention will be paid to material forms, not merely the content of the image. The forms themselves are likely to contain crucial and previously unrecognized evidence of the strategies employed in the articulation and dissemination of the image of ‘Southern Sudan’ in British anthropology.

17KH�UHJLRQ�RI�VRXWKHUQ�6XGDQ�VXEVHTXHQWO\�EHFDPH�WKH�LQGHSHQGHQW�VWDWH�RI�6RXWK�Sudan in 2011.

27H[W�TXRWHG�IURP�SDJH��RI�DSSOLFDWLRQ�E\�-HUHP\�&RRWH��3,��DQG�(OL]DEHWK�(GZDUGV��FR�DSSOLFDQW��WR�$UWV�DQG�+XPDQLWLHV�5HVHDUFK�%RDUG��0D\��$XWKRU¶V�¿OH�FRS\��350�





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I will return to the relationship between virtuality and materiality later, but it is worth mentioning here that this particular and distinctive material approach emerged from both an institutional and individual direction; photographs at the PRM have historically been subjected to similar processes of accession, documentation, curation, and cataloguing, as other objects in the Museum (Morton 2012), and this KDV�LQÀXHQFHG�WKH�ZD\�WKDW�WKH\�KDYH�EHHQ�DSSURDFKHG�WKHRUHWLFDOO\�E\�FXUDWRUV��especially Elizabeth Edwards, the PRM’s curator for photographs until 2005. Indeed, questions of materiality were uppermost for Edwards at the time, who wrote an article in the same year arguing that ‘materiality translates the abstract and representational of “photography” into “photographs”’ (Edwards 2002: 67). The emphasis upon materiality in Edwards’s writing came partly as a result of her experience as a hands-on curator of photographs, but also due to unease about immaterial approaches to the photographic image that ignored what the historical document contributed to its own meaning (Edwards 2013).

As project researcher, I was tasked with cataloguing and digitizing the photographs as part of the project. Given the considerations relating to materiality, the early decision was made to digitize original prints where available, and negatives only if no original print existed. This decision was based on three IDFWRUV��¿UVWO\��WKHUH�ZHUH�ORJLVWLFDO�LVVXHV�ZLWK�VFDQQLQJ�VXFK�D�ODUJH�QXPEHU�RI�photographic objects (both negatives and prints) in the time allowed without a dedicated technical post; secondly, there were presentational challenges envisaged in making multiple performances of the same image available, for negatives, prints, lantern slides, etc. Since the PRM catalogues all such objects individually, users would have retrieved numerous similar images, which would detract from the usability of the website. Thirdly, original prints frequently reveal previous QXPEHUV��DQQRWDWLRQV��FURSSLQJV��HWF��ZKLFK�DUH�RI�VLJQL¿FDQW�KLVWRULFDO�LQWHUHVW�DQG�which serve to remind the user that they are engaging with a virtual representation of a material object, rather than an image that may straightforwardly be decoupled from its material form. One of the problems with only showing the database record and digital image of prints was how to alert researchers to the presence of other performances of the same image, such as negatives, enlargements. This was never satisfactorily resolved during the project; each web page for a print that also has a negative has the text ‘There are records relating to alternative images that we do not have scans for in the database’ below it, with a link to a separate record that shows the documentation for the negative. So, although the materiality of any printed performance of an image is communicated successfully in the website, the materiality of the negative collection is barely acknowledged, mostly due to logistical and web design reasons.

The Southern Sudan project website, which was published online on 3 January 2006, presents users with the ability to carry out suggested or free text searches and then view thumbnail search results of both photograph and object holdings side by side. It also provides biographical notes about the photographers represented DQG�GHWDLOV�RI�WKHLU�FROOHFWLRQ��VXFK�DV�FDPHUDV�DQG�¿OP�W\SHV�XVHG��,W�ZDV�RQ�WKHVH�contextual pages that the opportunity was also taken to show examples of the





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reverse of some prints, for instance giving evidence of handling and dirt as a result RI�¿HOGZRUN�XVDJH�LQ�WKH�FDVH�RI�-HDQ�%X[WRQ¶V�FROOHFWLRQ��RU�WKH�FRPSOH[�UHJLVWU\�history and original listings that form an integral part of Evans-Pritchard’s archive. On detail pages, users are also able to zoom into photographs, and add them to a personal research space, in which images may also be compared side by side virtually, without the need for separate browser windows, as well as the ability to save these tagged images, add research notes, and send comments to the Museum.

'LVFXVVLRQV�ZLWK�WKH�ZHE�GHVLJQHU�ZKR�GHYHORSHG�WKH�¿QDO�UHVRXUFH�UHVXOWHG�in the thumbnail-based search results style of presentation that is still mostly favoured as a user-friendly method of interrogating online databases, especially for photography. It was recognized, however, that short 50-character captions would be required under each thumbnail, and that given the cross-cultural nature of the Southern Sudan resource, this would need to include both cultural group as well as some other indication of image content. This approach inevitably led to simplistic captioning such as ‘Portrait of Zande man’, ‘Anuak girl pounding grain’, ‘Nuer oxen with trained horns’, which in many ways mirrored both the original documentation provided by Evans-Pritchard and his style of captioning in such works as The Nuer (1940), such as ‘girl milking (Lou)’. Within the web

Figure 14.1 Screen shot of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Southern Sudan project website homepage [http://southernsudan.prm.ox.ac.uk; accessed 4 November 2013]





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resource, such simplistic captioning arguably had the effect of over-simplifying cultural identities as well as photographic intentionality.

The Tibet Album http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk

In 2003 the PRM (with the British Museum as partner) applied for a further JUDQW�IURP�WKH�$+5%�5HVRXUFH�(QKDQFHPHQW�6FKHPH�� WKLV� WLPH�IRFXVHG�RQ�LWV�photograph collections from Tibet, especially from the British colonial period between 1920 and 1950. As the principal applicant Elizabeth Edwards and co-DSSOLFDQWV�&ODUH�+DUULV�DQG�5LFKDUG�%OXUWRQ�PDNH�FOHDU�LQ�WKHLU�DSSOLFDWLRQ�WH[W��the photographs held by these two museums ‘comprise collections that were conceptualised as a joint visual documentation project by the photographers themselves’,3 including material by Sir Charles Bell’s mission of 1920–21, and PRVW�PHPEHUV�RI�WKH��%DVLO�*RXOG�PLVVLRQ��)DVFLQDWLQJ�RYHUODSV�H[LVW�DFURVV�these collections. As ‘multiple originals’, photographs were exchanged between WKH�PHPEHUV�RI�WKH�PLVVLRQV�IRU�WKHLU�SHUVRQDO�FROOHFWLRQV��)RU�WKH�PRVW�SDUW��WKHVH�images record a Tibet (and especially a Lhasa) that has been transformed beyond recognition by Chinese occupation and the Cultural Revolution. The project was therefore intended as a resource for both a scholarly community interested in Tibetan history and culture, as well as the Tibetan exile community in India, the Tibetan diaspora, and potentially Tibetans living within the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Although both museums were anxious to address the multiplicity of potential perspectives on the images–and for a time employed Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya to contribute to the project–the representational and political issues involved in putting a colonial visual record of Tibet online were obvious. But as the application itself made clear, the routes through such intractable issues were already present in the resource itself:

At one level the aesthetic and lyrical quality of the photographs re-tells the myth of Tibet as seen through colonial eyes – an unchanging, hidden land of cultural and spiritual richness, and yet a ‘backward’ but strategic outreach of Empire. +RZHYHU�� WKH�HYHU\GD\�UHDOLVP�RI� WKHVH�SKRWRJUDSKV�FRQWULEXWHV�VXEVWDQWLDOO\�towards demystifying Tibet in the imperial context. Through these photographic explorations, Tibet emerges as a region of many interactive cultural realities, all undergoing rapid change in this period.4

37H[W�TXRWHG�IURP�SDJH��RI�DSSOLFDWLRQ�E\�(OL]DEHWK�(GZDUGV��3,��&ODUH�+DUULV�DQG�5LFKDUG�%OXUWRQ��FR�DSSOLFDQWV��WR�$UWV�DQG�+XPDQLWLHV�5HVHDUFK�%RDUG��0D\��

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7KH� ZHE� UHVRXUFH� DV� ¿QDOO\� SXEOLVKHG� LQ� 'HFHPEHU� �� PDNHV� DURXQG�6000 photographs available online, along with a large amount of additional documentation, such as diaries, biographies, maps, etc. Not only can users navigate material by photographer, date, location, place, or named individual, they can also create their own virtual album of selections from the website, which they can save or share with other users. The wealth of supplementary resources presented alongside the images give the resource added value beyond its function as a database of the combined collections of two museums. Of particular historical interest is the way in which images have been cross-referenced between the various different albums, collections, and lists in which the same, or similar images appear. When viewing any individual photograph record, the different performances of the same image appear as thumbnails in the record. One example LV� D� SKRWRJUDSK� FDSWLRQHG� µ7VDURQJ¶V� IDPLO\� DW� KRPH¶� E\� )UHGHULFN� 6SHQFHU�Chapman.5 On the detail page for this photograph the scan is presented above a ODUJH�DPRXQW�RI�GRFXPHQWDWLRQ�UHFRUGLQJ�LWV�LQVWLWXWLRQDO�KLVWRU\�DQG�LGHQWL¿HUV��but also its ‘primary documentation’, such as Chapman’s original catalogue information; the fact that the print had been exhibited in 2003 in the exhibition ‘Seeing Lhasa’ at the PRM and published in the accompanying book; detailed biographical notes about the individuals in the image; additional information about its original numbering; a quote from Chapman’s book Lhasa: The Holy City (1938) about Tsarong and his house; and the ability to see all images from WKH�VDPH�¿OP�UROO��7R�WKH�ULJKW�RI�WKH�UHFRUG�DUH�WKXPEQDLOV�RI�UHODWHG�GDWDEDVH�records: for the same image in Chapman’s photo hand-list; the same image in +XJK�5LFKDUGVRQ¶V�DOEXP�DW�WKH�%ULWLVK�0XVHXP��DQRWKHU�YLHZ�RI�WKH�LPDJH�LQ�Richardson’s album showing the whole album page; another print of the same image in the Chapman collection at the PRM, which when linked to, also shows a UHYHUVH�LPDJH�FRQWDLQLQJ�DQQRWDWLRQV��DQG�¿QDOO\�D�UDZ�VFDQ�YHUVLRQ�RI�WKH�SULQW��which is a version without any image software manipulation and appears more sepia than the adjusted main version.

One of the most innovative aspects of the resource is the mapping of photographs. Not only are places on an interactive map actively linked to all images taken in that place, but users can also explore the routes taken by the colonial photographers on their various missions, and explore the photographs chronologically as they progressed along their routes. On a separate map of Lhasa, key landmarks are activated so that views of them by different photographers are retrieved, especially the Potala Palace, which was photographed so frequently, and from so many vantage points, that a compass is presented so that users can choose whether to see for instance all views from the south (most popular, with 53 views), or northwest (least popular, with one view). This sort of organization RI�WKH�UHVRXUFH�DGGV�VLJQL¿FDQWO\�WR�RXU�XQGHUVWDQGLQJ�RI�WKH�DUFKLYH��,W�SUHVHQWV�it as a complex interconnected body of material derived from individual

56HH� KWWS��WLEHW�SUP�R[�DF�XN�SKRWRB��KWPO� >DFFHVVHG� �� 'HFHPEHU�2012].





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photographers all recording the same views, events, people and activities. The interconnections are not only at the level of image content, in the sense of similar subject matter, but also in terms of the material lives of the photographs as they were reproduced, exchanged, and represented by members of the same mission in the years afterwards.

The Tibet Album resource attempts to foreground such material biographies of images without impeding other direct engagements with the photographs as images, for instance by indigenous users wishing to use the website mostly as a source of images of relatives rather than as historically complex documents. The extent to which it achieves this is somewhat mixed; there are Tibetan language elements, including names in the biographical sketches, but the design of the

Figure 14.2 Screen shot of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Tibet Album project website showing the detailed record for a photograph titled ‘Tsarong’s family at home’ (accession number 1998.131.479.1) [http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk; accessed 4 November 2013]





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UHVRXUFH�LV�ZHLJKWHG�VLJQL¿FDQWO\�WRZDUGV�VFKRODUO\�LQWHUHVWV��IRU�LQVWDQFH�LQ�WKH�way that the wealth of historical context is promoted, both textually and visually, and the somewhat ungenerous size of the actual image on any detail page, when compared to the lengthy space given to documentation below it. To a certain extent, WKLV�LV�D�UHÀHFWLRQ�RI�WKH�H[SHFWDWLRQV�DQG�SULRULWLHV�RI�WKH�IXQGLQJ�VRXUFH�LQYROYHG�in both these projects, being a UK research council scheme for the enhancement of a scholarly resource.

Luo Visual History http://photos.prm.ox.ac.uk/luo

7KH�ZHE�UHVRXUFH�/XR�9LVXDO�+LVWRU\��ZKLFK�ZDV�SXEOLVKHG�RQOLQH�LQ�-XQH��makes available online around 350 photographs relating to the Luo of western Kenya in the PRM collections, dating from 1900 to 1936. The website was the byproduct of an exhibition and research project conducted by the author and Kenyan archaeologist Gilbert Oteyo in early 2007 (Morton and Oteyo 2009; Morton and Oteyo forthcoming; Bouquet 2012: 174–7). The project was funded E\�WKH�DXWKRU¶V�&DUHHU�'HYHORSPHQW�)HOORZVKLS�DW�WKH�350�6 which focused on the E.E. Evans-Pritchard photograph collection, and the website was created in-house by a web designer who was being employed on other projects at the time. The core of the Luo project was a travelling exhibition, titled Paro Manene (a 'KROXR� SKUDVH�PHDQLQJ� µUHÀHFWLQJ� RQ� WKH� SDVW¶�� ZKLFK�ZDV� KRVWHG� LQ� VHYHUDO�village locations in Nyanza Province for a few days at a time, in order to connect the photographs to the areas in which they were taken, mostly by anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard during a brief six-week tour in 1936, as well as much earlier SULQWV�E\�WKH�DGPLQLVWUDWRU�&�:��+REOH\��DURXQG��7KH�ZHEVLWH�DOORZV�XVHUV�to follow the exhibition sections as curated by Oteyo, with the images and texts presented by him arranged under different headings, such as ‘Odiero odonjo (the Luo Encounter with Europeans)’, and ‘Mano jananga (the Westernization of the Luo)’. Also presented are images taken of the exhibition as it was displayed in the village locations, with visitors engaging with the exhibition panels, often hung from lines of string. A series of thematic categories are suggested for browsing (under the heading ‘Explore’), including portraiture, landscapes, archaeology, homesteads, cattle, personal adornment, and the Luo mortuary ceremony tero buru. What is of interest here is the way in which such thematic categories can EH�PDSSHG�GLUHFWO\�RQWR� WKH�SKRWRJUDSKLF� LQWHUHVWV�RI�ERWK�+REOH\�DQG�(YDQV�Pritchard, which has the effect of reinforcing–even naturalizing–the ethnographic vision as developed within their respective projects. Re-presenting such archival visions of Luo culture online, the effect is created that such cultural categories are contemporary themes, when in fact they are historically and epistemologically circumscribed.

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Shortly after the Paro Manene exhibitions took place, the disputed presidential elections of 27 December 2007 led to widespread violence. Nyanza saw much of this violence since this was the home region of opposition leader Raila Odinga. It is now clear that much of the violence was largely politically motivated, involving new factors such as religion, age, and economic deprivation (Cheeseman 2008). The project thereby took place at a time when national issues of ethnic identity and politics were very much part of local discourse, especially related to the economic development of Nyanza Province. Some of the recorded responses to the exhibition suggested that politics, economic development, and museum projects were closely linked in some people’s minds, especially in the calls for local authorities to establish a Luo cultural centre as a means of consolidating a sense of Luo historical identity.7 With the Luo website being developed against this traumatic political backdrop, we were concerned how such a resource would be read in the wider Kenyan national context, and whether we as staff at a Western museum were contributing to the reinforcement of historical ethnic divisions, ZKLFK�WKH�%ULWLVK�FRORQLDO�DGPLQLVWUDWLRQ�KDG�GRQH�VR�PXFK�WR�IRVWHU�LQ�WKH�¿UVW�place. In the event, no comments along these lines have ever been sent to me as the relevant curator, and indeed much use has been made of the website in the direction of positive cultural exploration by Luo groups and individuals, especially in the diaspora (see below).

Materiality

As has been indicated, both Sudan and Tibet web resources were especially concerned with the presentation of photographs as material objects, and both websites adopted strategies to this end. In contrast to the Sudan and Tibet websites, the decision was made during the Luo project to digitize negatives where possible in order to produce higher quality exhibition images for the Paro Manene project, which were then also used for the website. This meant that Evans-Pritchard’s Luo prints were not scanned, although the earlier print material, such as prints E\�+REOH\��ZHUH�VFDQQHG�DQG�SUHVHQWHG�RQOLQH��)RU�D�QXPEHU�RI�UHDVRQV��LW�ZDV�considered less important to show Evans-Pritchard’s Luo prints, partly since he had QRW�DQQRWDWHG�WKHP�RQ�WKH�IURQW�DV�KH�KDG�KLV�1XHU�SULQWV��+RZHYHU��WKH�PDWHULDOLW\�of the negative is present in the online resource, since the scans were all made just EH\RQG�WKH�HPXOVLRQ�FRDWLQJ�RQ�WKH�¿OP�DQG�WKXV�JR�EH\RQG�WKH�ERXQGDU\�RI�WKH�image content. This delineation of the image frame is important since it presents numerous imperfections in the emulsion edges, scratches, and occasional double H[SRVXUHV�DW�WKH�HGJH�RI�WKH�¿OP�

The employment of a dedicated scanning technician on the Tibet project enabled a more sophisticated interrogation of the physical objects than either

76XFK�FRPPHQWV�ZHUH�QRWHG�E\�VHYHUDO�YLVLWRUV�WR�WKH�H[KLELWLRQ�YLVLWRUV¶�ERRN��3LWW�5LYHUV�0XVHXP�3KRWRJUDSK�&ROOHFWLRQV��5HODWHG�'RFXPHQWV�)LOH�IRU�FROOHFWLRQ��





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6XGDQ� RU� /XR�ZHEVLWHV� RIIHU��+RZHYHU�� WKH� H[WHQW� WR�ZKLFK� WKLV� LV�PDGH� IXOO\�PHDQLQJIXO�ZLWKLQ�WKH�OLPLWDWLRQV�RI�D�ZHE�UHVRXUFH�LV�TXHVWLRQDEOH��)RU�LQVWDQFH��UHÀHFWLYH�VFDQV�RI�QHJDWLYHV�DUH�PDGH�DYDLODEOH�IRU�GLUHFW�FRPSDULVRQ�ZLWK�WKH�PDLQ�image, the central reason for doing so being the interrogation of the negative as an object, on which manuscript annotations have been made by the photographer. +RZHYHU��VLQFH�WKHUH�LV�QR�DELOLW\�WR�WKHQ�]RRP�LQWR�WKHVH�LPDJHV�VXFK�DQQRWDWLRQV�are not readable, and the image loses most of its research potential. Arguably, since such annotations are anyway recorded in the catalogue record beneath, such functionality adds little but visual corroboration that the image is derived from an actual archival object, which has a material existence in the Museum. Rather WKDQ�IXO¿OOLQJ�D�XVHIXO�UHVHDUFK�IXQFWLRQ�YLVXDOO\��WKH�QHJDWLYH�DV�DQ�REMHFW�KHUH�could be seen as symbolizing an anxiety about curatorial authority, especially in the representation of knowledge about photographic objects, and in the ability to translate information cross-culturally. Where the Tibet website is most successful in thinking through materiality is in its connections to other performances of the same image, both in the collection of the same photographer (such as in an album), or else in that of another collection (for instance, via exchange). To trace print histories in this way is to fully acknowledge that photographs don’t just appear – they are printed, selected, arranged, labelled, grouped and presented in different ways over time. These sets of fascinating photographic and intellectual connections are achieved in an innovative way that makes full use of the possibilities allowed for within an online environment.

The decision to only digitize the prints within the PRM southern Sudan collection, partly as a result of funding restrictions which meant that no dedicated VFDQQLQJ�WHFKQLFLDQ�ZDV�DYDLODEOH��OHG�WR�VLJQL¿FDQW�GDWDEDVH�LVVXHV��LQ�SDUWLFXODU�how to avoid showing essentially duplicate database results for negatives and prints of the same images, half of which would state ‘This record has no image’. As already indicated, the solution was to show only thumbnail results for prints, and in the record to indicate that other associated records exist for negatives, which can be linked to. The Tibet Album also returns far fewer thumbnail results than photographic objects in the collection, prioritizing one record over others (frequently the negative), which is then reconnected to associated records (for instance, album prints, lantern slides) from the detailed record page.

This may seem a mostly logistical set of considerations, but it is in fact a critical issue. Website designs are driven by a particular set of assumptions about user expectation and behaviour. The main assumption made by all three websites discussed here is that, despite a curatorial emphasis upon the materiality of the photograph, and the multiple performances that an image may make in different IRUPV��WKHVH�FRQFHUQV�DUH�GLI¿FXOW�WR�PDS�RQWR�ZHE�XVDJH�QRUPV�ZKHQ�LW�FRPHV�to interrogating image resources online. All three websites prioritize thumbnail image search results as the preferred method of sharing curatorial knowledge about the resource in response to a user text query. And all three websites prioritize one performance of an image over any other as part of this interaction with the user, to ‘represent’ all performances of that image in the collection. The curatorial





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concern with materiality and multiple image performances then becomes a set of secondary considerations, given the demands of web user expectations that they engage with unique images when searching photograph collections.

The concern with materiality also raises another critical issue, which is the extent to which curatorial anxiety about engaging with photographs as objects UHVWULFWV�WKH�DELOLW\�RI�WKH�LPDJH�WR�FRPPXQLFDWH�DW�WKH�OHYHO�RI�LPDJH�FRQWHQW��)RU�instance, the digitization of Evans-Pritchard’s working prints within the Sudan project, which are marked with his own annotations (e.g. ‘Nuer IX/58’), heightens the apprehension of the photograph as an archival object, but simultaneously closes off the potential for the image to be released from its multiple archival contexts, for instance by indigenous viewers wishing to reclaim them. This is a critical issue since it strikes at the heart of the question of whom online ethnographic resources are for. Are they mostly for a Western scholarly community in which archival layers are crucial evidence of the way in which photographs accumulate meaning over time, within a discipline and an institution? Or are they images of places, ancestors, histories, for indigenous and diasporic communities, to be UHFODLPHG��UHWKRXJKW��DQG�UHFRQ¿JXUHG� LQ�HQWLUHO\�QHZ�ZD\V"�7KH�ZHE�SURMHFWV�discussed in this chapter all set out to engage with both these senses of audience, but the insistence on material and archival contexts inevitably denies some other types of visual engagement. The Sudan website for instance would have looked VLJQL¿FDQWO\�GLIIHUHQW�LI�RULJLQDO�QHJDWLYHV�KDG�EHHQ�GLJLWL]HG�LQVWHDG��DQG�VKRZQ�DW�a larger size. Without the presence of archival annotations, and discolouration due to poor preservation and processing of the prints, the images would have collapsed temporal and cultural distance in a way that is heightened with the prints.

7KLV� HIIHFW� LV� H[HPSOL¿HG� LQ� DQ�H[KLELWLRQ�DQG�ERRN� WLWOHG�Congo belge en images, organized by Johan Lagae and Carl De Keyzer the Magnum photographer (Lagae 2012). As part of this project, the curators worked from original negatives, retouching and enhancing them so as to produce the best possible image from the source. The result is a set of images that have the look and feel of a Magnum photographer working today, which then jars against elements of the image which gradually strike the viewer as historical, such as dress and colonial situations. The effect of the temporal collapse is unsettling since the visual cues that we usually pick up on to register images as historical, such as sepia colour, scratches, and other imperfections, are all removed. The effect is dramatic, but only since we are not used to seeing historical imagery without such visual cues regarding their historicity. But the removal of the negative’s materiality in this way also opens completely new ways of engaging with historical photographs – simply as images, at the level of the image itself, released from its archival and material contexts. The theoretical discussion on indigenous processes of ‘looking past’ colonial contexts of image production is relevant here, something noted by Aboriginal writers such as Michael Aird (2003: 25) and Donna Oxenham (quoted in Lydon 2010: 247). Whilst it is true that many indigenous people will engage directly with the image content in order to reclaim the histories held there, it is less clear to what extent curatorial judgements about the formats and contexts in





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ZKLFK�VXFK�LPDJHV�DUH�SUHVHQWHG�DIIHFW�VXFK�SURFHVVHV�RI�UHFHSWLRQ��+RSHIXOO\�the next generation of ethnographies on indigenous image reception of archival collections will be revealing.

Reappropriations

Many images from the websites discussed in this chapter have been reappropriated by a wide range of other web users, almost all without the formal consent of the PRM. In addition to websites, the dramatic shift towards online social networking environments has meant that the photographs are increasingly involved in highly ephemeral social interactions which nonetheless leave an indelible mark online. Consider for example the posting of two of Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer photographs within an online conversation on the microblogging and social networking web service tumblr which allows users to post multimedia and other content on a short-form blog.8 The two images are presented with some caption text derived from the PRM website, by a user known as mrmontag��)ROORZLQJ�WKH�OLQN�WR�WKLV�user shows that they have published three of Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer photographs on tumblr, all of which have attracted comments from other users, mostly using WKH�)DFHERRN�VW\OH�µOLNH¶�IDFLOLW\��EXW�RQH�VXJJHVWLQJ�WKDW�WKH�LPDJH�VKRZHG�WKDW�Evans-Pritchard was showing an artistic side with the photograph in question. Examples of online museum content being reappropriated within social media now abound. The range of new meanings and contexts being generated for the images is endless, and a cross-section through such recontextualizations using online ethnographic methods would be of real interest. As some researchers have discussed, such virtual ethnographies involve images as part of the way in which ULFK�DQG�FRPSOH[�RQOLQH�VRFLDO�IRUPDWLRQV�DUH�FRQ¿JXUHG��+LQH��$V�RWKHU�researchers have shown, the contexts in which online archival data move over time also change, as do its audiences, and so the secondary analysis of qualitative data produced as part of the projects discussed in this chapter will ‘repurpose’ the original intentions of the projects (Carmichael 2008), such as demonstrating the visual and material basis of the social anthropology of South Sudan, or the construction of a distinctive colonial vision of Tibet. Increasingly, ethnographers of online sociality are coming to understand archival images online, not as virtual objects, the abstract representation of ‘real’ things in the museum collection, but DV�µDFKLHYLQJ�¿UVW�FODVV�REMHFW�VWDWXV��LQ�WKH�VHQVH�WKDW�SHRSOH�FDQ�PDQLSXODWH�WKHP�SUHFLVHO\�DV�WKH\�ZRXOG�PDQLSXODWH�µUHDO¶�REMHFWV��)LVFKHU�HW�DO��,Q�WKLV�sense, museums should see themselves as the creators, rather than curators, of new types of digital artefact.

More conventional web reappropriations (or ‘repurposings’) of the photographs have also taken place over the last few years. One of the most interesting is the Anyuak Mini Museum, part of a website whose stated purpose

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is ‘for the members of the Anyuak society to meet, to discuss, and to learn about themselves, and the world around them. It is also where we can express and share our joy and sorrow.’9�,W�VHHPV�WR�KDYH�¿UVW�DSSHDUHG�RQOLQH�LQ�-DQXDU\��DQG�is hosted on a server in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Anyuak Mini Museum includes nearly 100 images from the PRM southern Sudan project website, including nearly seventy photographs taken by Evans-Pritchard from his 1935 Anuak ¿HOGZRUN��7KH�LQWURGXFWRU\�WH[W�PDNHV�DQ�LQWHUHVWLQJ�SOD\�RQ�WKH�RI¿FLDO�SURMHFW�title of ‘Recovering the material and visual cultures of the southern Sudan: a museological resource’ by stating that the Anyuak Mini Museum includes images of ‘the recovered material and visual cultures of the Anyuak’.10 This shift in the meaning of cultural recovery, from the scholarly attempt to reinsert material and visual culture within the study of South Sudanese society, to the indigenous perspective of healing and reclaiming heritage after decades of civil ZDU��H[HPSOL¿HV�WKH�PXWDELOLW\�RI�PHDQLQJ�LQKHUHQW�LQ�WKH�SKRWRJUDSKLF�LPDJH�as it becomes a new digital object, appropriated and repurposed in new historical and cultural contexts online. Occasionally this also takes the form of refashioning WKH�LPDJH��2Q�WKH�KRPHSDJH�RI�WKH�/XR�GLDVSRUD�JURXS�/XR�6RFLDO�)RUXP��EDVHG�LQ�,OIRUG��8.��D�¿JXUH�ZHDULQJ�D�KHDGGUHVV�DQG�KROGLQJ�D�VWDII�LV�SUHVHQWHG��FXW�out from its original frame and source, a photograph by Evans-Pritchard from 1936.11�7KH�¿JXUH�KDV�EHHQ�ÀLSSHG�KRUL]RQWDOO\� WR� IDFH� LQWR� WKH�ZHESDJH��DQG�VRPH�VHSLD�FRORXULQJ�DOVR�DSSOLHG��7KH�¿JXUH�OHDQV�WRZDUGV�D�ZLQGRZ�LQ�ZKLFK�images of Barack Obama (whose grandfather was Luo) scroll past, including his inauguration and visit to Luoland in 2007. In this sense the archival image acts as a source for an entirely new historical and political vision of Luo identity in the past and present. Yet in using such image elements as the basis for a design that UHIHUHQFHV�FXOWXUDO�LGHQWLW\��WKH�/XR�6RFLDO�)RUXP�ZHE�GHVLJQHU�LV�GRLQJ�QRWKLQJ�more than the designer of the PRM’s own southern Sudan website did in creating DQ�LFRQ�IRU�WKDW�ZHEVLWH��ZKLFK�FRQWDLQV�VHYHUDO�¿JXUHV�VHDWHG�XQGHU�D�WUHH��DOO�GHULYHG�IURP�¿JXUHV�LQ�DQ�RULJLQDO�SKRWRJUDSK�E\�-HDQ�%X[WRQ�LQ�0DQGDUL�12

Conclusion

This chapter has explored the way in which three web projects related to historical photography at the Pitt Rivers Museum between 2003 and 2008 were approached, and especially the interpretive and representational issues involved. It was shown that the intellectual approach in all three projects was to present the photographs

96HH�KWWS��ZZZ�DQ\XDNPHGLD�FRP�$ERXW8V�KWPO�>DFFHVVHG��'HFHPEHU��@�106HH� KWWS� ��ZZZ�DQ\XDNPHGLD�FRP �$Q\XDN� ��0LQL ��0XVHXP �LQGH[�KWP�

[accessed 11 December 2012].116HH�KWWS��ZZZ�OXR�VRFLDOIRUXP�RUJ�>DFFHVVHG��'HFHPEHU��@�126HH�KWWS��VRXWKHUQVXGDQ�SUP�R[�DF�XN�GHWDLOV��>DFFHVVHG��'HFHPEHU�

2012].





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as material culture objects rather than images, with an emphasis upon archival documentation, as well as the institution as generator of photographic meaning. Whilst this approach is consistent with the PRM’s curatorial approach to photograph FROOHFWLRQV�� LW�ZDV� DUJXHG� WKDW� UHFHQW� VLJQL¿FDQW� VKLIWV� LQ� WKH�ZD\� WKDW� ,QWHUQHW�audiences (including indigenous audiences) engage with imagery online, have meant that academic concerns with representing the materiality of photographs on the web may inadvertently close down the potential range of alternative readings and uses of historic images. The original academic concern in these projects was that if images were presented as disconnected from their archival and material contexts, it would undermine the institution’s intellectual rationale for making the UHVRXUFHV�DYDLODEOH�LQ�WKH�¿UVW�SODFH��7KHUH�FRQWLQXH�WR�EH�VRXQG�DFDGHPLF�JURXQGV�for this approach to the photographic image, yet the argument in this chapter has been that such concerns often translate poorly online given the range of potential audiences, and that in the examples discussed, the logistical challenges of creating a website meant that most of the academic concerns with material contexts were either compromised or remained implicit, rather than being demonstrated. ,QGHHG�WKH�GLI¿FXOW\�RI�VXFK�ZHE�UHVRXUFHV�WR�DFWLYHO\�GHPRQVWUDWH�WKH�UHVHDUFK�potential of academic approaches such as that of materiality (rather than existing DV�SRWHQWLDO� VRXUFHV� IRU�VXFK� UHVHDUFK�� OHG� WR� WKH�$+5&¶V�GHFLVLRQ� WR�FORVH� WKH�Resource Enhancement Scheme in 2006. Despite evidence that suggested that such web resources were valued, it appeared from most evaluations hard to verify that target audiences had been reached or that the enhanced resource had impacted

Figure 14.3 Screen shot of part of the Luo Social Forum website homepage [http://www.luo-socialforum.org; accessed 23 August 2012]





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on academic research activities.13 The sustainability of museum web resources remains a critical area and the web projects discussed in this chapter still face an uncertain future.14 With the development of an illustrated version of the PRM’s photograph collections database in 2012, the innovation of making collections visible becomes less relevant, as does the information held on the websites, since their data is not updated or updateable without additional funding. What remains of lasting value from these projects is the depth of detailed research brought to bear on these collections, and the subsequent social lives they have lived, as transcultural digital objects online.

References

Aird, Michael. 2003. ‘Growing up with aborigines’, in Photography’s Other Histories, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 23–39.

Bouquet, Mary. 2012. Museums: A Visual Anthropology. Oxford: Berg.Carmichael, Patrick. 2008. ‘Secondary qualitative analysis using internet

resources’, in The Sage Handbook of Online Research Methods, edited by 1LJHO�)LHOGLQJ��5D\PRQG�0��/HH�DQG�*UDQW�%ODQN��/RQGRQ��6DJH��±��

&KDSPDQ�� )UHGHULFN� 6SHQFHU�� Lhasa: The Holy City. London: Chatto & Windus.

Cheeseman, Nicholas. 2008. ‘The Kenyan elections of 2007: An introduction’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2: 166–84. DOI:10.1080/ 17531050802058286.

Edwards, Elizabeth. 1989. ‘A question of image: Introduction’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, Vol. 1: 1–3.

Edwards, Elizabeth. 2001. Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology, and Museums. Oxford: Berg.

Edwards, Elizabeth. 2002. ‘Material beings: Objecthood and ethnographic photographs’, Visual Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1: 67–75. DOI:10.1080/1472586 0220137336.

Edwards, Elizabeth. 2013. Personal communication.(GZDUGV��(OL]DEHWK�DQG�-DQLFH�+DUW��µ0L[HG�ER[��7KH�FXOWXUDO�ELRJUDSK\�RI�D�

ER[�RI�µHWKQRJUDSKLF¶�SKRWRJUDSKV¶��LQ�(��(GZDUGV�DQG�-��+DUW��HGV��Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images. London: Routledge, 47–61.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

13'DYLG�5REH\��SHUVRQDO�FRPPXQLFDWLRQ��0D\��146HH�WKH��$+5&�GRFXPHQW�µ6XVWDLQDELOLW\�RI�GLJLWDO�RXWSXWV�IURP�$+5&�5HVRXUFH�

Enhancement Projects’ http://www.ahrcict.rdg.ac.uk/activities/review/sustainability08.pdf [accessed 11 December 2012].





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