Book review: An Eloquent Picture Gallery

Published Oct 21, 2010

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An Eloquent Picture Gallery

edited by Keith Dietrich and Andrew Bank (Jacana, R295)

This is a collection of 234 photographs taken by Gustav Theodor Fritsch during a visit to South Africa and Botswana from 1863 to 1865.

Fritsch was a gifted photographer in the pioneering days of photography and produced "native portraits" which he subsequently used in an anthropological study demonstrating the racial typology that dominated European anthropology and underpinned European attitudes to the colonial "other".

Identity is not static and the encounter between colonialism and local cultures effected profound changes. Fritsch's photographs capture a moment in this dynamic process.

Gustav Fritsch's photographs contribute an important challenge to the long dominance of identity politics that sanctioned notions of superiority. - John Boje

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