Colonial women and (representations of) the Other in German travel writing: Lotte Errell’s 'Kleine Reise zu schwarzen Menschen' (1931)

(1)

Colonial

women

and

(representations of) the Other

in German travel writing: Lotte

Errell’s

Kleine Reise zu

schwarzen Menschen (1931)

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the

degree of Master of Arts in Literature, Culture and Society

(German language track)

Graduate School of Humanities

Universiteit van Amsterdam

25

th

_{of June 2019}

(2)

ABSTRACT

In her 1931 book Kleine Reise zu schwarzen Menschen, the German photojournalist Lotte Errell published the photographs she had taken on a journey she undertook in West Africa alongside a rambling travel narrative, detailing her experiences in the colonial territories of Togoland and the British Gold Coast. This thesis seeks to analyse Errell’s representation(s) of the Other in this book, using a postcolonial framework to examine her treatment of the colonies and the colonised subjects she encountered on her journey. In addition, Errell’s subject position as a ‘colonial woman’ travelling through these territories is considered and the manner in which she negotiates this in the colonial environment is emphasised with regard to its influence on her production of images on a visual and textual level. Through analysis of the book’s production, the photographs it contains and the travel narratives that constitute the written account of Errell’s journey, this thesis argues that the multiplicity of her discursive position resulted in the construction of conflicting representations of the colonised Other, producing a depiction that is simultaneously reductionist and a. Ultimately, this thesis acknowledges this complexity as resulting in a highly ambiguous representation of the Other and locates this within contemporary scholarship on the position of colonial women.

(4)

1. INTRODUCTION

Lotte Errell’s Kleine Reise zu schwarzen Menschen (henceforth Kleine Reise) was published in 1931 and is a short book comprised of a travelogue detailing a journey Errell took through parts of West Africa, accompanied the photographs she took on this expedition. These images constitute approximately half of the book’s eighty-eight pages and were taken in various locales under the control of British imperialism, having been occupied as part of the German colonial empire prior to World War One. Although the German empire ceased to exist in 1920 as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles, signed after the country’s defeat in the First World War, the country’s imperial presence did not vanish from its former colonies overnight. Some of the territories that Errell visited had been under German occupation until what was for her relatively recently (Schilling 2009, p. 140). In territories such as Togoland, the German presence had been abolished after the First World War. Despite this, the former colonies were still held under imperial control after Allied administration enacted a military campaign to strip Germany of its colonies and subsequently took over the management of affairs in the affected regions before officially merging them into existing imperial areas of jurisdiction – for instance, Togoland was divided into British Togoland and French Togoland after 1922. In other areas that Errell visited (for example, the British Gold Coast), the imperial empire that had been present since the colonial project was established was still in existence (here, the British empire). However, even in the states no longer under German authority, the German colonial presence lingered and persisting colonial remnants and fantasies pervaded the cultural milieu that Errell occupied as a German woman in the early twentieth century. The legacy of imperialism was also evident in Germany after the nation had been stripped of its territories, with extensive material and ideological campaigns of colonial revisionism aiding in the construction and upholding of a sustained ‘colonial imaginary’ throughout the years of the Weimar Republic (van Hoesen, p. 200). As a contemporary of this era, Errell’s travels to and within Africa were conducted within the historical context of these lingering interwar colonial fantasies, as were the textual and visual products of her journey.

(5)

This thesis will use the book that documents Errell’s journey to Africa as the case study for an examination of how identities intersect to influence the production of specific images in a (post)colonial context. In the discursive sense, Errell’s identity was comprised of multiple varied parts: she was a white Jewish German woman travelling and working as a professional photographer within the former German colonial territories in Africa during the late 1920s. Blunt and Rose describe marginality as ‘relative for white colonising women who were positioned both inside and outside colonial discourses’ (p. 13) and this gender-based theorising will be developed further apropos of other aspects of Errell’s subject position, which was multiple and therefore influenced by varying, often conflicting factors. The consequent instability and fluidity of these intersecting identities results in a constant state of renegotiation regarding where Errell might be located within their respective discourses. With all this in mind, this thesis ultimately intends to answer the following research question:

What kind of image of the (former) German colonies did Lotte Errell construct in her

Kleine Reise zu schwarzen Menschen and how did her unfixed subject position as a

‘colonial woman’ influence her visual and textual representation of the individuals, locations and cultures she encountered there?

In its analysis of Errell’s image construction, this thesis will utilise theories of travel writing, photography, postcolonialism, and gender as conceptual frameworks through which to examine three core aspects of Kleine Reise. Firstly, the conditions of its production (including physical format, publication and reception) will be assessed, as these play a key role in the manifestation and broadcasting of that image construction initially produced by the text itself as well as influencing the text’s synthesis. Secondly, Errell’s photographs will themselves be critically appraised, both independently as representations of Errell’s travels in their own right and also contextualised alongside the written account of her travels (which was the circumstances under which they were originally printed). Finally, a textual analysis of the the travelogue that comprises the book’s written component will be presented. This section will assess Errell’s position as an individual within the colonial framework under which she was

(6)

operating and how this is expressed through her commentary, constructing a thematic approach with a focus on several relatively broad subject areas within the text as lenses through which to conduct this analysis.

The modern perspective and historical context will also be taken into account when examining Errell’s position. Nuance is vital when dealing with such a fluid discursive subject – labelling Errell’s commentary and subsequent image production with such black and white terms as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or even ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ is relatively unproductive when it comes to analysis of an individual and their work that intends to take into account the complexities of their discursive situation, particularly when their historical context is considered. A constructive examination of the circumstances that resulted in Errell’s cultural output requires an awareness of these complexities, understanding that her subject position does not provide automatic exemption from from discourses surrounding other identities, nor does it mean that she had an intrinsic level of identification with others marked as discursively fluid by virtue of their identities. This thesis proposes the employment of a literary analysis of Errell’s book as a case study for the purposes of drawing conclusions that may be utilised in the wider context of scholarship surrounding (post)coloniality and gender. Academic analysis of Errell’s writing has been very limited, and it is intended that these conclusions contribute to existing research in this area through a deconstructive theoretical approach to colonial representations of the Other which takes into account the specificities of circumstance that influence their production.

(7)

2. METHODOLOGY

The primary mode of analysis in this thesis will be a close reading of Errell’s Kleine Reise, examined through a critical framework which works with theories of postcolonialism and gender. Particular focus on the intersection of these admittedly very broad disciplines and the utilisation of existing scholarship produced at this junction will allow for a more theoretically specific lens through which to analyse the text and result in a more nuanced conclusion. As the text in question is a travelogue, the employment of relevant theory on travel writing will also be required in order to provide a thorough and considered response to the research questions that this thesis aims to answer.

Although this thesis is intended principally as a piece of literary analysis, critical attention will also be paid to the photographs printed within the book alongside Errell’s travel account. The text was published as an accompaniment to these photographs – Errell was a professional photographer, not a writer by trade1_{– and therefore should be considered in this}

context. For this reason, this thesis will also utilise theories of photography and the imperialist gaze in order to properly contextualise the travelogue and provide a more thorough examination of Errell’s image construction, both textual and visual.

1 Kleine Reise zu schwarzen Menschen was written at the beginning of her professional life, but Errell did develop her journalistic skills throughout her career and report in writing as well as through images. However, her primary occupation was and would remain photojournalism.

(8)

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

3.1 Who was Lotte Errell? A brief biography

Prior to a discussion of the theory that will be applied as critical framework for an analysis of Lotte Errell’s book, it is pertinent to consider her life and work for contextual purposes. Little biographical information has been published on Errell; although she lived until 1991, she retired from photojournalism in the 1950s and was rarely interviewed. An exhibition of her work took place in 1997 at the Museum Folkwang in Essen and resulted in the publication of the first (and so far, only) comprehensive biography of Lotte Errell, published as a relatively minor text as an accompaniment to an extensive collection of her photographs. Ute Eskildsen, the editor of this text, spoke with Errell in 1982 and was able to obtain much biographical information directly (Eskildsen 1994, p. 5). This biography, alongside information from a profile on Errell included in a 1994 exhibition at the same museum, constitutes the sole source for much of what is known about Errell’s life and travels.

Born as Lotte Rosenberg in 1903, she took on the artistic pseudonym ‘Errell’ upon her marriage to photographer Richard Levy in 1924 (who used this alias for his own publications) and her subsequent work was published under this alias (Wiethoff, ‘Fahren zu fremden Welten’ p. 6). Although she received no formal training as a photographer, her work in her husband’s atelier allowed for a kind of hands-on education in the subject2_{. Her career in}

photojournalism did not begin properly until her 1928/29 travels to and within Africa, the photographic and anecdotal results of which would ultimately constitute her first solo publication (and the subject of this thesis): Kleine Reise zu schwarzen Menschen, published two years later in 1931. On this trip, she accompanied the film director Dr. Friedrich Dalsheim and the ethnologist Gulla Pfeffer to the Gold Coast in West Africa, where they would make the film Menschen im Busch (to be released the following year) (Wiethoff, ‘Reisen als Publikationstätigkeit’ p. 258).

2 Errell described herself as an “Autodiktatin” with regard to both her photography and her journalism (Wiethoff, ‘Fahren’ p. 6).

(9)

Africa was the first of Errell’s foreign expeditions, but it was not to be the last. She followed up her trip almost immediately with a journey to China in 1931, an assignment on behalf of the Ullstein-Verlag (a prominent German publishing house based in Berlin, where Errell would put on an exhibition to display the products of her journey in 1933). She stayed in China for year and a quarter, photographing and interviewing myriad individuals from all walks of life – including the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, Pu Yi. During her stay, Errell photographed women of the upper classes and also continued her career in written journalism by penning pieces on child labour in the silk industry. One of her more impressive feats was managing to obtain an interview with the head of a secret society prominent in Shanghainese organised crime (Wiethoff, ‘Fahren’ p. 10). On her return to Europe, Errell divorced Richard Levy (although continued to use his pseudonym in her work). Errell’s next journey was undertaken in 1934, when she was given an assignment that allowed her to venture a little closer to her home country of Germany with a brief visit to England and Ireland. For several years, Errell was forced to publish anonymously as a consequence of the Gleichschaltung process3_{. This legislative operation was key in the early stages of the systematic}

disenfranchisement of Jewish citizens in Nazi Germany and for Errell (a Jewish woman) it took the form of a ban, preventing her from publishing under her own name. Officially, she was banned from publishing at all, but her contacts within German photojournalism helped her to continue working anonymously for a time. After several years of this forced anonymity, Errell was sent a document by the German Press Association at the end of 1934 (although it did not reach her until 1935, as she was in Baghdad at the time) confirming that she was now banned from publishing her work in any German magazine (Wiethoff, ‘Fahren’ p. 18). As a consequence of this, she remained in Baghdad in order to maintain her source of income and met her second husband (Dr. Herbert Sostmann) while there. During this time, Errell also travelled to Iran, Kurdistan, Lebanon and Syria for the purposes of her photojournalism, conducting interviews as well as taking photographs. In 1938, Errell crossed the Atlantic to

3 After the NSDAP came to power in 1936, German citizens experienced a ‘Nazification’ process on all levels of society, known as Gleichschaltung (literally ‘coordination’).

(10)

spend time in the Unites States on an assignment for a magazine, although she was not successful in her hopes to emigrate and build a career in photojournalism there.

During the Second World War, Errell’s position as a Jewish German was precarious to say the least. She was briefly interned in a camp in Iraq for her possession of a German passport and eventually sent to a camp in Uganda on the grounds of potential espionage for Germany, despite having been completely stripped of her German citizenship in 1941 (Wiethoff, ‘Fahren’ p. 18). She remained interned in camps until 1944. Upon her release she returned to the Middle East, and after the Allied victory and subsequent end of the war she planned to relocate to America. However, this second attempt to emigrate to the US was as unsuccessful as her first, and ultimately Errell chose to return to Germany with her husband in 1954; his disapproval of her work constituted part of the reason that Errell eventually gave up photography, alongside complications with her health. She stayed in Munich until her death in 1991, aged eighty-eight.

3.2 On German colonialism: interwar perspectives on the (former) African colonies

Germany began its formal colonial rule in the mid-1880s, occupying territories in Africa as well as several island regions in the Pacific. Schilling notes that it was a ‘latecomer’ to the colonial project and gained its territories significantly later than other imperial powers such as England and Spain, among others (2015, p. 427). Germany’s empire came to an abrupt end 30 years later after suffering defeat in World War I, forcing the country to decolonise and consequently transfer its former territories to Allied colonial powers such as Britain and France. This relatively short-lived colonial regime remained in the national consciousness despite the briefness of its existence and the cultural memory of empire remained dominant in the 1920s, immediately following its end. Nostalgia was rife and revisionists argued for the restoration of the colonies to Germany. This backlash stemmed in part from outrage at the idea of the ‘colonial guilt lie’, which upheld that Germany was not fit to rule after the First World War (Schilling 2015, p. 428). The colonial fantasy which persisted in Germany at the time is

(11)

an interesting phenomenon, considering the limited period of time that the German colonial project existed in actuality. Such a dominant yearning for the imperial past was therefore not rooted in a reality that had ever actually endured to the degree that might warrant such ‘fond memories’ – without diminishing the suffering caused by German colonial occupation, it is clear that this regime was comparatively insignificant in terms of global power and domination when examined alongside the scale of other imperial regimes operating at the time, such as the British empire.

3.3 Theories of travel writing and gender

Travel literature is a difficult ‘genre’ of literature to define. It has been described by scholar Mary Campbell as ‘text that generally proffers itself as ‘true’, as a representation of unaltered reality’ (p. 263); however, understanding what constitutes that reality and what cultural and social influences factor into the process of representing such a reality means that travel texts are ripe for critical analysis to investigate what kind of an image these texts are constructing and perpetuating. In her 2002 text ‘Travel writing and its theory’, Campbell situates travel literature within literary theoretical contexts; she discusses - through discourse theory4_{- its ties}

to postcolonialism (particularly the work of Edward Said), Othering, feminism, anti-Eurocentrism and post-structuralism, among other theoretical structures. Her analysis is not merely a succinct summary of travel writing theory since its inception (around the 1980s) but is also an excellent tool for understanding the multiple critical lenses through which travel writing can be analysed. A key such lens to be utilised for the purposes of this thesis is that of gender studies, an academic field which has been closely linked to travel writing analysis. In recent years, this discipline has also developed in conjunction with postcolonial theory and feminist perspectives on the colonial project are now extensive. Bringing together gender, postcolonialism and travel writing provides a strong theoretical framework for analysis.

4 Here referring to discourse in the Foucauldian sense, articulated succinctly by Weedon as ‘ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and the relations between them’ (1997, p. 105)

(12)

One such example of this analytical framework in action is the work done by Mary Louise Pratt in her book Imperial Eyes, which examines how travel writing by Europeans ‘produces’ the rest of the world for European readerships. Her concept of the ‘contact zone’ which deals with the ‘space of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with one another and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and irretractable conflict’ (Pratt, p. 8). Also developed in this work is the concept of ‘anti-conquest’, a term which Pratt defines as ‘refer[ring] to the strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony’ (p. 9). These theoretical terms assist the broader frameworks of postcolonialism and travel writing to come together in a dialectic conceptualisation specifically focused on the way that the titular imperial eyes engage with and simultaneously construct the ‘rest of the world’. Although Pratt acknowledges the role that gender plays in this and discusses such female writers such as Mary Kingsley in the imperial context, her conceptual ‘seeing-man’ is representative of the white male coloniser – ‘he whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess’ (p. 9, emphasis mine). It would seem that the woman who travels and writes is somewhat exceptional by virtue of her gender. If the default (colonial) travel writer is a masculine one, how and why does his female counterpart differ?

Within travel writing, as within the products of other literary genres, womanhood has been ‘marked’ as necessarily distinct – an identity divergent from that which ‘ought’ to be presumed the norm. Throughout history, travel writing has been conceptualised as the domain of rich Western men5_{, a tradition that has arguably continued to the present day. To be a female writer}

(or a black writer, an Eastern writer, etc.) is to be marked as ‘other’ by virtue of the identifying preceding descriptor. The white Western male is almost never identified as such; to be simply a ‘writer’ without a preceding delineator is to automatically prescribe to this Western and

5 Somewhat ironically so, considering that one of the first known pieces of (European) ‘travel writing’ to be identified as such was written by a woman – the travel account of Egeria, a pilgrim who documented her journey to the Holy land in the 5th_{century for her ‘sisters’ (likely in the monastic sense)}

(13)

masculine norm. That this norm is in itself a socially constructed identity – neither ‘Western-ness’ nor masculinity are biologically determined factors, but rather culturally designated and structurally perpetuated constructs – is rarely questioned. Although it can be argued that this is now slowly beginning to change, it was certainly the case for Lotte Errell and her contemporaries in the early-to-mid twentieth century. As mentioned previously, it is the intersection of such marked and non-marked identities that will be the focus of this thesis. To be a female travel writer is certainly to be classified as ‘other’; however, does this leave the woman writer exempt from the ‘unmarked’ discursive identities which she may also embody – for example, her whiteness, her Western-ness, her social class?

During imperial rule and the following postcolonial era, the relationship that the white Western woman traveller navigated with other discursive identities was complex and multiple. To argue that the female ‘marker’ negates any culturally constructed notions of superiority over those with different ‘othering’ identifiers - as Melman does when she claims that ‘Western women’s writing on ‘other’ women then substitutes a sense of solidarity of gender for sexual and racial superiority’ (p. 8) - is to theorise in a very simplistic and reductionist manner, ignoring the manifold structural ways in which the colonial woman was positioned differently to the ‘other’ women subjugated under imperial rule. In addition, her subject positioning in relation to the men living under colonial rule is much more complex than her relationship to the men of her contemporary society. Her marginality here is unstable and fluctuating; within the colonial context ‘patriarchal and colonial “discourses of difference” were spatially distinct’ (Mills, paraphrased in Blunt & Rose, p. 13) and therefore the subject position of the colonial woman was susceptible to frequent displacement. Mills has argued that ‘many […] women critics treat these writers as if they travelled as individuals and were not part of colonialism as a whole’ (p. 29). When a white, Western woman travelled to the colonies in Africa, she was doing so within the (post)colonial context and her gender, although a marginalising factor when perceived within the patriarchal context, did not exempt her from imperial constructions of racial superiority. She was therefore able to wield colonial power in her own right despite her structurally inferior position in the gender context due to the specific

(14)

colonial circumstances in which she was operating. In the 1920s/30s context in which Lotte Errell was operating, issues of women’s emancipation and colonial revisionism were certainly intimately linked. Schilling notes that women who ‘spoke the “language” of colonial revisionism were allowed to continue their independent and emancipated activities throughout the 1930s’ (2009, p. 155) – they were able to enjoy the relative freedoms that travel in the colonies offered them, but the cost of this was their endorsement of the colonial project; their relationship with imperialism was thus collaborative at best and more likely involved actively working towards repressive colonialist aspirations. By so validating one hegemonic system of structural oppression, these women were able to achieve some level of distance from that which they themselves were systematically disadvantaged by.

The ‘complexities of constructions of racial and gender difference in white women’s contributions to imperial perceptions of “otherness”’ (McEwan, p. 75) constitute a vital part of any analysis of a work written by such a white woman – their experiences of empire differ from their male contemporaries, as well as from each other. That which empowers a white woman travelling and writing in the colonial context varies depending on her subject position within her own society and results in relatively heterogenous representations of ‘Otherness’, which in themselves contribute to imperial perceptions of such ‘Otherness’ to varying degrees.

Gender, then, adds a more complex dimension to a critical field already ripe for analysis. Denoted as ‘Others’ by their identifying label ‘female’, women do and have navigated their travels and how they write about their experiences differently to their male contemporaries. Mills has argued that

[…] there are elements in the process of production of the text which are different if the writer is female, for example, her access to a literary education and funding may be different, but, most important, it is the elements in the process of reception which differ markedly for female authors. (p. 40)

In other words, it is not that there is some fundamental difference between male and female writers which makes the texts that they produce so different – to make such a claim would be

(15)

to adhere to an essentialising framework which fails to take into account the fact that gender is not something biological or inherent, but rather a cultural construct. Instead, it is the conditions of production that have differed (and continue to do so) for female writers in comparison to their male contemporaries. These conditions of production are also influenced by the ‘process of reception’ mentioned by Mills, who goes on to theorise that the writing process for women is affected from the outset by the anticipation of the critical response it will receive upon publication. Texts are not produced in a vacuum, yet are often analysed as though they were – especially when it is taken into consideration that ‘women’s writing is systematically judged to be exaggerated’ (Mills, p. 108). Including photographic evidence in their publications is one of the ways women have historically attempted to counter the male-critic-driven narrative that their works are hyperbolic or even consist of outright lies (Mills, p. 113) - an interesting detail to note in the context of this thesis, as Lotte Errell’s text was an essay accompanying a series of photographic prints, which could be said to ‘prove’ her experiences and validate that which she wrote about, which may have otherwise been treated with denial or disbelief.

3.4 Theories of photography and the imperialist gaze

As previously stated, this thesis does not focus on photography and seeks to analyse the written travel account of Lotte Errell as its primary function. However, Errell’s Kleine Reise is a book of photographs as well as a piece of travel writing, and as photography was both the purpose and result of Errell’s trip to Africa. The critical relevancy of Errell’s photographs and their context within her travel account means that they will here be subject to a certain level of criticism as regards their relationship with Errell’s text and their accompanying contribution to Errell’s construction and propagation of a particular image. Geoff Dyer describes books such as Errell’s - which combine text and photography and structure themselves as ‘self-contained essay with self-contained image’ - to exist in a ‘harmonious […] many-leveled marriage’ (Dyer p. 2) and it is pertinent to discuss existing scholarship as regards photography in general as well as relevant theory on the imperialist gaze in order to fully contextualise this ‘marriage’

(16)

between text and image. Within the context of Errell’s travels, the imperialist gaze can be examined through a lens situated at a discursive intersection between postcolonial criticism and photographic theory; indeed, much postcolonial scholarship on the imperialist gaze analyses photography and its uses as a tool of the occupying power. Relevant theory will therefore be briefly reviewed and then applied in a short critical appraisal of Errell’s photographs in order to scrutinise the function of her photographs in relation to her textual work as well as their independent status as regards (anti-)colonial constructions and image-building.

The philosopher and critic Roland Barthes became a major theorist on the subject position of photography in particular after the publication of his 1979 book Camera Lucida, which developed a number of ‘reflections’ on the topic in the form of a collection of essays. Using his background as a semiotician, he examines how photography impacts the person viewing it through terminology of his own devising; his key concepts are those of the operator who is the photographer, the spectator who is ‘ourselves, all of us who glance through collections of photographs’ (Barthes, p. 9), and the spectrum – ‘the person or thing photographed […] the target’ (p. 9). Within the spectrum, there are two further elements: the

studium, or cultural knowledge which allows for understanding of the photograph’s contents,

and the punctum, or the ‘element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow and pierces me’ (p. 26) – that elusive something in the image which ‘pricks’ the spectator, which establishes a relationship between them and the photograph. Errell’s photographs, dependent as they are on interpretation by the viewer as opposed to the accompanying text for explanation, are certainly evocative, and their ‘Otherness’ means that the studium inherent in each photograph’s spectrum is dependent upon the colonial context in which they were viewed as well as that cultural knowledge which is imparted by Errell in her text and captions. This unstable positioning of the photographs is relevant not only when discussing the images themselves but also during any analysis of the book’s publication and reception; to present the book in a particular manner or accompanied by particular information is to change these dynamics for the interpreter.

(17)

In her ground-breaking 1977 text On Photography, Susan Sontag devotes a great deal of thought to the notion of reality and how it is constituted and confirmed through the act of photography. Her arguments cover a variety of topics but include focus on the capacity of the camera to lie, the alienating function of photographic documentation, the act of photography as attempted possession of reality, and the event-making function of photography. For Sontag, photography may ‘presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate’ (1977, p. 13). Mention of the unavoidable ‘limitedness’ of any explanation of photographs through their captions provides a theoretical perspective on the audience’s expectations of truth, and how impossible that is to achieve through photography in the conventional sense – a photograph cannot ‘speak’ as words can and any expectation that it should is to misunderstand its function6_{. Sontag’s 2004 Regarding the Pain of Others, a}

follow-up of sorts to On Photography (though, as the title suggests, her focus here was on images of suffering in particular) brings new considerations to light as well as critically confronting much of what she had discussed in her earlier work. In this, notions of objectivity and intention in photography are foregrounded, as well as a critical perspective on the intrinsic exclusivity of photography. Her treatment of imperialism – which here is done in broad terms, despite Sontag’s primary focus on the suffering of others – highlights ‘the centuries-old practice of exhibiting exotic - that is, colonized - human beings’ (2004, p. 65) within the (post)colonial context. Sontag talks about the construction of the colonised Other through photography and how photography can be utilised to actualise such individuals ‘as someone to be seen, not someone (like us) who also sees’ (2004, p. 65). This theorising, when applied to Errell’s context, allows for a critical analysis of what it means for a white woman to photograph native subjects in the way that Errell did, foregrounding the notion of Seeing and thereby necessitating a discussion of what it is to See – and the (lack of) reciprocity inherent therein.

6 ‘What moralists are demanding from a photograph is that it do what no photograph can ever do – speak. The caption is the missing voice, and is expected to speak for the truth. But even an entirely accurate caption is only one interpretation, necessarily a limiting one, of the photograph to which it is attached.’ (Sontag 1977, p. 109)

(18)

The imperial gaze has been subject to critical scrutiny by feminist scholars, often utilising feminist theory and applying it in a more specifically postcolonial circumstance. E. Ann Kaplan, an American scholar, coined the term ‘imperial gaze’ in a postcolonial context as a way of looking which ‘reflects the assumption that the white western subject is central much as the male gaze assumes the centrality of the male subject’ (p. 78). This imperial gaze has been theorised on at length within film criticism7_{, but also through other visual mediums. As}

one such visual medium, photography is intimately tied to notions of looking – who and how is doing the looking, and whether that looking is equally done, has ramifications on power structures. The camera as a weapon of imperialism is a concept elaborated on by Teju Cole in his recent New York Times series On Photography. Cole emphasises that ‘photography during colonial rule imaged the world in order to study, profit from and own it’ (2019, p. 2); by making it clear that the camera was a classificatory tool of the imperial power first and the utensil of an artist second, he asserts the dominating function of such technology in the colonial context8_{. He argues for a critical conceptualisation of photography and its proximity to}

violence, reminding that ‘when we speak of “shooting” with a camera, we are acknowledging the kinship of photography and violence’ (p. 3); his ultimate contention is that to photograph others is all too often a collaborative act that ‘illustrate[s], without condemning, how the powerful dominate the less powerful’ (p. 5). For Cole, the consumption of other peoples’ lives is facilitated by photography and photojournalism, perpetuating an ignorance of the right not to be Seen – a dangerous lack of awareness, particularly when it serves to uphold an oppressive regime such as a colonial presence.

3.5 Theories of (post)colonialism and anticolonial feminism

7 A key voice here is that of bell hooks, whose 1992 essay on the Oppositional Gaze examined modes of ‘rebellious’ looking to theorise on black people’s right to look – specifically focusing on black female spectatorship. Though not directly relevant to this thesis, which examines image construction rather than spectatorship, this gaze is worth mentioning as one of several ways in which the colonised individual has taken back control of their right to See or else subverted colonial paradigms surrounding this. 8 Cole does also acknowledge the uses the camera had for subject peoples alongside its more problematic applications, but stresses its systematic function as a weapon of oppression.

(19)

Having discussed in part the intersection between gender, postcolonial theory and travel writing, it is pertinent to now elaborate in more detail on postcolonialism as a broader, more general theoretical concept in order to more definitively specify where this thesis discursively locates itself within this framework. The discipline is an extensive one with many subfields – often in disagreement with one another - and in order to summarise its key theoretical concepts, many strands must unfortunately be omitted for the sake of brevity. For the purposes of this essay, several founding concepts of postcolonial studies will first be examined before a closer look is taken at feminist postcolonial theory as the branch of postcolonialism integral to the analytical framework of this thesis.

Since its emergence as a cohesive body of critical thought in the 1980s, scholarly literature on postcolonialism has been extensive. Discourses of ‘Othering’ and imperialism go hand in hand, with the wielding of colonial power as a prerequisite to constructing hegemony and exercising control over the Other (in this case, the colonised peoples). Edward Said’s 1978

Orientalism is a seminal text within postcolonial studies and utilises a poststructuralist

perspective to examine the construction of perceived Western superiority against its Eastern counterparts, taking the (former) academic discipline of Orientalism to be a nothing more than system of representations which consolidates and perpetuates this constructed image. He posits that this discipline is “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (Orientalism, p. 1) and utilises a ‘textual attitude’ to manufacture an identity for non-Europeans through strategies such as ‘generalisations, valorised statements, temporalisation, making people into textual entities’ (Mills p. 49). To Said, Orientalist works (and perspectives in general) are inherently political in nature as they constitute a key aspect of culture and therefore of government practice and policies, allowing for the persistence of colonial power relations even after independence has been achieved and colonialism is officially ‘over’ (in the sense that the colonial presence has physically relinquished an imperial hold on the colonised country). As a key concept within postcolonial theory, Said’s work on Orientalism provides a framework for examining the remnants of colonial rule and the endurance of their hegemonizing function. Frantz Fanon also

(20)

theorises on the production of an Othering process in his book Black Skin, White Masks, where he analyses facets of ‘civilisation’ such as language and how these are utilised by the white colonisers as a gatekeeping mechanism to prevent the assimilation of colonised – specifically black - people into their own societies, while simultaneously encouraging a desire for assimilation (literally to ‘become white’) on the part of the colonised individual which can never be realised because of their blackness. The systematic process of Othering highlighted by Fanon in this book is presented in dichotomous terms - in a white-controlled society, the white man positions himself as ‘human’ and places the black man somewhere beneath this, on the level of something Other: ‘at the risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers, I will say that the black is not a man’ (Fanon 1952, p. 1). Much of Fanon’s work has a radical tone and ultimately argues for a restructuring of society as the only way to complete the work necessary for the complete eradication of racism in all its forms and all the structural inequalities it produces. Fanon’s work has (literally) revolutionised postcolonialism as a discipline, but has been criticised harshly for its depiction of the role that black women play in their own oppression in particular. In analyses (such as this thesis) that deal with representations of the Other, Fanon’s foundational theory is invaluable and - as with Said - the broad frameworks set in place by Fanon mean that his concepts are suitable for adaptation in more specific analyses. Another scholar relevant here is Homi K. Bhabha, who theorises notions of ‘hybridity’ and ‘mimicry’ in relation to colonised peoples. His work stresses the unavoidable connection between the coloniser and the colonised and focuses on the constant state of negotiation that this constructs, which for him goes both ways and in which results in ‘ambivalent’ productions of cultural identity. The instability of the in-between space in which these are constructed – dubbed by Bhabha as the ‘Third Space of enunciation’ (p. 37) -produces a ‘hybridity’ of cultural production, which for Bhabha is made productive precisely because of its ambivalent nature. Bhabha’s concept of mimicry examines the relationship between the colonised person and the behaviours and culture of the coloniser, which may be imitated. Bhabha does not see such emulative performativity as inherently problematic or ‘wrong’ on the part of the colonised individual, but something which has the potential to be

(21)

subversive through its ability to make the behaviour that is being mimicked more transparent, whatever judgement that might result in. Bhabhan thought here ties in with Fanon’s conceptualisation of a desire on the part of the colonised individual for access to the culture of the coloniser, although his focus is less on the binary of the two and he argues for the productivity of the ‘Third Space of enunciation’ rather than its deconstruction.

The above theorists and works are by no means definitive of postcolonial thought and its beginnings, but they are strong foundational texts which have had extensive influence on the field to this day. Particularly, their construction of strong conceptual frameworks within postcolonialism mean that the possibility for their adaptation and utilisation in other criticism is left open. They have helped to shape and establish this relatively young field of scholarship; however, they are certainly not exempt from criticism of their own, and much of their work has been criticised and developed in line with other subfields. As founding texts in the discipline, the utilisation of these works is vital in any postcolonial analysis, but any engagement with their ideas must be done critically and with reference to the analysis that they themselves have been subject to since their original publications. For example, in the context of gender and travel writing, Mills argues that

The work of women travel writers cannot be fitted neatly within the Orientalist framework, and seems to constitute an alternative and undermining voice because of the conflicting discourses at work in their texts. They cannot be said to speak from outside colonial discourse, but their relation to the dominant discourse is problematic because of its conflict with the discourses of ‘femininity’. (Mills, p. 63)

It is clear that the utilisation of these frameworks is necessary; Mills here structures her own theorisation around Said’s foundational concept of Orientalism. This framework is criticised for its shortcomings and then adapted in a manner which addresses these failings productively for a more specific, gender-focused context. Use of these frameworks must always undergo such criticism and but they must be examined through that which the original theory failed to

(22)

take into account. For the purposes of this thesis, postcolonial theory which has been adapted constructively through a feminist lens will be expanded upon and critically utilised in analysis.

It is notable that many of the founding voices in postcolonial thought – the above sample constituting a clear and representative example – are male ones, and few engage seriously with the role of gender in this already very complex area of theory. Relevant to this thesis in particular is the body of work that has been built up surrounding anticolonial feminism and that which examines the role of women in colonialism. Over the past half a century, postcolonial theory has found itself inextricably tied to notions of gender and scholars have engaged with this in a deeply polemical manner. Typically, female scholars of postcolonialism have engaged with this most deeply, although in recent years this has developed into a more mainstream school of anticolonial thought. The work done in the field of anticolonialism by female theorists of colour in particular has sought to criticise those aspects of the aforementioned seminal texts in the field which do not seriously consider the role that gender plays in the debate, often aiming to centralise the figure of the ‘third world woman’ in the discourse that she has been disproportionately excluded from.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a key voice in the subfield of postcolonialism and gender, popularised the term ‘third world woman’ in her 1985 essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, which was ground-breaking in its critique of Said’s theory of Orientalism and its foregrounding of gender in the debate. Her conceptualisation of ‘epistemic violence’ as a silencing of the subaltern (in particular, the silencing of the ‘third world woman’) is integral to her perspective on Western academic discourses within the scholarly field of (post)colonialism. Spivak sees contemporary postcolonial theorists as ‘[reproducing] Orientalist discourses by conceiving the subaltern as supine, inescapably oppressed, and essentially “Other” than Western subjects’ (Mendoza, p. 109). Chandra Talpade Mohanty also criticises Western postcolonial perspectives on the ‘third world woman’ and argues against the homogenising tendencies of writers on these women, which she posits as labelling them ‘sexually-constrained […] ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic,

(23)

family-oriented, victimized, etc.’ (1984, p. 337); a singular, homogenous group constituting the colonised female ‘Other’9_{. María Lugones, meanwhile, has contributed extensively to the field}

with her conceptualisation of the ‘coloniality of gender’, building upon existing scholarship on the coloniality of power to argue that modern conceptions of gender as defined ‘as the biological dimorphism, the patriarchal and heterosexual organizations of relations’ (2008, p. 2) stems from an inherently colonial, hegemonic Eurocentrism.

These theorists represent but a fraction of those who have contributed to the body of work on postcolonial feminism that has developed over the last several decades. Even examining these few examples, it is clear that much anticolonial feminist scholarship stands to combat the epistemic and imperial violence committed against the colonised woman in particular, and to establish a postcolonial project that facilitates the amplification of her voice. As a piece of scholarship written by a white Western woman about a white Western woman within the postcolonial context and using a postcolonial framework as a vehicle for analysis, this thesis must and hereby does recognise its position in regards to the silencing function of much Western postcolonial theory. It is intended that - through an analysis of how colonial women have aided in the construction, perpetuation and representation of the binary ‘Other’ that has been dubbed the colonised ‘third world woman’ - this thesis will not speak for or over the myriad individuals who have historically been grouped under this denomination. Rather, it aims to examine the conditions that led to and upheld the production of this categorisation in order to provide a deconstructive approach to this ‘discursively constructed group’ (Talpade Mohanty 1984, pp. 337) and thereby provide a contribution to the theoretical framing of the culturally constituted group ‘women’ in a manner that allows them actualisation ‘as material subjects of their own history’ (Talpade Mohanty 1984, pp. 337-338).

9 Talpade Mohanty positions this ‘in contrast to the (implicit) self-representation of Western women as educated, modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions’ (1984, p. 337)

(24)

4. ANALYSES OF KLEINE REISE ZU SCHWARZEN MENSCHEN

4.1 Production, publication and advertisement

To the seasoned reader of travel literature, Kleine Reise zu schwarzen Menschen is somewhat atypical in its structure. Composed as a collection of prints accompanying a travel account in a long-form, essayistic style10_{, the text is without formal structure and is not subject to any kind}

of division into chapters or subsections. Errell’s writing does not follow a chronological or thematic configuration; instead the reader accompanies her on a textual ‘ramble’ through her experiences in West Africa. She expounds on what she sees, discusses whatever historical background she sees as relevant on a particular topic, criticises the continuing British colonial presence in territories such as the Gold Coast, comments on her interactions with those she meets, and varyingly expresses her opinions on each of these topics as and when they might be relevant. In short, Errell talks about what she wants to talk about, and the structure remains loose in order to fully accommodate this. As the text was written between 1929 and 1931 (and published in the latter year), it was feasibly influenced in style by the popular modernist endeavours of the time. Although these were usually works of fiction, the significance and the impact that had on the literary milieu of the time meant that the style affected literature in a relatively ubiquitous manner and was likely to have had an impact on the writing of authors from a multitude of genres11_{. The essay constitutes Errell’s first foray into publication and was}

in all probability her first real piece of extended writing in such a context, meaning that her style was that of a newcomer to essay composition; her career in (photo)journalism spanned over 30 years and as such her writing had ample opportunity to develop in the years following the production of Kleine Reise.

10 The exact conditions of production under which Errell wrote this essay (i.e. when, where and how she wrote it) are unknown, but based on the level of detail exhibited in its recounting of events it was likely compiled from a combination of extracts from some kind of travel diary alongside Errell’s recollection after the fact.

11 This is not necessarily to say that the influence was always a direct one, but an indirect impact is likely considering the dominance of the modernist literary movement at the time and the increasingly popularity of a more radical writing process which no longer required such formal restrictions as chapter divisions or chronology – the absence of which allows for considerable experimentation in travel writing, a ‘genre’ which is by its itinerary-driven nature conventionally bound to such rigid organisation.

(25)

The format of the book can be loosely broken down into two component parts: section one is comprised of the text itself and constitutes 34 pages of writing interspersed with seventeen full page prints of the photographs taken by Errell on her travels; the rest of the photographs taken throughout the trip make up the section two of the book and are presented without an accompanying essay. Each photograph (in both sections of the book) is contextualised with a brief, single-sentence description of its contents, often providing cultural frames of reference or other relevant information to help the reader fully comprehend the image that they are looking at. In the first section of the book, there is a disconnect between the photographs and the essay that they accompany; Errell does not at any point comment on or even reference the photographs in her writing and often the images do not correspond to the text that they are printed alongside. Errell barely references her photography throughout the entire text and her images stand alone in this sense, to be appreciated and judged on their own merit.

As a physical product, the book was ‘packaged’ in a style clearly designed to appeal to those looking for something ‘exotic’. Bound in a woven flax with a ‘tribal’ pattern, it sells

(26)

itself as immediately ‘African’ (see Figure 1). The photograph used as advertisement and on the book’s dustjacket is a striking one (see Figure 2). The image, apparently of a woman named Abra who Errell photographed while on her travels12_{, is certainly a powerful}

representation of the individual in question13_{and an excellent example of the work that the}

purchaser could expect to find within the book. Yet the image is also one of a naked black woman. The cover image of any book is not just indicative of what the reader will find between the pages; it is also an advertisement, there to help sell the book’s contents. The decision to use this particular photograph was a deliberate and conscious one made by multiple people, all of whom worked in the German publishing company Brehm Verlag. In 1931, many women (such as Errell) were entering professional markets in increasing numbers14_and

therefore it is not impossible that women were involved in the decision-making process here; however, it is very unlikely that no men were included in deciding on this choice of cover image. It is extremely unlikely that any persons of colour (in this instance, specifically black persons) were involved in the decision to use this image for the book’s cover and for advertising purposes.

When this gender and racial context is taken into account, it becomes apparent that this is not an image of a naked black woman presented on her own terms, but as a result of choices made by a likely male, almost certainly white publishing team. The production of the image in this specific circumstance begs the question as to what message those involved were aiming to send. If the ‘selling point’ of the book revolves around an image of a naked black woman, the context of her presentation is changed; she is no longer an individual being photographed, but a commodity to be sold. The ‘reality’ that Errell was attempting to capture when she first took the photograph is transformed into an object of trade and Abra’s representation is decontextualised from that highly specific circumstance in which it was produced. To use the

12 Abra was possibly an Ewe woman who met Errell while the latter was visiting the village of Helekpe during her travels in the Gold Coast as the photograph appears alongside the section of the text describing her stay there; however, as previously mentioned Errell’s text does not always correspond with the images it accompanies and consequently this is not certain.

13 For analysis of Errell’s photographic treatment of the individuals she encountered, see section 4.2. 14 A demographic source for the gender division of the employees of the Brehm Verlag could not be found, and therefore it is acknowledged that this point remains speculative.

(27)

naked body of a black woman for sales purposes when that body does not belong to the person doing the selling is to exploit it; it is sexualised racism, it utilises misogynoir15_{for profit. In}

addition to this, Abra’s name is absent from the book cover – unlike the version in-text, which names her in its caption and in doing so preserves her individuality. This reduces her to an emblematic image, apparently typical of the ‘schwarzen Menschen’ that the book’s title indicates: she is no longer one of many people encountered by Errell on her travels, but instead now representative of them all.

In the era of lingering colonial fantasies that constituted the Weimar Republic years, the impact of the colonial imaginary so pervasive at this time adds a further dimension to the use of Abra’s nude image in this context. Schilling notes that advertisements for the book consistently ignored its anti-colonial aspects in favour of selling the ‘exotic’ image of the African Other and remarks that the archetypal German Neue Frauen (many characteristics of which the adventurous young professional Errell certainly exhibited) who had been ‘praised for their “realistic” depictions of everyday life in Africa were ignored when these depictions became too critical for a nation that was trying to reclaim its former colonies’ (Schilling 2009, p. 149). In 1932, the advertisement for the book was even included in the design magazine

Gebrauchsgraphik under a list of excellent examples of international advertising (Schilling

2009, p. 148). This reveals the success of such reductionist recontextualization of colonial imagery in the immediate postcolonial era and the lack of interest shown by both the advertisers and the publishing house towards the more critical aspects of Errell’s work. Germany was nostalgic for its recent colonial past and advertising tactics such as these played successfully on those revisionist longings for a return to the sovereign stability of empire, particularly in such an economically and politically volatile period as that which characterised the Weimar Republic. By using her image to trigger these wistful yearnings for empire, Abra becomes the ultimate exotic Other, representative of the ‘glorious’ colonial past. As already discussed, this past was far from exceptional when examined in comparison with those of

15 This term was coined by black feminist scholar Moya Bailey in her 2010 blog post ‘They aren’t talking about me…’ in order to describe the effect of specifically anti-black racism on misogyny and how this results in an altered misogyny uniquely experienced by black women.

(28)

other European imperial powers, and yet Germany’s complex regarding its defeat in the First World War and the contention that it was unfit to rule which had resulted in the forced loss of its colonies meant that such exaggeration regarding its own importance on the imperial stage was perhaps to be anticipated as a symptom of colonial nostalgia. In this context, then, Abra’s image is used to romanticise the splendour of empire. The highly sexualised aspect of the colonial project is also evident in the utilisation of her nudity, presented here for public consumption. Ann Stoler’s foundational work on the racialisation of sexuality and gender as key to the colonial enterprise regards the sexual exploitation of the colonised woman as systematic under imperialism (Stoler 1989; Benard 2016). The image used to sell this book cannot be removed from the context of the ‘sexualization and use of ‘‘colored’’ women’s bodies [which] reinforced White male supremacy during colonialism’ (Benard p. 3) and as such upholds imperial notions of sexualised control over the body of the colonised woman.

4.2 Errell’s photographs

Within the book, Errell’s photographs can be contextualised differently to their use in commercial advertising purposes. Much of her work adheres to the Neue Sachlichkeit (‘New Sobriety’ or ‘New Objectivity’) artistic movement of the later Weimar Republic years, which stood against expressionism to focused on a modernist and realist style. In photography, those who adhered to this style ‘want[ed] only to capture the object well and objectively’ (Lotz, quoted in Stetler, p. 281). Errell’s pictures are clear, detailed and carefully focused; her portraits of individuals are bold and often close-ups, while her photographs of inanimate objects remove them from their context and present them as they are – her captions provide any additional information necessary for comprehension. Key to the Neue Sachlichkeit movement was an objective lens – literally – through which to examine the world and present it as it existed, without the frills and excess of the avant-garde and surrealism that had come before. However, the idea of a photograph as objective is a complicated one. Initially, the photograph seems to be the perfect candidate for the impartial artistic representation of the

(29)

material world; however, when the construction of the reality that constitutes the framed ‘truth’ of the photograph is considered, the neutrality of the captured image enters murkier waters. In an analysis of Errell’s photographs, this critical eye to their production is crucial for a thorough understanding of their subject position, particularly in the postcolonial context.

In her portraits, Errell presents numerous individuals she encounters on her journey in various states of being, framing them differently. In some photographs, the subject is staring directly at the camera, in others, they look away; in several of her pictures of people, Errell chose to focus on such features as their hands, their attire, or an activity they are engaged in16_.

For the most part, however, images of people in Errell’s book are focused on their faces. These photographs are startlingly intimate, often focusing on the details of each individual’s face in a close-up or else observing their conduct in a suspended moment of engagement, highlighting an aspect of their behaviour or positioning. Her use of angles in this is particularly unusual and deviates from expectations of ethnographic portraiture. The images of many individuals are shot from a low angle, with Errell poised beneath them – the subversion of normative colonial positioning could not be more obvious, as the black subject of the photograph is literally elevated above the white photographer by the camera’s angle. By repeatedly choosing such an angle, Errell ‘complicated the traditional paradigms for portraying “natives”’ (Schilling 2009 p. 147) and – at least visually – she thereby inverted the racial power structures in place by her presence in the colonies.

A significant number of the persons photographed for Errell’s book are women. Errell displays them diversely: frequently they are shown to be staring down the camera lens with deliberate directness, while in other examples they are seen engaging with their families or are absorbed in activities relevant to the community. On several occasions, they are not doing anything in particular, apparently captured on film while simply existing in their own environment. Errell also includes images of priestesses as well as their male counterparts, foregrounds markers of identity such as hairstyle, and utilises a focus technique with soft light

16 Examples include the prints captioned ‘Ewe-Frau mit kunstvoller Frisur formt aus frischem Ton einen Topf‘ (p. 30) and ‘Hände einer Priesterin mit Kaurimuscheln aus Kultabzeichen‘ (p. 42), displaying a woman fashioning a clay pot and the hands of a priestess respectively.

(30)

which allows the camera to centre a particular facet of the woman’s body or behaviour without detracting from that which surrounds this focal point. The photographs are intimate and yet manage to avoid appearing invasive; they do not come across as classifying and pseudo-scientific, but rather as records of a life. Cole has theorised on the violence done to indigenous peoples through the use of the camera, which often took the form of forced documentation and resulted in destructive transgressions of native rights to exist unobserved in order to catalogue and ‘study’ their cultures; as Cole puts it, ‘nothing would be allowed to remain hidden from the imperial authorities’ (2019, p. 2)17_{. Errell was still very much a representative of the}

lingering colonial presence in this place and her work there, however well intentioned, carries implications as a result of the recent imperial past that links her to the place and people she is photographing. She does, however, manage to ambiguate the colonial revisionism that so pervaded her contemporaries in Europe. Her photographs show individuals and their lives in the colonies without attempting to justify the imperial presence there and she does not frame her images around either the propagation of colonialism or the traditional ethnographic documentation that was the function of much colonialist photography in the occupied territories. Her images are ambivalent, ‘in-between’ – she by no means utilised photography as a political tool to call for an end to colonial rule or condemn the imperial occupation that was still exerting control over the people she had encountered and gotten to know, nor did she employ it as a revisionist tool or defended the colonial project.

Despite the clear repositioning of power and the resulting ambiguity toward the colonial revisionism of the time that Errell’s images reveal, it is also important to note that here, it is the white Western woman doing the inverting. Errell does not discuss her artistic process in her text and we do not know how she went about selecting which people she would photograph, what their perspectives and opinions on being photographed were, or whether they

17 Cole acknowledges that photography was not solely the medium of the colonial occupiers but also put to use by colonised peoples, and this was as true in the Gold Coast (where Errell was operating) as it was anywhere else. Influential native photographers of the time included the Accra-based Lutterodt family, whose studio was the first to open in West Africa and who went on to operate several regional studio branches (Haney, p. 126).

(31)

even wanted to be recorded in this manner. In this way, the silencing function of photography becomes clear, even as the images distort expectations of what they ‘should’ be as products of their cultural and temporal location. A photograph is a series of potentials between the photographer and the photographed subject, and the power balance between them is an unstable one which is constantly being negotiated and renegotiated. To argue that Errell is elevating these individuals - particularly women - in her photography is to highlight a shift in paradigm but, when asserted uncritically, also strays towards white saviour territory. It cannot be ignored that the European society that Errell both comes from and represents with her presence is the reason for their subjugation. Susan Sontag’s contention that much photography of colonised individuals is an inheritor of ‘the centuries-old practice of exhibiting exotic – that is to say, colonized – bodies’ (2004, p. 65) and that this results in the construction of an Other who exists only ‘as someone to be seen’ (p. 65) reveals the process of Othering even in Errell’s more ambiguous context to be an inherently silencing one. John Berger posits that ‘a photograph is already a message about the event it records [...] at its simplest the message, decoded, means: I have decided that seeing this is worth recording’ (1967, p. 18, emphasis in original), but the concept that the photographer is the one to make this decision immediately reduces the power held by the person, object or event being ‘recorded’ to something of secondary importance (if, indeed, the photographed subject holds any authority on the matter at all). Photography is a voiceless medium regardless of context, but the respective subject positions of the photographer and the photographed alter the circumstances and beg the question: whose voice is being stifled here? A picture can speak a thousand words, but that implicit meaning always represents the perspective of somebody: ‘it is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude’ (Sontag 2004, p. 41). The question that should be asked when regarding any photograph is not limited to ‘what is happening in this photograph?’ but must also be expanded to include ‘and what is happening outside the borders of this photograph?’. In the colonial context, this wider comprehension is essential to fully understanding the image and the conditions of its production.