Picturing bushmen : the Denver African Expedition of 1925 / Robert J. Gordon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gordon, Robert J., 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Heikum (African people)--Pictorial works.

Heikum (African people).

San (African people)--Public opinion.

San (African people).

Khoikhoi (African people)--Public opinion.

Khoikhoi (African people).

Denver African Expedition (1925-1926).

Denver African Expedition.

Photography in ethnology.

Public opinion--United States.

Public opinion.

United States.

Genre:

Pictorial works.

Physical Description:

xiii, 208 pages : illustrations, map ; 27 cm

Other Title:

Denver African Expedition of 1925

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, [1997]

Summary:

Bushmen have frequently been the archetypal "other" in Western intellectual and popular thought. These romantic images portrayed in commercial advertising, art exhibitions, films, and novels are actually less myth than fairy tale, which persist in spite of a sound body of contrary empirical evidence.

In this innovative study of bushman imagery, Robert Gordon focuses on a particular event, the Denver African Expedition of 1925, which went off to Africa to "seek the cradle of Humanity". The participants claimed to have found the "Missing Link" in the Heikum Bushmen of the Etosha Game Park and, because the Expedition was a commercial venture, its backers marketed this image.

Gordon, an anthropologist, examines the "culture of visualization" that gave direction to the expedition and was in turn influenced by it. Because the pictures from the Denver Expedition were aesthetically pleasing, they encouraged widespread merchandising of bushman images, which, in turn, had unanticipated consequences.

Picturing Bushmen ventures beyond traditional boundaries of area studies, visual theory, and academic anthropology to press for an appreciation of the familiar as well as the spectacular. In evaluating the role of the "ethnic photograph", it addresses the perennial questions that haunts field workers: How much are they influenced by the mundane in their own society and when are they exploiting their subjects?

"It is easy to fall into the error of regarding the Bushmen as more primitive than they really were". -- J. S. Marais, 1939

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-200) and index.

ISBN:

082141187X

0821411888

OCLC:

36352440