Anthropology and Photography at the American Museum of Natural History

These images are all housed within the archives of the American Museum of Natural History. As a class assignment, each student in my class Anthropology in and of Museums (taught at the NYU Program in Museum Studies in Spring 2009) was given an image to research. Barbara Mathé, the Museum Archivist and Head of Library Special Collections and I selected the images. We gave them to the students and encouraged them to think at first purely from the image: what could they learn not only from the content of the image, but the way in which it has been annotated, catalogued, curated, and archived. Following these leads, each student conducted original research into their images. These are their stories.

Dr Haidy Geismar, Anthropology and Museum Studies, NYU

In my hands is a black and white image from the archives at the American Museum of Natural History of a congregation of people who are positioned in front of a fairly modern looking building. Some look directly into the camera and others gaze to the side. Perhaps something other than the photographer has caught their attention or the photographer has requested that they focus their attention in that direction, no one can be sure. Careful consideration has been taken to provide some seating during the photo shoot. The same can be probably said for the arrangement of the individuals in relation to one another. Decisions needed to be made as to who was in the center of the photograph and who was relegated to a periphery role in the frame.

The head of the Hittite Goddess, cropped and rotated to approximate the image on the lantern slide. (Kurt Bittel)

In the archives of the American Museum of Natural History, there is a lantern slide. It shows a head carved in stone from an archaeological excavation. This image presented me with several mysteries. I not only had to identify the subject, but also the reason why the slide was at AMNH. When I first saw the slide and its box, I thought the image had been used in eugenics lectures. Now, however, I believe the reverse is true. The slide’s owner was actually a strong opponent of eugenics. I believe that he used the slide in lectures arguing against the practice of eugenics in anthropological research.

“A concentration on content alone, ethnographic appearance – the obvious characteristics of a photograph – is easy, but will reveal only the obvious. Instead, one should concentrate on detail….Consequently the arguments explore specific photographic experiences: how photographs and their making actually operated in the fluid spaces of ideological and cultural meaning. (Edwards 2001: 2-3)

It is this type of thick description illustrated by Elizabeth Edwards, which I intend to achieve in the analysis of three photographs from the Jesup North Pacific Expedition in the library collection of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). My intention is to analyze the photographs through addressing the historic cultural circumstances of their creation, while also attending to the meanings currently being made within the museum and my own associations. I conceptualize my work as falling within what Christopher Pinney characterizes as photography “being rephotographed…not chiefly to the conservation process by which the decaying archival image is reproduced for another generation, but rather the manner in which dark recesses of photographic archives are coming under scrutiny and images of an imagined past brought from the darkness to light” (Pinney 1992: 90). This is a trend that is already apparent within the AMNH’s treatment of the photography from the Jesup North Pacific Expedition through the exhibition and related materials of “Drawing Shadows to Stone: Photographing North Pacific Peoples, 1897-1902.”

The photograph depicts a gathering. Women, men, and children, wearing hats, dresses, suits, and ties, form a loose semi-circle in a clearing in a West Coast forest around a phonograph. Its operators stand to the right, military in their poses and their explorer’s dress—leather leggings, riding britches, and boots. The cover of the recording—“Pres. Wilson’s Speech,” the archivist’s notes on the back of the photo’s cardstock mount tell us—lies in the dry grass, the only thing that punctures the gap between crowd and phonograph. The men in front in the front of the crowd are Native American (1), and of the Suquamish tribe in Port Madison (2), Washington, according to the unknown archivist’s written words. Their Nativeness is marked: they too wear suits, but for most of these men, pinstriped pants peek out of leather shoes, and starched collars emerge from the tops of patterned blankets and fringed tunics. Some of their faces are painted, some wear headdresses, and one holds a leather drum and stick, while two others point long wooden sticks into the earth, which swells under the leather-clad foot of the man with the striped leggings. This regalia marks their difference from the rest of the crowd.

A picture paints a thousand words and a photograph captures a moment that portrays the story of its subjects outlining a historical point in time. The photographer sees one thing and the subject looking out gazes with another thought and intention behind the situation, a century later the curious onlooker interprets the historical significance through contemporary eyes. The ancestors of a culture, an anthropologist and his subject, all visual keys to unlock the past and continue the evolution of knowledge and the study of humanity. What contribution does this photograph provide in the accumulation of cultural knowledge for the Maori people and what is the connection to New York and the American Museum of Natural History.

A photograph of a noble group of Maori1 posed theatrically, some looking ahead others looking to the side, but none smiling or portraying any emotion. Seventeen men and twelve women handsomely adorned in traditional woven feather cloaks, wielding weapons and embellished with striking hei tiki2. Well manicured and regal, some with facial tattoo’s, and all wearing fine European clothes, and framed by marble pillars, a makeshift backdrop and wooden display cabinets peaking from the sides.

The above image and its minimal textual clues are the starting point for this journey. Like all images there is a history behind this one, a story surrounding it, which this paper will uncover. The essay is laid out in sections following the natural course of research on the image. The first section will document the researcher’s first impressions of the above image, without having any prior background knowledge on it. The subsequent sections will delve into the factual findings on the image. It will be curious to see if there are any commonalities between the researcher’s initial educated guesses and that of the actual facts about the photograph.

3/2/09-Visit to the AMNH

On a cold snowy day the Anthropology in and of Museums class met at the American Museum of Natural History. Barbara Mathé, an archivist at the American Museum of Natural History’s research library, gave the class a tour of the archival storage of photographic images and films that it houses. Near the end of class each student was given an image that they had never previously viewed and asked to jot down any first impressions. The image I received had this text on the front, number 108272, 122- Johnson New Hebrides, and on the back was written, “(Nagapate and his head men inspect the picture sheet) New Hebrides, Martin Johnson, 1918”. My first impressions, directly as I initially wrote them, are as follow:

The image shows three men standing on a type of platform, almost like a stage. Two of the men are facing the white screen, while the third directly looks at the photographer. It looks like a picture of a picture. Similar to the behind the scenes images of films, this photograph manages to completely erase the fake reality created by what appears to be a staged scene. The camera has zoomed out to show not just a close up picture of the three men in front of a white background, but rather the whole scene. It is as if the camera has stepped back from what might have been just a photograph of the man’s face or upper body. The screen looks extremely out of place in this setting. I am curious how they rigged the screen up in such a natural setting, on trees perhaps? The caption on the back of the image does say that these men are inspecting the screen, but that does not necessarily give clues as to the screens purpose. As mentioned earlier it is possible that the photographer was looking to take portrait pictures with a clean white background. The first questions that arise are, was this an expedition? If it was did Martin Johnson lead it or was he just the photographer? What is the general history of the expedition? Where is New Hebrides? Was New Hebrides a specific destination of the expedition or a side trip?
These were the initial reactions and questions that I had regarding my photograph. The following sections will look to the research findings on the image to determine if any truth lay in my initial guesses.

In the image “Public Health Hall 1921,” (Figure 1) students are exploring the exhibit hall established by the American Museum of Natural History’s Department of Public Health. The students appear to be of middle school or high school age, and look as if they’ve just entered this hall, as they throng towards the cases, bundled in coats and hats. Some stare off across the room, while there are others who chat with those near them or examine the glass cases. A few look directly at the camera, acknowledging the photographer. In their hands, they hold papers; perhaps worksheets or brochures intended to be consulted while engaging with the exhibit. Though not in uniform, the students’ dress is remarkably invariant. All seem to be wearing dark stockings and ankle boots. Though their dress is largely the same, the students’ faces do not have the uniformity that one might expect from a homogenous community. The group in this exhibit suggests a multicultural background that has been assimilated into a single American educational ideal.

Introduction: The Connotative Power of Photograph Card 73
On July 26, 1922, Gladwyn Kingsley Noble, an Associate Curator in Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History, and his young wife, Ruth Crosby Noble, an Assistant Curator in the Museum’s Department of Public Education, departed New York on the SS Iroquois for the far-flung shores of Santo Domingo, the island in the Caribbean which is now present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic (AMNH, AR 1922 6). The immediate mission of the Angelo Heilprin Expedition to Santo Domingo was to study the life cycles and collect specimens of the rhinoceros iguana and the giant tree frog, both indigenous to the island. I first encountered this expedition not through display text in the Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians or through published accounts in annual reports of Natural History, but rather through an unassuming page of photographs, labeled only Angelo Hielprin Expedition to Santo Domingo, 73. In these photographs, the vividly recorded faces of the women and children of Santo Domingo stare out, compelling me to ask questions about their stories and identities. Alongside these intent eyes, the faded and distant landscape of northeastern Santo Domingo, labeled only as the region of Samana, rests before me, silently reflecting the landscape in which these people lived their lives.

This photo, titled Invocation-Sioux, came from drawer 149 in the photography collection. Physically, this photo is mounted on white matte board, with a stamped negative number below and writing going along the side reading “107 Sioux Curtis.” The photograph also shows a border, and information below that reads the title, the photographer, “from copyright photo 1907 by E.S. Curtis,” and what type of a print it is and who made it “Photogravure, John Andrew and Son.” Because the photograph has a border surrounding it which contains this information with the photo frame, we can ascertain that it is a copy, taken not from a negative, but a pre-existing image, most likely a print in a book. Information on the back of the matte board gives us the location of the original, “Vol. 3-Plate 109,” showing that it definitely came from a previous publication It also gives us the name of the publication, North American Indian-E.S .Curtis, and the date that this photo was taken, “May 1971.” These last to entries are both stamped, which could suggest that this photo was part of a series entered in mass, since they went to the trouble of having stamps made.