Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses the application of "repeat photography" to a set of "ethnographic" photographs. The latter depict a "first-fruits ceremony", produced in 1899 South Africa. Identifying the event's spatial and temporal coordinates entails both epistemological and ethical conundrums.

Paper long abstract:

"Repeat photography" is an effective research methodology that means to take a photograph from the exact same vantage point as a much older photograph. Once applied to 19th century "ethnographic" photographs in the archives of ethnological museums, the evolving tension of change regarding people and landscapes eventually creates an excess of meaning. This process renders the photographs anthropologically relevant in a new sense, by providing them with potential social impact in the present.

Anthropological studies have so far hardly dealt with related epistemological and ethical conundrums, as photographic occasions can often no longer be clearly identified. The series of photographs I wish to discuss, instead allows for a minute analysis through space and time due to a specific set of circumstances, involving a still recognisable landscape topography. The 17 photographs depict a so-called "first-fruits ceremony" (ingcubhe), taken in 1899 by the photographers of the Catholic Mariannhill Mission in the Umzimkhulu District, South Africa. Once they are brought together, the old photographs and the repeat photographs made during my research, each may assist the production of knowledge on various temporalities: their respective pasts, presents, and futures.

Instead of employing unspecific terminologies, such as "visual repatriation", I argue that it is more sensitive to think of the entire process as "reconnecting" a historical event. In order to achieve this, it is crucial to involve, next to the politics and poetics of ethnography, also the provenance and provenience of photographs.