Robert Visser and his photographs from the Loango Coast

African Arts, Winter, 2002 by Katrin Adler, Christine Stelzig

The last decade has seen an enormous upswing of interest in historical photographs among ethnologists and historians. In many exhibitions and publications, scholars have raised questions about the value of colonial photographs as a source of research (e.g., Theye 1989; Schindlbeck 1989; African Arts 1991; Edwards 1992; Heintze 1994; Geary & Webb 1998; Maxwell 1999). Most of these writings address the extent to which white photographers created a picture of "exotic peoples" that was far more representative of a European cliched point of view than of reality.

Other critics have proposed that these recent publications represent a new confirmation of European arrogance whereby pictures of other peoples are doubly misused:

   Ethnographic pictures were, as one
   says in popular method-jargon,
   deconstructed in order to show the
   part that the European world
   played in their genesis.... In current
   studies on ethnographic photographs,
   the indigenous peoples
   often merely play the role of extras
   or requisites.

   (Nippa 1996:18)

Indeed, these studies often include illustrations that manifest the power of taking photographs (see Theye 1989:14): anthropological images, erotic genre scenes, documentations of alleged barbary. While such pictures are used to denounce the voyeurism of earlier observers, at the same time they feed the present-day voyeurism of the politically correct: Were these imperialists not contemptuous of human dignity? One need only view the pictures for proof!

Such "colonialist" photographs have been the subject of scholarly focus probably because other kinds were simply unknown or inaccessible to these authors (see Wirz 1982:32). The differences inherent in source material, written or pictorial, that was meant for public consumption and that of a personal nature have been apparent at least since the publication of Malinowski's diary and are constantly reaffirmed through independent studies. Christraud Geary has made this point with regard to photographic sources. (1) In her article on mission photography (1991), she distinguishes between private photographs and those intended for public presentation. Historical photographs of the latter kind thus served as general metaphors for the context at hand--in this case, life in the missions. A certain pictorial language was created through the choice of settings (school or church), accessories (clothing or the absence of it), and composition (e.g., the missionary as the central figure in a group of people). Colonialists used it to make certain ideas visually legible. Thus, "naked" or scantily dressed Africans photographed with clothed Europeans propagated the difference between black and white (accentuated even more by the latter's tropical garb), between "wild" and "civilized." In this way photographs became a public confirmation of supposed cultural superiority (Geary 1991:49-50). Further, Elizabeth Edwards has made distinctions among public photographs: those with scientific content principally directed toward a educated public and those intended for colonial administrative, missionary, or commercial purposes (Edwards 1992:13). Photographers oriented themselves to the conventions and expectations of their "clients." The criteria for a picture meant to meet scholarly standards were different from yet equally strict as those for an image intended to satisfy an audience interested in exotic genre-scenes.

One needs but a single quick glance at a contemporary photograph to recognize its message: one is an advertisement for a certain brand of pullover, the other portrays a well-known politician, and still another is a souvenir photograph of a trip to Paris. The situation becomes more difficult when looking at photographs from an earlier time and a different environment. In some cases neither the visual language nor the contents are understood--which persons or things are depicted when and where, or what the details are meant to relate. The viewer requires "supplementary documentation" (Nippa 1996:22; see also Heintze 1994:95)--that is, nonphotographic information--to shed light on the special significance of the picture.

In this contribution we would like to use such supplementary documentation to illuminate the photographs associated with Robert Visser (Fig. 1), a German merchant who lived on the Loango coast, in what is now Congo (Brazzaville) and the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, from 1882 to 1904. During his residence he collected a plenitude of ethnographica for the ethnographical museums in Berlin, Leipzig, and Stuttgart. Visser's name is linked primarily with Kongo "fetishes" (minkisi, or power figures; sing. nkisi) that are now in various American and German collections (Fig. 2). Some examples he acquired in this genre are considered outstanding examples of traditional African art, such as the privately held female power figure (Fig. 3a, b) or the minkisi in the Art Institute of Chicago (Berzock 1999:32) and the Detroit Institute of Arts (Falgayrettes 1989:46-47; Wochenpost 1995:39). With respect to his concentration on power figures and "fetish-objects," Eckart von Sydow wrote praisingly: "R. Visser takes a medial position between Peschuel-Loesche and Dennett ..., and as a collector of numerous fetishes ... may be credited with a comprehensive knowledge of the subject ..." (1930:353).