US Photography in the Philippines Before 1898: The Menage Expedition of 1890–1893

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-23-2018

Keywords

fsc2019

Abstract

Between 1890 and 1893, two young Americans, Frank Swift Bourns and Dean Conant Worcester, travelled through the central and southern Philippines on a zoological expedition. In addition to collecting animal specimens, the two men took more than one hundred and fifty photographs. These photographs have not been given much attention by historians but they are an important set of images that help expand the understanding of photography in the Philippines in the late Spanish colonial era. This article discusses the circumstances surrounding the making of these images and provides a framework for interpreting their significance by applying the concept of the ‘photographic obsessions’ of Western explorers as defined and described by Willem van Schendel and his colleagues in the book The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2017.1399679

Additional Files

Share

COinS