Is it ethical to freely redistribute photographs taken in colonial contexts, historically and today? Showing the complexities behind this question, this study looks at how a vast media network... Show moreIs it ethical to freely redistribute photographs taken in colonial contexts, historically and today? Showing the complexities behind this question, this study looks at how a vast media network evolved around the commercial photographic studio at Mariannhill Monastery and the mission station Centocow in South Africa from the 1880s until today. Taking a grass-roots perspective, it argues that photographs produced by missionaries, like all colonial photographs, must be studied by considering their interconnectedness: first, their alliances with other media, like paintings, theatre plays, tableaux vivants, maps, films, exhibitions, and “ethnographic” objects; second, the exhibitionary complex they depend on, involving museums, libraries, archives, and printing presses; and finally the lobbies, journals, printed instructions, discourses, and interpretive communities that produced, used, and consumed them. Eventually, the study turns to the crucial question how photographs act on and as subjects. Few colonial photographs have left sufficient traces that allow to write their biographies. Mariannhill’s photographs, however, due to their aesthetic aspiration and the congregation’s unique setup, have successfully taken root in many places, moments, and discourses. To show the photographs’ ongoing relevance for stakeholders in both South Africa and Europe, and possible ways of dealing with them today, this study follows their intermediary role over time and in between other images, spaces, objects, and subjects. Show less
Tamil movie fans typically manifest themselves in public space during movie releases and other special occasions. All over Tamil Nadu their fan club organizations put up billboards and posters,... Show moreTamil movie fans typically manifest themselves in public space during movie releases and other special occasions. All over Tamil Nadu their fan club organizations put up billboards and posters, paint murals, and generate a plethora of images in different media. With this ‘fandom on display’ fans pursue aspirations of power that seem to go beyond the fan clubs’ cinematic roots. This ethnography explores these diverse ambitions by looking at the images that fans produce, disseminate and consume. Images, Roos Gerritsen argues, are crucial for fans in engaging with their star, but they also assist in putting forward their own personas and hence they underpin individual needs, personal career aspirations, and desires for power. A second important focus of this dissertation is organized around fan images in Tamil Nadu’s wider mediascape and public sphere. It concentrates on the role of urban space in the dissemination of political imaginations and aspirations that are embedded in neoliberal, global imaginaries of “world class”. The dissertation shows how such imaginations are slowly changing the ways in which fans use public spaces, watch films and engage in socio-political networks. In this last part of her dissertation, Gerritsen shows how public space and the images it contains become the canvas on which these clashing and shifting discourses are played out. Show less
