MAKING HISTORIES: THE TORRES STRAIT EXPEDITION OF 1898

Authors

Elizabeth Edwards, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Abstract

The Cambridge Torres Strait Expedition used photography to address two agendas, both of which were grounded in the temporal ambiguities of photography. Photography was used first as an integrated tool of anthropological investigation, particularly in the field of salvage ethnography and through “reenactment”; and second as a site of social interaction between the expedition and the Torres Strait Islanders through the exchange and display of photographs. I argue that these two agendas and their function as “history” are grounded in the temporal ambiguities inherent in photographic inscription. The first, the scientific, depended on the construction and representation of a “static” temporality; the second, the social, on active “real time,” which embraced the passage of individual lives and the process of social change. My theoretical position thus addresses the complex historiographical implications of photographic inscription of histories.

Recommended Citation

Edwards, Elizabeth (1997) "MAKING HISTORIES: THE TORRES STRAIT EXPEDITION OF 1898," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 20: No. 4, Article 5.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol20/iss4/5