Museums have, in recent years, become increasingly aware of the sensitivities surrounding colonial photographs – especially those produced for race research. However, curatorial ethics are difficult to maintain when photos are digitised and move beyond the museum walls. This chapter examines the circulation and repurposing of colonial photos on platforms such as Flickr and Pinterest. Photography was an important tool in colonialism, and historically photographs of quite diverse origin, such as anthropological photographs of ethnic types, anthropometric photography, colonial family photos, and commercial postcards, were all used to support race theories. The inclusion of colonial photographs in contemporary museum exhibitions can be difficult and controversial. However, Elizabeth Edwards and Matt Mead (2013) have shown how careful curatorial framing can acknowledge numerous perspectives and thereby address the complexity of colonial societies. They argue that in order to avoid recirculation of racist attitudes and celebratory approaches to colonialism, it is sometimes necessary to guide visitors' decodings by explicitly pointing out "misreadings" (2013: 32). In this way curating exhibitions with colonial photographs becomes "exercises in controlled readings" (2013:33). However, such curatorial ethics are difficult to maintain when photos are digitized. Photographs may entirely lose their historical context – be stripped of their provenance – as they are transferred from museums and archives into social media. This is especially the case when private users grab photographs from museum websites and share them online without consent.
This paper focuses on the circulation of colonial photographs on the social media platforms Flickr and Pinterest. To what extend is it problematic that such photographs circulate 'freed' of their historical contexts? Are the photographed persons posthumously 'freed' from previous racialization or are they rather re-exploitated in this commercialized media site? How can museums facilitate that the social biographies of colonial photographs are acknowledged – and hereby counter the European tendency to claim white innocence and suppress knowledge about historical racism (Wekker 2017)?
Particularly relevant to Museum and Memory Working Group
