Shades of Empire: Police Photography in German South-West Africa

Abstract

This article looks at a photographic album produced by the German police in colonial Namibia just before World War I. Late 19th- and early 20th-century police photography has often been interpreted as a form of visual production that epitomized power and regimes of surveillance imposed by the state apparatuses on the poor, the criminal and the Other. On the other hand police and prison institutions became favored sites where photography could be put at the service of the emergent sciences of the human body—physiognomy, anthropometry and anthropology. While the conjuncture of institutionalized colonial state power and the production of scientific knowledge remain important for this Namibian case study, the article explores a slightly different set of questions. Echoing recent scholarship on visuality and materiality the photographic album is treated as an archival object and visual narrative that was at the same time constituted by and constitutive of material and discursive practices within early 20th-century police and prison institutions in the German colony. By shifting attention away from image content and visual codification alone toward the question of visual practice the article traces the ways in which the photo album, with its ambivalent, unstable and uncontained narrative, became historically active and meaningful. Therein the photographs were less informed by an abstract theory of anthropological and racial classification but rather entrenched with historically contingent processes of colonial state constitution, socioeconomic and racial stratification, and the institutional integration of photography as a medium and a technology into colonial policing. The photo album provides a textured sense of how fragmented and contested these processes remained throughout the German colonial period, but also how photography could offer a means of transcending the limits and frailties brought by the realities on the ground.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Earlier versions of this article have been presented in a public lecture at the History of Art Department, University of Michigan, and in the South African Contemporary History and Humanities Seminar, Centre for Humanities Research and History Department, University of the Western Cape. I would like to thank Giorgio Miescher, Dag Henrichsen, Anne Hermann, Leslie Witz, Stephan Miescher, Carola Schlettwein and Nina Sylvanus for their critical comments.

Notes

Examples of such exhibitions and publications are Phillips, Haworth-Booth and Squiers [1997]; Rugoff, Widler and Wollen [1997]; Wride and Ellroy [2004]; Phillips [2010]. For a more general theoretical discussion on photography moving from one discursive space to another, see Krauss [1982].

This also applies for Campbell [2009], who looks at European women in colonial Sydney exclusively, without considering indigenous ones. For the sake of readability I am not discussing the appropriation of police photos in art and popular culture as part of an imaginary of crime here, though it does play an important part in most exhibitions mentioned.

Important nuances to this argument are in Jäger [2001].

Hamilton and Hargreaves [2001] are less sophisticated in this regard.

Peter Burke [2001]: his argument is firmly grounded in a framework of social and cultural history, but remains helpful for methodological problems precisely on the question of photos as source-material used by historians.

See the numerous texts in Trachtenberg [1980], or Kelsey and Stimson [2008: xiii].

Obviously my approach owes much to Elizabeth Edwards's work; e.g., Edwards [2001].

All photographs discussed in this article were taken by myself in the National Archives of Namibia in August 2010.

National Archives of Namibia (NAN) ZBU Pol/A. 737.

In English, “Photographic Album 1b, Blacks.” It is somewhat unusual that the term Farbige (blacks) is used instead of Eingeborene (Natives), which was much more common at the time.

The term “aura” is commonly linked to Walter Benjamin's work, and often referred to as a mere aesthetic category. My use of the term echoes Benjamin's more complex understanding of aura as a way of theorizing the conditions of possible experience linked to the presence of an object (of art). For an elaborate discussion, see Bratu Hansen [2008].

I was introduced to the album by the head archivist, Werner Hillebrecht, who found it as soon as I had spoken about my interest in police photography in Southern Africa.

Panopticon is used here according to Foucault's discussion [1995] of the architecture of power.

Mug-shots usually show a person's front and profile view of the face or the head; e.g., Doyle [2005]. The use of the term “mug” for faces is linked to the representation of faces on drinking mugs popular in England since the mid-18th century. They were also known as Toby jugs, or more correctly Toby Fillpots (or Philpots). They take the form of a stout old man with a tricorn hat, the corners of which act as spouts. In the early 19th century there were similar Nelson jugs and Wellington jugs. Since these items were associated with popular underclass culture, by the early 19th century “mugging” acquired the double connotation of drinking and stealing [Tamony 1971].

Alphonse Bertillon developed the first modern system of criminal identification in Paris in 1879–80; Sekula [1988: 17]. I'll come back to this system later on.

Sekula's argument remains formative here; Sekula [1988], also Bate [2007].

This institution was called Erkennungsdienst in German. See NAN BWI 254, Kaiserliches Gouvernement von Deutsch Südwest Afrika an das kaiserliche Bezirksamt Windhuk, Windhuk, 3.8.1911.

NAN ZBU 751 G II a 4, Verbrecheralbum, Fingerabdrücke, Bd 1, Kaiserliches Bezirksgericht Swakopmund, von Lindequist an das kaiserliche Konsulat in Kapstadt, February 10, 1906. On colonial anxieties over flourishing criminal activities in Swakopmund in particular and in southern Africa more generally, see Van Onselen [2007: 267–303], concerning Swakopmund and Windhoek in 1905–6. How far von Lindequist had in mind the “criminal gangs” van Onselen talks about remains unclear. See also Zimmerer [2001: 149–150].

NAN ZBU 751, G II a 4, Verbrecheralbum, Fingerabdrücke, Bd 1, General-Konsul Kapstadt an den kaiserlichen Gouverneur von Lindequist, June 5, 1906. Apparently the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin had earlier on raised the same desire to be supplied with copies of the “rogues gallery” in Cape Town, and had got a negative response, allegedly because the Cape authorities considered the wider circulation of the photos as an “infringement of the feelings of those natives, who have been photographed.” On efforts to acquire ethnographic and anthropometric collections in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, see Krautwurst [2002].

On the significance of repetitiveness and seriality for the notion of the everyday, see Roberts [1997: 41].

Important in this regard is the institutional transformation resulting in the establishment of the Landespolizei. For a brief but accessible contemporary account of the Herero War, see Cana [1910: 802–803]. For a short ethnographic account of the Herero, see Vivelo 1995.

For a discussion of these processes of professionalization and modernization in the European metropole, see Jäger [2003].

NAN BWI 254 Sicherheitspolizei und Erkennungsdienst. Erkennungsdienst Berlin, n.d. The files include various publications and regulations concerning the police departments in Berlin and Hamburg.

NAN ZBU 752 G II a 4, Verbrecheralbum und Fingerabdrücke. Das Kaiserliche Gouvernement an das kaiserliche Bezirksamt Windhuk, February 29, 1912. As is widely known, fingerprinting has its own imperial histories and emerged as a method of identification in colonial India in the later 19th century. See Cole [2002], in particular chapter 3; on Bertillonage, see Sekula [1988: 17].

Sekula's discussion of these processes is still among the most sophisticated [Sekula 1988]; also Cole [2002: 63].

On phantasmagoria, its original reference to optical illusion and its epistemic transformation, including the connection with the alienating power of imagination, see Castle [1988: 61]. He refers adequately to photography as the ultimate “ghost-producing” technology of the 19th century.

NAN ZBU 752 G II a 4, Verbrecheralbum und Fingerabdrücke. 23 März 1912, Kaiserlicher Bezirksamtmann Windhoek an das kaiserliche Gouvernement, Windhuk, March 23, 1912.

Same as in note 27; my translation.

NAN ZBU 752 G II a 4, Verbrecheralbum und Fingerabdrücke. Kaiserliches Bezirksamt Windhoek an das kaiserliche Gouvernement, Windhuk, July 22, 1913.

NAN ZBU 752 G II a 4, Verbrecheralbum und Fingerabdrücke. 23 März 1912, Kaiser-licher Bezirksamtmann Windhoek an das kaiserliche Gouvernement, Windhuk, March 23, 1912.

Same as in note 30. The unidentified officer made reference to portraits, photos of crime scenes and of objects related to crimes. This corresponds to Bertillon's categorization of the different types of criminal photography.

NAN BWI 254—Sicherheitspolizei und Erkennungsdienst. Kaiserliches Gouvernement an das kaiserliche Bezirksamt Windhuk, June 26, 1912. The Windhoek authorities explicitly modeled the wider social use of fingerprinting on experiences in the Cape Colony and the neighboring Portuguese territories.

The social proliferation of various forms of fingerprints is an integral part of its history [Cole 2002: 60].

NAN BRE 27, Bezirksamt Windhuk an das Bezirksamt Rehoboth, Steckbrief, June 13, 1914. On the standardization of the search warrant, see P. Becker [2001].

Michel Foucault's work has been fundamental in addressing the individual's entry into the field of knowledge production, and how the body has become a site of power; Foucault [1995]; Anderson [2004].

A similar argument has been made, following Max Weber, with regard to written documents as technologies of bureaucracy [Hull 2003].

Filed in NAN ZBU 751 G II A 3, Fahndungsblätter. Fahndungsblatt is best translated as Police Gazette, though it literally means “manhunt publication.”

I use the concept of visual economies in line with Poole [1997: 8].

Filed in NAN GWI 730 Bezirksgericht Windhuk K. 10/12 Bd. IV, Akten über die Strafsache Falk und Sommer.

NAN GWI 730 Bezirksgericht Windhuk K. 10/12 Bd. IV, Akten über die Strafsache Falk und Sommer.

The photographs are published in Budack [1999]. Sergeant Hermann Strunck was considered to be the main victim in the case. Further victims, among them two children, were all Africans and identified by their pass-discs or by relatives questioned by the police.

NAN GWI 730 Bezirksgericht Windhuk K. 10/12 Bd. IV, Akten über die Strafsache Falk und Sommer.

Südwestbote, April 5, 1912. Quoted in Budack [1999: 10], author's translation.

The narrative of the sources remains unquestioned in Budack's account [1999].

As far as I can tell at this stage, the implementation of racial segregation and separation according to gender in the big prisons, e.g., in Windhoek and Swakopmund, seems to have been a gradual process, which materialized in the construction of “modern” prisons for “native” and “white” men in Swakopmund in 1908. The prison for “white” men had 27 cells, of which 24 were designed for single prisoners while 3 were meant to host several men at a time. The capacity of the prison was hence limited to 32 inmates, but was at the time qualified as an enormous improvement over previous conditions. One of the main reasons to build the new prisons was that convicts sentenced to longer imprisonment could be kept in the colony (instead of being sent to Germany) and used for forced labor. The situation in smaller prisons and cells adjacent to police stations all over the territory most probably continued to be significantly different, where segregation of detainees remained impossible. See, e.g., NAN BSW 29, Gefängnissachen.

Werner Hillebrecht, head archivist of the National Archives of Namibia, who showed me Album 1b, was unable to locate further albums there.

NAN BWI 254 Sicherheitspolizei und Erkennungsdienst. Kaiserlicher Gouverneur von DSWA, Theodor Seitz, an das kaiserliche Bezirksamt Windhuk, Windhuk, August 3, 1911; my translation.

NAN BWI 254 G.8.q. Kaiserliches Bezirksamt Windhuk, Akten betreffend Sicherheitspolizei und Erkennungsdienst, Bd. 1, January 1, 1911, Verzeichnis der im Gefängnis befindlichen Gefangenen, n.d.

For a discussion of the socioeconomic reasons framing the criminalization of Africans in the brief German colonial period, see Wallace [2011: 183 ff.]. On the economic rationale of colonial confinement more generally, see Alexander and Anderson [2008]; for Africa, see Bernault [2007: 60].

I make this argument on the basis of Kracauer's discussion of photography, though his analytical emphasis is slightly different; Kracauer [1993: 431]. Thanks to Gary Minkley for referring to his argument during the “Developing the Common” Conference at the CHR of the University of the Western Cape, October 6–7, 2011.

For an elaborate discussion of the place of the visual in Michel Foucault's work, see Rajchman [1988].

The entrenchment of crime, race and photography is a prominent topic in histories of photography; e.g., Biber [2007]; Bernault [2007: 64].

This is a preliminary statement. My sense of the archives suggests the “absence” of women in prison and police photography was grounded as much in the fragilities of police photography at the time as it was linked to the ideological construction of African male criminality.

For a critical discussion on teleological models of the emergence of modern penitentiary systems in Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, see Ignatieff [1981: 163 ff.].

Discussed in more depth in Rizzo [2010: 194 ff.].

Gendered differentiation in the prosecution of criminal offenders was significant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and it reflected itself in photographic representation. Examples from Australia are discussed in Doyle [2005]. For a more general discussion on criminalized women and their visual recording in late 19th-century Western Europe, see Regener [1999]. On histories of African female criminality, see Zimudzi [2004: 500].

Here again, there is an important difference between the album as a visual narrative and the actual organization of prisons in German South-West Africa, which at the time had already introduced segregation of detainees according to gender, though the implementation in everyday detention practices remains unclear. Segregation of gender could imply African women's incarceration in prisons for “white” men. See two examples recorded in NAN BWI 254 G.8.q., Verzeichnis der im Gefängnis befindlichen Gefangenen, n.d.

The black bar, with the subject's name on it, is a recurrent visual marker in the album. In some of the photos it is clear that the bar was actually placed on the ground in front of the person and the photographic frame adapted to include it, in order to create the illusion of a visual rather than a material device.

I'm far from assuming the German colonial police and penitentiary system to have been a functionally efficient “total institution” in terms of Goffman's model; far from that. The more so, I would argue, police photos and the album in particular became a representational space in which colonial authorities strove for the comprehensiveness and coherence which they lacked on the ground. As such, the album articulated a tautology within a modernist notion of the order of vision as a whole; Haxthausen [2004: 55]. On Goffman, see H. S. Becker [2003].

Besides the relevant literature mentioned in the introduction to this article, scholars of Southern Africa have likewise looked at anthropological and anthropometric photography produced in prison institutions; e.g., Webster [2000]; Bank [2006].

For a general critique of the argument see Jäger [2001].

For the broader legal argument, see Rizzo [2007], and for the economic context Bley [1968: 260ff].

My phrasing loosely echoes W.J.T. Mitchell's critique of equating desire and power when it comes to the investigation of what images do [Mitchell 1996: 74].

The phrasing goes back to Christopher Pinney and is referred to in the introduction to Hayes [2006: 2].

For the broader discussion that builds on Michel de Certeau's argument, see Edwards [2001: 132].

Edwards [2001: 3], based on Carlo Ginzburg's argument in support of the micro-historical method.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorena Rizzo

LORENA RIZZO is a historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and an Academic Associate at the History Department of the University of Basel. She has published on visual history, gender and colonialism in Southern Africa and is currently working on police photography in the region. E-mail: [email protected]