Children in Japan, welcoming Taft. Source: H. F. Woods Camps TrustThey are ostensibly pictures of celebration, or at least of manufactured celebration in the spirit of hosting dignitaries. The requisite row of children, waving flags at a strange-looking man.
Apparently, more than 1000 of these were sitting in a photo album in the long-deceased photographer's family home in the Adirondacks.
Taft arrives, Bacolod, Philippines. Source: H. F. Woods Camps TrustToday's NY Times article about this discovery classified this finding in the realm of art, mostly noting the remarkable and pleasing objects produced in a medium relatively new at the time, snapshot photography.
Why am I surprised? How many Americans have heard about the 1905 Taft-Katsura Agreement, after all?
Why am I surprised? How many Americans have heard about the 1905 Taft-Katsura Agreement, after all?
In these photos, taken on a 3-month trip documenting then-Secretary of War (great title) William Howard Taft's trip from San Francisco to Honolulu, Japan, Philippines, and China, everything is so ordinary, unremarkable, and unposed. As the article notes, it's a trove of snapshots -- moments unplanned and seemingly incidental-- and so, men gambling on ships, people waving from docks, street scenes of Shanghai.
And yet it is during this time that Japan and the US, through Count Katsura and Secretary of War Taft, agree on this: Japan takes Korea, if the US gets to keep the Philippines, an agreement which became formalized in the Treaty of Portsmouth later that year.
I'm still a bit speechless that the exhibit showcasing these photos makes this event a matter of OHIOAN PRIDE. The article does finally get beyond the gushing family members to quote one professor of history, who notes that this is a pivotal diplomatic moment for two budding empires, as they agree mutually on their respective 'spheres of influence.'
I love these euphemisms. 'Sphere of influence' sounds like a gently irrigated crop circle. And framing the agreement as 'diplomacy' erases all the resistance and violence that came before and after. The article is a great example of how to naturalize the violence of colonialism with a gaze that only sees the literal subject matter of the shots. A lot of time spent pondering President Roosevelt's nubile 21-year old daughter, for example.
Then, there is the language of the actual agreement: For Japan, colonial exploitation of Korea is a matter of 'general peace in the extreme East' in exchange for recognition that the US would be a 'strong and friendly nation' governing the Philippines. Meanwhile, the tutorial for teachers based on this new exhibit calls it a significant moment in the 'transformation of the United States into a world power.' Ah yes, you mean going from crude gunboat diplomacy to the wonderful and exclusive new club of international law.
What's really perfect about the pictures is that they also are among the first touristic photos shot with the hand-held Kodak- in a sense, the first touristic snapshots. The word connotes spontaneity and some promise of authenticity- this really happened, this was not a set-up. Yet coupled with the context of tourism, the snapshot is also a lens back to the photographer, the document showing his or her valuation of what was worthy of being captured, and all the things they did not or could not see.
Moro Women, Philippines. Source: H. F. Woods Camps Trust
Moro Warrior, Philippines. Source: H. F. Woods Camps TrustSo it kind of stopped my heart to see these shots of the Moro people in the Philippines album (above), who, according to the article, are demonstrating their 'prowess with spears' for Taft's party. How ironic. How heart-rending, especially after just leaving the Philippines and learning more about the Moro peoples' long struggle for independence and autonomy, their patchwork incorporation into the US-occupied and now authoritarian Philippine state. How many other photographers followed, to Zamboanga, to Jolo, all over Mindanao (and who is photographing what is taking place there with the Philippine and US military now)?
But I call these pictures perfect because it becomes so transparent: how tourism and colonial conquest go hand in hand, but in a sleight-of-hand way; where one type of border crossing (tourism) covers up the other, even though both are happening simultaneously. The violence in the gaze is unremarked upon, and gets to go wandering around with a point-and-click camera. The natives are keepsake images, everything else is ripe for the picking.
For me, it is also telling that after that agreement is made, main attraction Taft goes home but Alice Roosevelt goes to Korea (as the need for diplomats has obviously become moot). There she and an American minister are apparently the first foreigners to be entertained by the emperor of Korea and the ladies of the court (more euphemisms). So the rulers of Korea are essentially meeting Americans precisely after their sovereignty has been signed away --
Behind the scenes, oh behind the scenes, is this familiar argument for empire through colonial conquest, Social Darwinism and development. Asian lands were "rich in possibilities, but unfruitful through the incapacity of negligence," inhabited as they were by the "incompetent races" (words of influential US naval officer Alfred Mahan).
The timing of this article is funny, since I had been thinking 1. that it would be good to go back to this moment to launch this blog, as a way of historicizing how the US, Korea, and the Philippines overlap in time and space, and 2. wondering how to introduce the agreement. Then this January 1st 'discovery' of snapshots comes along. All in all, Taft-Katsura feels like the historical equivalent of two ships passing in the night, when two sets of spoils change hands - and while this did not mark the beginning of liberation movements in either country, by any means, the agreement itself is radically interpreted by Korean movement activists as evidence of the US reneging on agreements and NOT in fact acting as savior of the Korean peoples. It was one of those revelatory 'aha's' in my study of modern Korean-US relations for the KEEP program that still, to this day, feels like a secret. And the article keeps it that way.
I don't mean to remain at the political response level of 'indignation' and 'shock' alone. I hope to get on to all those other feelings, the other readings of the moment and these photographs. But I had to honor my own doubletake at all the erasures within this article.
But I call these pictures perfect because it becomes so transparent: how tourism and colonial conquest go hand in hand, but in a sleight-of-hand way; where one type of border crossing (tourism) covers up the other, even though both are happening simultaneously. The violence in the gaze is unremarked upon, and gets to go wandering around with a point-and-click camera. The natives are keepsake images, everything else is ripe for the picking.
For me, it is also telling that after that agreement is made, main attraction Taft goes home but Alice Roosevelt goes to Korea (as the need for diplomats has obviously become moot). There she and an American minister are apparently the first foreigners to be entertained by the emperor of Korea and the ladies of the court (more euphemisms). So the rulers of Korea are essentially meeting Americans precisely after their sovereignty has been signed away --
Behind the scenes, oh behind the scenes, is this familiar argument for empire through colonial conquest, Social Darwinism and development. Asian lands were "rich in possibilities, but unfruitful through the incapacity of negligence," inhabited as they were by the "incompetent races" (words of influential US naval officer Alfred Mahan).
The timing of this article is funny, since I had been thinking 1. that it would be good to go back to this moment to launch this blog, as a way of historicizing how the US, Korea, and the Philippines overlap in time and space, and 2. wondering how to introduce the agreement. Then this January 1st 'discovery' of snapshots comes along. All in all, Taft-Katsura feels like the historical equivalent of two ships passing in the night, when two sets of spoils change hands - and while this did not mark the beginning of liberation movements in either country, by any means, the agreement itself is radically interpreted by Korean movement activists as evidence of the US reneging on agreements and NOT in fact acting as savior of the Korean peoples. It was one of those revelatory 'aha's' in my study of modern Korean-US relations for the KEEP program that still, to this day, feels like a secret. And the article keeps it that way.
I don't mean to remain at the political response level of 'indignation' and 'shock' alone. I hope to get on to all those other feelings, the other readings of the moment and these photographs. But I had to honor my own doubletake at all the erasures within this article.
