Methodologies of Alternative Photographies : The Siamese case

Abstract

The analysis of photographic technologies and their utilizations within various geographical and conceptual contexts poses a unique challenge to the development of ‘alternative’ modernities studies across several disciplines. Being simultaneously a technological and cultural medium, the introduction and development of photography in pre-modern societies is easily pinpointed and may then be placed within a causational framework as a turning point in movements towards modernization. This focus on photography as a ‘marker’ of modernity frequently places Europe at the centre of studies of alternative photographies, as its introduction to non-European societies appears to be reliant on some contact with Europeans as a condition of technological transfer. Utilizing the case study of the introduction and early development of photography in Siam, this paper draws upon Chakrabarty’s calls to decenter Europe as the source of understandings of modernity in non-European contexts (Chakrabarty, 2000). The implications of this decentering include the complication of simplistic readings of the transfer of photographic technologies as either an easily integrated, neutral technological medium or as a culturally determined medium already steeped in European modes of understanding. As a semi-colonial nation and as a colonizer, Siam’s double identity presents a particularly pertinent example, against which this new methodology of alternative photographies may be tested.