DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.6| FRAUWALLNER: IN//OUT OF FRAME_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 34This is a theme woven into not only the Otavi-album,but the Nath-album as well. Considering this on alarger scale, I argue that this negation of bodily presence applies to many other visual media from theperiod, thereby making it a colonial visual practicewhich intends to present colonised bodies as an intricate part of their location rather than as individualhuman beings.Colonial gaze and clothingAnother striking visual practice can be observedwithin the Otavi and Nath albums: the presentationof non-white bodies through specific clothing or thelack thereof. For example, Black women can be seenwearing various items of clothing – of European orlocal fashion – in Nath’s album, but the meaning ofthe garments is subverted by the respective captionwhich is an accomplice to a colonial gaze.The marking of non-white and colonised bodies occupies an ambivalent position in colonial visual practice. This practice was part of pseudo-scientific racialtheory and served to emphasise the supposed superiority of the white race and justify the oppression ofnon-white people.23On the other hand, voyeuristicimages show the performative adaptation of European clothing as an expression of a distinct identity, as was the case with Herero women who madetheir own version of theohorokweva onde(a long,A-line dress with petticoats) modelled on Victoriandresses.24The depictions of non-white people in the Otavi andNath albums illustrate this ambivalence. It is important to note that white people are usually shown fullyclothed while non-white people are shown clothed,partially clothed, or naked. Garments are a meansof incorporating other cultures into a familiar setFig. 4:: While depicting the captioned„house of a Herero chief”, this photographs alsoshows the(supposedly) associated familial entourage of women. The spacial division of thewomen into two groups according to their clothing is striking.23J. Marti, Africa,„Colonized Bodies, Bodies as Identities“,Consejo Superior Investigaciones Cientificas-Csic Revista de dialectologíay tradiciones populares, 67(2012), 319–346.24A. A. B. Hendrickson,Historical Idioms of Identity Representation Among the Ovaherero in Southern Africa, PhD thesis, New YorkUniversity(New York, 1992), 293–294.
