DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.6| FRAUWALLNER: IN//OUT OF FRAME_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 34 This is a theme woven into not only the Otavi-album, but the Nath-album as well. Considering this on a larger scale, I argue that this negation of bodily pres­ence applies to many other visual media from the period, thereby making it a colonial visual practice which intends to present colonised bodies as an in­tricate part of their location rather than as individual human beings. Colonial gaze and clothing Another striking visual practice can be observed within the Otavi and Nath albums: the presentation of non-white bodies through specific clothing or the lack thereof. For example, Black women can be seen wearing various items of clothing – of European or local fashion – in Nath’s album, but the meaning of the garments is subverted by the respective caption which 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 racial theory and served to emphasise the supposed super­iority of the white race and justify the oppression of non-white people. 23 On the other hand, voyeuristic images show the performative adaptation of Euro­pean clothing as an expression of a distinct identi­ty, as was the case with Herero women who made their own version of the ohorokweva onde (a long, A-line dress with petticoats) modelled on Victorian dresses. 24 The depictions of non-white people in the Otavi and Nath albums illustrate this ambivalence. It is import­ant to note that white people are usually shown fully clothed while non-white people are shown clothed, partially clothed, or naked. Garments are a means of incorporating other cultures into a familiar set­Fig. 4:: While depicting the captioned„house of a Herero chief”, this photographs also shows the(supposedly) associated familial entourage of women. The spacial division of the women into two groups according to their clothing is striking. 23 J. Marti, Africa,„Colonized Bodies, Bodies as Identities“, Consejo Superior Investigaciones Cientificas-Csic Revista de dialectología y tradiciones populares , 67(2012), 319–346. 24 A. A. B. Hendrickson, Historical Idioms of Identity Representation Among the Ovaherero in Southern Africa , PhD thesis, New York University(New York, 1992), 293–294.