DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.6| FRAUWALLNER: IN//OUT OF FRAME_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 35 ting or highlighting cultural differences, often to reinforce cultural identity through a contrast with the“other”. 25 the colony. Their bodies are employed to spark re­cognition of the“other” among an imperial-minded European audience. The photograph captioned Haus eines Herero­Häuptlings [House of a Herero Chief] provides an interesting example of how subtly the colonial gaze can function through the choice of clothing and spatial positioning. 26 The photograph(fig.4) depicts two groups of women posing for the camera in front of two small buildings. The group of seven women on the left are wearing dresses reminiscent of Eu­ropean fashion in the mid-nineteenth century, but they are made of fabrics with patterns common to the region. Meanwhile, the group on the right are dressed in local fashion consisting of the oneheke and oruhira (back and front skirt-like panels which are tied around the waist, reaching to the knees), the orupera (a cloak tied over the shoulders, rea­ching to the knees, covering the back of the body) and an ekori (in this case a head covering with a three-pointed top). All these elements were made from sheepskin rubbed with otjize (a paste of red ochre and fat). 27 The staging of this image is no coincidence; it is intended to show a white audien­ce the difference between the precolonial and the colonial – or to put it more bluntly: to make clear the difference between“uncivilised” and“civilised” people. Notably, the same four-element dress is also worn by the woman photographed for Herero­frau in Kriegsschmuck (fig. 1). However, in her case, the meaning ascribed to her attire reaches beyond showcasing“tradition” and takes on a propagandis­tic claim marking her as a“warrior”. In photographs like these, Black women are made highly visible according to a colonial imagining of the visual distinction between the future and the past of Conclusion Photographs of Herero women ascribed them the role of warriors, which fit neatly into the image perpetuated by German war propaganda that women were active parti­cipants in battle. In this context, Herero women were made hyper-visi­ble. Simultaneously, Herero women were made invisi­ble in the photographs taken to document the cons­truction of the Otavi railway. Here, they were erased from image and text, despite them performing stre­nuous physical work as forced labourers. The case of Herero women performing forced la­bour as prisoners of war challenges the notion of la­bour, infrastructure, and war as exclusively male do­mains, necessitating a re-examination of these“male spaces”. While the images analysed for this article do hint at a gendered difference in representations of colonised bodies by the means of clothing, a more in-depth analysis of a larger number of images is re­quired to draw any meaningful conclusions about the particular ways in which different genders are repre­sented in colonial photography. Little if anything is known about the incentives or di­rections given to anyone involved – whether photo­grapher or photographed – which makes the produc­tion process all the more obscure. However, to pick up on the observation by Muthien and Bam 28 refe­renced at the beginning, the fact that indigenous wo­men are often not tangible is due to the contempo­25 V. Rovine,„Colonialism’s Clothing: Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion“, Design, 25(2009), 44–61: 44–45 . 26 TMW, Archiv für österr. Eisenbahngeschichte, EA-002910-31, Leutnant Nath, photo album(c. 1904–1908), n.p. 27 Hendrickson, Historical idioms, 304(see n. 24 28 Muthien and Bam, Rethinking Africa (see n. 4).