I don’t know where or when I first heard about the aboriginal belief or fear or superstition or whatever it was or is (more than a notion) that their spirit would be stolen if their person was photographed. The concept has always intrigued me and carried with it a ring of plausibility to the point that I can completely understand why a so called primitive soul would draw such a conclusion. Speaking of drawing, I’ve never heard of anyone expressing such fear about having an artist draw them, but I suspect such cases have occurred, especially considering the high-quality renderings of gifted field artists under the hire of a well-funded expedition before photography clicked.
The portrait artist, whether photographer, painter or sketcher (or writer for that matter, drawing pictures with words–language being a wholly cognitive creation that readily allows the reader to participate subjectively, individually, imposing associations however embellished or tainted depending on life experience and mood of the moment–instead of the two-dimensional representation, comes under a lot of pressure, typical of any creator. You can read a picture and you and visualize a description. Depending on the subject and the range of physical characteristics imposed by chance or deliberately produced as a result of the photographer’s skill and effort, or lack thereof, the number of words a picture is worth surely varies from the standard thousand, especially factoring in the skill, vocabulary, artistry and verbosity of the writer.
Well, okay. Huh? That’s what I mean. Say what? Yeah, that’s right.
Anyway, the whole thing about stealing the spirit is not necessarily literal, but then again, it is. Perhaps language translation plays a role.
The first practical problem of that of time and place, the disparity of those two factors during the development of the photograph or the drawing of the portrait. For the painter or sketch artist, those two factors are not such a big deal since sketches are often of the moment, candid, loose, spontaneous and usually free of the formal constraints of producing a painted image where the subject(s) remain static, posed (for long periods) in a manner prearranged agreeable to all involved parties. Here it becomes handy to equate the photojournalist to the sketch artist as the studio photographer to the painter. The differences lie in the environment: the former without control; the latter insistent on control.
Whichever or whatever, the artist is at risk of the subject and their kin assigning credit or blame depending on how the image is perceived. Is it good or is it bad can breach beyond aesthetic considerations to presenting of moral, ethical, even sacrosanct, on enumerable levels. Did you take a picture or draw a picture so somebody doing something they shouldn’t have been doing? Maybe you knew it was wrong when you did it. Maybe not. Probably not. Did you understand the context of what was going on in the when and where of it? Does it matter? Yes. It matters, especially if the subject wants to kill you because of what you’ve done. Such is often the relationship between fashion model and photographer, but that is yet another dimension of the same story and perhaps a bit too much of a deviation for now.
I can see where the Polaroid photography could be alarming to someone who has never witnessed such a thing, let alone seen a white person. Do only white people have such powers? Do all white people have such powers? The answers are as simple and elegant as the questions, in this order: No; Yes. But the second answer is incomplete because of the inclusion of one word in the question: white. Remove that limitation from the question and the possibilities explode. Such is not the case with pen and paint. Not everyone can recreate the image of any subject by hand. This is much more than the differences of Picasso and Wyeth.
Regardless of how unrealistic a caricature of an individual might be from a photograph of that same individual, both presentations can augment or diminish the subject’s standing in the poles, make or break reputation and esteem.
And so, the aboriginal chief, the most articulate representative of the tribe, tells the translator: “Hey! You’ve really captured our essence there!” At least, that’s what the chief meant. But the interpreter spews out. “Eeeeeck! Is this real? You have stolen our spirits.” Upon hearing these words, the white men become even whiter with fear. This reaction is totally unexpected as far as the natives are concerned and so they become agitated. Ululations erupt, violence ensues, blood is spilled. The white men stay for dinner because they have become dinner. A lovely snapshot, taken during the early moments of the party, takes it’s place of honor, displayed prominently in the chief’s first wife’s hut.
