School Photography and Imperial Convivialities
Photographer unknown, The Prefects 1928, print reproduction of a black-and-white photograph, Diocesan Boys’ School Photographs, Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS93-1-472. Copy provided by the Hong Kong Public Records Office with the permission of the Diocesan Boys’ School. Fourteen Asian boys in crisp suits and ties are photographed in two rows, according to the generic conventions of the formal school photograph.
While researching Archives of Intimacy, I collected hundreds of school photographs, mostly from Hong Kong, as well as a few precious examples from London and Liverpool. This essay was a first attempt to think through what makes such photographs so compelling in their utter banality and overfamiliarity. Published in a special issue of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas on the Canadian sesquicentenary, the essay examines four photographs of schoolchildren taken at around the same time in a range of locations across the British empire: Hong Kong, Liverpool, and Salt Spring Island. All feature Chinese children in close proximity to black, South Asian, or white peers. Wanting to know how and with what consequences these photographs might be read in relation to one another, I develop the concept of resonance as a way of thinking both about and against imperial projects of multiracial community formation. Originally published March 2018 @ https://doi.org/10.1163/23523085-00401002.