Picturing Bushmen: The Denver African Expedition of 1925

by Robert J. Gordon

The Denver African Expedition of 1925 sought “the cradle of Humanity.” The explorers returned claiming to have found the “Missing Link” in the Heikum bushmen of the Kalahari—and they proceeded to market this image. As Robert J. Gordon shows in Picturing Bushmen , the impact of the expedition lay not simply in its slick merchandising of bushmen images but also in the fact that the pictures were exotic and aesthetically pleasing. Like all significant events, the expedition and its images had unanticipated consequences. The Denver Expedition played a key role in romanticizing bushmen. Indeed, its image of bushmen has permeated Western mass culture. Before the expedition, bushmen commonly had been presented as impoverished savages. In its wake, the bushmen of South Africa have inspired commercial advertisements, art exhibitions, and novels. Bushmen are frequently the archetypal “other” to Western intellectual and popular thought. Explaining the impact of the expedition involves, in part, considering the culture of visualization that gave the expedition direction and in turn was influenced by it. Although Rob Gordon is an anthropologist, this study ranges into questions of film theory, history, and popular culture. It offers a perspective on coffee-table books, ethnology, and the nature of research on those labeled “others.” While suggesting how “ethnographic photographs” might be appreciated, Picturing Bushmen is also a subtle analysis of the perennial issues that haunt field workers—especially what and how they “see” and how their perception is influenced by the mundane in their own societies.

Genres: Anthropology

325 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 1997

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book under a misapprehension of what it was about. I had heard of the 1925 Denver University expedition to South-West Africa (now Namibia) and had previously seen its best-known photo, which depicted two bushmen going to hunt zebra whilst disguised as ostriches. I had thought this book was a report of the Expedition, but it’s actually a 1997 book “critiquing” the 1925 photos.

The expedition was led by C. Ernest Cadle, a recent graduate of the university, and Paul Hoefler, a photographer/journalist with the Denver Post. Their started aim was to find “wild” bushmen with no previous contacts with whites, and to establish whether the Bushmen were the so-called “missing link” between apes and humans. They also planned to kidnap two bushmen, a man and a woman, and bring them back to the US for examination by scientists. These attitudes are shocking to the modern reader of course, and I suspect they were fairly antediluvian even at the time. Thankfully no more was heard of the kidnapping plan after the expedition reached Africa.

South West Africa had been a German colony between 1884 and 1915, when it was overrun by the South African army as part of the wider WW1 conflict. Following the war it had been placed under South African administration, though in 1925 the white population was still mainly of German origin. Compared to the members of the expedition, both the local white farmers and the administrators had a far more accurate and realistic view of the bushmen.

The expedition did meet bushmen, took photos and made a film. When its members retuned to the US they were hailed as having discovered a “lost tribe,” a “relic of our prehistoric past,” from a “mystery land stripped of all vestiges of civilisation.” The reality was very different. Hoefler himself recorded in his private journal that one of the bushmen he encountered possessed a photograph of the silent movie actor Robert Frazer. He described it as “a small litho put in cigarettes by an English firm.” This was definitely not the image he wanted to show in his photos! A South African geographer wrote a restrained criticism in which he commented, “The Denver expedition that did such good work in South West Africa has somewhat overshot the mark in claiming that the Heikum Bushmen are a hitherto unknown tribe…” Another anonymous correspondent, probably a farmer called Hartmann who lived nearby, completely ridiculed the claims made by the expedition.

So what of the photos, which were my original reason for choosing the book? The author, Robert Gordon, highlights that Hoefler went with an idea of the photos he wanted to take and of the market they would be aimed at. The expedition had a commercial aim - they hoped the film they shot would make them famous. We must therefore acknowledge that the photos were chosen with the specific aim of portraying a “primitive” people. There are various “hunting” scenes showing bushmen equipped with bow and arrow and wearing camouflage or disguise, which romanticise them. The limitations of photography in the period (for example Hoefler needed to set up the camera on a tripod) also meant that the photos were all posed. That said, the author does acknowledge that the accoutrements worn by the bushmen must have been real.

There’s an interesting conclusion, when the author went to Namibia in the 1990s and showed the photos to descendants of the people depicted. He was worried about their reaction but they were delighted. They loved the photos. They agreed they were staged but so what? Doesn’t everyone try to look their best in a photo?

The analysis contained within the book was rather dry, and the text got rather repetitive. Nevertheless I found it worthwhile. Despite all the warnings these days about AI manipulation, I still have a tendency to assume photos are authentic, and in this respect, the book gave me food for thought.

The book is available on the Internet Archive, if anyone wants to flick through the pages to see the photos. The “ostrich” one is right at the start.