Photography and the Religious Encounter: Finnish Missionaries’ Representations of the Owambo, Namibia

Abstract

Although research has been done showing Finnish missionaries as compassionate and sympathetic in their photographs of the Owambo, this chapter argues that they participated in the colonial photographic practice of producing images of the “other”. This chapter provides a more critical analysis of photographs taken by Finnish missionaries—highlighting their different intentions and photographic practices, which sought to visualize the Owambo in a certain manner that complemented their civilizing enterprise. It also addresses their various genres of photography, ranging from landscapes, expedition photographs, and ethnographic scenery to group and individual portraits, which missionary photographers used to document life in Owambo, and interrogates not simply what missionary photographs represent but how, where, when, by whom, and why they were taken. This chapter further considers a selection of images and revealing archival reports and correspondence concerning mission work in Owamboland dating to the years between 1890 and 1930, combining sustained visual analysis with archival research. It concludes that the photographs were deliberate constructions of the missionary experience along the lines of a prevalent reference to a missionary conversion narrative that signaled modernity and development. It further concludes that Finnish missionaries’ photographs should be seen in relation to how colonial photographs were constructed and supported, through labeling, marginalization, and other techniques, contributing to the way the Owambo were represented in a colonial context.