- FileA detail of one of the Duperly pictures on display.
Oya Tyehimba, Contributor
RECENTLY I had the chance of viewing the Duperlys' printing/photography exhibition currently showing at the National Gallery and what struck me was the Duperlys' evident praise for that which is colonial.
Adolphe Duperly, a young French man on his way to the West Indies to teach lithography in Haiti, visited Jamaica in 1824 and never left. Choosing to reside in Jamaica where, like most colonials, he was able to make a profitable living on behalf of his family and himself, while re-occuringly glorifying colonial aestheticism, a project later continued by his sons.
Indeed, one should not see this as their fault, for being that which they are, and subsequently wishing to immortalise this in their artistic expressions. The Duperlys were being faithful to their socio-political and racial disposition. This mode of expression, in spite of what the curator of the exhibition might wish to deny, certainly did not separate itself from the social context from which it belonged.
In fact, all of the Duperlys' subject matter should be taken in light of this fact. Those, which are seen as mere landscapes, exist as a glorification of the colonial legacy imbued in the "New World", while the portraits reflected the oppressive reality of the times, this made Blacks slaves and later marginalised labourers.
The National Gallery had chosen to try to ignore the fact that the Duperlys' prints are done through the eyes of a white colonial. Such an exhibition, which seeks to deceive the public of its true nature by divorcing the context, which is blatantly represented throughout every piece of work, most certainly must have been decidedly done to appease the viewing public and conversely insult the majority. For certainly the curator could not have been so ignorant to highlight the photographic technique over the content it portrays.
Even more erroneous, is the fact that in his article 'The Duperlys', Early Photographers of Jamaica,' (Sky Writing, October, 2001), Dr. Boxer praised a lithographed drawing of the '2nd of August Celebration', (to mark the total abolition of slavery), as being an exuberant work with fireworks and a bonfire, and figures feasting together. One does not have to be a great historian to know that this is a falsification of a historical event and thus only serve to further substantiate Duperly's desire to create and cement a type of landscape he and his kind struggled to maintain. The work is far more problematic than mere technical problems, as cited by Dr. Boxer.
In 1834, Adolphe Duperly first attempted to project a series of 48 lithographic prints of Jamaican views and occurrences, which had failed because no one wanted them. One of his greater handicaps was his lack of technical skills and "being a careful, but not a technically advanced draftsman, and he, clearly having difficulties in working out the perspectives of scenes, quickly embraced the new technology (the daguerreotype, the earliest form of photography,) as a drawing aide." (Dr. Boxer). In so doing, he became the first known daguerreotypist in Jamaica. It is for this reason, I am assuming, that it was necessary to have an exhibition on his and his heirs' behalf.
In the early 40s, Duperly revised his 1834 scheme and began taking daguerreotype views in Kingston and around the island. These were later transformed into lithographs in Paris and published in Kingston. The series began with nine views of Kingston, four concentrating on 'important' buildings including the 'Coke Chapel', 'King's House', 'The Kingston Barracks' and 'Kingston Theatre', while streets strategically guide one to more colonial monuments and legacies. In addition, there is the marked and projected images of the stereotyped and dimensionally lacking "Negro", docile and servile in a society whose very structure existed as an overbearing reminder of what it expected them to be and continue to want to remain.
Pieces such as 'Negro Washing', 1905, 'Two Market Vendors', 'Native Hut', are few such reminders.
Surely, those of us who are Black are not really expected to celebrate the images put forward by the Duperlys.
