Face to Race

41    I want to give a few examples from the history of the European discovery of Australia. Between 1837-1839 George Gray travelled on the coast of Western Australia and landed at Hanover Bay, near Perth. (Gray) His observations were therefore historically beyond the epistemic break of 1800, mentioned above. His "Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia" stand out because of its factual tone and the accompanying illustrations that are devoid both of the look as defined by Kaja Silverman and the pornography of humanitarian gaze that Mario Klarer and Karen Haltunnen have discovered. (Klarer; Haltunnen) Gray notes the differences of indigenous and European cultures, without trying to dissolve these differences in the image of the noble savage or Greek classic aesthetics.

42      Edward John Eyre (1815-1901) undertook an expedition in 1840/41 at the end of which he published a text, which is explicitly aimed at a representation of indigenous Australian cultures. He was the first white person to traverse South Australia from Albany to Adelaide on foot, marching at least 2,000 miles or 3,200 kilometers, with his friend and indigenous leaders Wylie and two other Aboriginal men. (Eyre) He, too, looks almost neutral on the indigenous peoples, without Europeanizing or idealizing them.

43      Ludwig Leichhardt (1813-1848), one of the German pioneers of ethnographical research in Australia, disappeared 1848 during an expedition into the interior of Australia. He left, however, a travelogue, which helped settlers to advance into the interior of the continent. (Leichhardt) Leichhardt, too, travelled in the company of two Australian indigenous men, which made it possible for him to survive in the extremely arid land. In his report Leichhardt availed himself of an objective tone, and his drawings reveal that a patronizing or racist attitude is completely missing/absent.

44     In 1831/32 Major Thomas L. Mitchell (1792-1855) undertook an expedition on behalf of the British Government, during which he explored New South Wales and the later Victoria. The drawing on the first page of his report shows a scantily clad indigenous man, who does not avoid the artist’s and the viewer’s glance, but who looks back very self-confidently. Mitchell was conscious of this fact, because he titled this drawing "Portrait of Cambo, an Aboriginal Native." Here, the indigenous man does not only have a name, but a portrait of him has been made which clearly signifies his subject character.

45     If the readers gain the impression that in these more neutral depictions the female corporeality is largely omitted, this is not entirely unjustified. In discourses and viscourses alike, the picture of the promiscuous while unsightly indigenous woman dominated and thus indigenous female bodies were unspeakable. Only Mitchell depicts indigenous women, but never shown in the frontal, one may surmise, in order to avoid the representation of nudity which was discursively with the image of promiscuity. Here one can demonstrate by reference to what is not mentionable or sayable how viscourses determine the qualitative bandwidth of the visible, but also how media strategies and procedures expanded or restricted the field of the visible.