Intervention photographs? On the photographs of German anthropologist Hermann Klaatsch

The article discusses photographs taken by Hermann Klaatsch in 1906 during his research at a prison in Wyndham, Australia. The anthropologist stayed there during his three-year research trip to Australia (1904–1907). The text attempts to answer the question of whether Klaatsch’s photographs of prisoners, copies of which are held in the collections of the Human Biology Museum at the University of Wrocław, can be considered interventionist photographs. The context for the analyses presented is the interpretation of photographs taken by people associated with the Congo Reform Association in the Congo in the early 20th century and an analysis of how they were used, as presented in Sharon Sliwinski’s article titled “Childhood of human rights: The Kodak on the Congo” and the doctoral thesis by Mark Anthony Sealy Decolonizing the Camera: Photography in Racial Time. The article traces the use of Klaatsch’s photographs—both by him and by other researchers— and how they were perceived by the public.