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This article explores how social science applications of photography employed in the early 1950s to both understand and change so-called ‘backwards’ people became entangled with, and drew momentum from, the geopolitical concerns of the early Cold War. Specifically, I address the employment of photography in the Cornell-Peru Project in the Andean community of Vicos, a decade-long research experiment combining development anthropology and fashionable modernisation theory emanating out of the behavioural sciences. In addition to development activities that were to serve as the catalysts of change (agricultural improvement, health and education), researchers at Vicos were at pains to uncover and validate the inner ‘predispositions’ towards change and modernity they hoped were lurking inside villagers. Reflecting Cold War priorities and concerns, researchers sought to locate a particular developing indigenous subject – one closer to liberal capitalism (and its values of self-reliance and individualism) and away from communal nature of indigenous society that too strongly resembled Soviet models of development and collectivisation. Along with an arsenal of other psychological projective tests, researchers hoped the camera’s lens would reveal this change through such subtle cues as the rearrangement of home interiors and modifications in dress, style and comportment, as well as the development of visual literacy. Following the photographic work of famed photographer and formative visual anthropologist, John Collier, Jr., during a year at Vicos, this article ultimately explores the limitations of the behavioural sciences’ hopeful uses of photography.
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Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.
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