Maine sinks into Mudd for Smithsonian exhibit

The Smithsonian cleaned up Mudd's walls with a photo exhibit entitled Beyond the Maine: Imaging the New Empire - Photographs of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Phillipines. The title of this photographic exhibit refers to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor in 1898. Two months after the mighty battleship was sunk, Spain and America were at war. The conclusion of the war left the United States in control of a pre-established empire, but the colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Phillipines were unfamiliar to most Americans, whose closest link to the new possessions was the Cuban sugar they stirred into their coffee.

The Spanish-American War was the first conflict that was documented with photographic evidence, and the conclusion of the war led to a heightened demand for images from the new U.S. territories. This exhibit, now on display in the main lobby of Mudd library, shows the work of two documentary photographers from the turn of the century who helped shape the public conception of the new territories.

Charles Edward Doty was a government employee from Ohio who served first as a soldier in Havana, then became an official government photographer. Doty's black and white photographs from Cuba range from Havana streetscapes to rural scenes, but they share a sense of imminent cultural change. An example is his beautiful record of the Havana Cathedral, crisscrossed with electrical wires, showing the coming of technology even as horses and buggies line the cathedral square.

Doty was a socially conscious artist, evidenced by his complex photograph of rows of black inmates in pinstripes in a Havana prison. He also shot a triptych entitled "Garrote Execution" that reveal a glimpse into a tortuous mode of execution that was common in Cuba at the time.

Interestingly, Doty took photographs of subjects which are becoming taboo a hundred years later. The U.S. government takes special precautions to ensure that current images of prisons or executions are censored. Doty's simple and stirring prints also remind us that America has invested steady pressure over time to reduce the number of positive images coming from Cuba. Doty's several revealing shots of U.S. soldiers standing uncomfortably in rows are reminiscent of recent photos of soldiers stationed in Guantanamo Bay. The soldiers' postures illustrate their shaky discomfort as foreign enforcers of colonial authority.

Helen Hamilton Gardener was a world traveler and early feminist whose most famous series was a rubuttal of assertions that the female brain was inferior to the masculine. She chose to document the importance of female rural production in her travels through Puerto Rico and the Phillipines. In "Phillipine Weaver" a lone woman works at a loom while two men sit on the curb and relax.

The entire exhibit is arranged thoughtfully, placing Gardener's images of the upper-class next to a peasant market, and juxtaposing Doty's records of death with joyous street celebrations. One point to remember is that both Doty and Gardener were representing a colonial power when they recorded their images, and it is apparent in their photographs because the subjects are always presenting prepared faces to the camera. In fact, the cameras that recorded these faces and places were symbols of a documentary technology that has served to maintain the state of imperial relations throughout the twentieth century.