Feb 25, 2016 - Sale 2406

Sale 2406 - Lot 16

Price Realized: $ 18,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
(PHILIPPINES)
Group of approximately 250 photographs of the Philippines relating to Dean Worcester's political ideology. With images ranging from portraits of indigenous people performing rituals, to factory, plantation, and construction workers, as well as architectural views and mountainous landscapes; also with a few of Worcester himself posing with subjects. Silver prints, most approximately 4 1/4x6 1/4 inches (10.8x15.9 cm.), some slightly smaller, some with captions, in pencil, on verso. 1902-12

Additional Details

Please note the corrected time frame of 1902-1912 and that photographs from Worcester's personal collection were bequeathed to the University of Michigan, the Field Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, among others.

with--A group of 22 medium-format photographs of Pagsanjan, Laguna, and the Philippines, including landscapes, interiors, and portraits. Silver prints, 7 1/2x9 1/2 inches (19.1x24.1 cm.), some with captions, in pencil, on verso.

Dean C. Worcester (1886-1924), an American government administrator in the Philippines from 1901-13, is best-known for stridently perpetuating the American colonial agenda. An avid photographer, he wrote numerous illustrated articles for National Geographic. Though trained as an anthropologist, Worcester was a racist and ideologue whose practice of manipulating images to maintain American dominance in the islands led one judge to characterize him as "the P.T. Barnum of the 'non-Christian tribe' industry."