Imperial Reproductions: Imag(in)ing the Philippines in Color

Scanning the various aspects of Philippine life are hand-drawn, painted, or photographic images on glass suited for projection. As a form, these were introduced in the United States in the 1850s and were popular all throughout the First World War. This prevalence owed to the attraction of color, as well as the capacity of the medium to reach a larger audience through projection. This kind of reach gave photography the chance to lay claim to a broader constituency, changing it from an intimate art of memorabilium to a mass-scale instrument of entertainment, education, and popular culture.

The colony as a possession depicted in the postcards is made to work as an efficient economy and a productive polity. It must be able to govern itself, prepare labor for assembly lines, condition consciousness for the industry of culture. Both infrastructure of public administration and disposition for a lifestyle are installed from the ground up. From schools to hospitals, from bridges to ports, the sense of a hectic outpost roused to life and touched to the quick by imperial industry is brought to sharper focus by photography, even as it crops out the hidden costs of progress.