ABSTRACT Between 1889 and 1922, John Møller (1867–1935), the first professional Greenlandic photographer, produced more than 3000 glass plate negatives documenting life in Western Greenland around the turn of the twentieth century. Rooted in an internal understanding of self, Møller’s photographs played an important part in the formation of a contemporary image of Greenlandic indigenous identity. At the same time, Møller’s photographic practice was arguably entangled in and delimited by a historical reality that was structured by colonial relations of power. This paper examines the social and art-historical contexts of Møller’s work, focusing in particular on a selection of his formal studio portraits. My reading of these portraits suggests a case in which conflicting impulses coincide. On the one hand, Møller produced images that played out the “ethnographic convention”, a European form of representation dating back to the sixteenth century used for the documentation of non-Western indigenous peoples as specimens. However, in acting out that convention, Møller’s photographs hint at a subtle, progressive building-up of identity that reclaimed images of Greenlanders for themselves, and turned an originally negative, external image of indigeneity into a positive sense of self.

中文翻译：

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复制土著：约翰·穆勒 (John Møller) 的格陵兰人工作室肖像画

摘要 1889 年至 1922 年间，第一位格陵兰岛专业摄影师约翰·穆勒 (John Møller，1867-1935 年) 制作了 3000 多张玻璃底片，记录了二十世纪之交西格陵兰岛的生活。Møller 的照片植根于对自我的内在理解，在形成格陵兰土著身份的当代形象方面发挥了重要作用。与此同时，穆勒的摄影实践可以说是被一个由殖民权力关系构成的历史现实所纠缠和界定的。本文考察了 Møller 作品的社会和艺术历史背景，特别关注他的正式工作室肖像的选择。我对这些肖像的阅读表明，冲突的冲动同时发生。一方面，Møller 制作的图像符合“民族志公约”，这是一种可追溯到 16 世纪的欧洲表现形式，用于将非西方土著人民作为标本进行记录。然而，在表演这个惯例的过程中，穆勒的照片暗示了一种微妙的、渐进的身份建构，它为自己收回了格陵兰人的形象，并将原本消极的、外在的土著形象转变为积极的自我意识。