Missionaries working in Mysore, as elsewhere in India, took enthusiastically to the new art of photography from the 1840s, to record their ‘views’ of the society they undertook to transform. Evangelising was, however, early on, allied with education as a way for missionaries to make their way into a complex, hierarchical society with learning traditions of its own. How did the missionary ‘see’ the Indian classroom, and invite the viewer of their photographs to participate in its narrative of ‘improvement’? What was the place of the photograph at a time when meticulous written records were kept of victories and reverses in the mission field of education? Revealing the work of the photograph in aiding missionary work must perforce begin with the more instrumentalist uses of this new art, as technologies of recording par excellence, before turning to the possible ways of looking at photographs, whether by those contemporaries of the missionaries who were physically distanced from the location, and were yet linked to their work in India, or when they formed part of the contemporary historian’s archive. Here one may exploit photography’s ‘inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy’ instead of its truth-telling capacity. I am precisely posing a dynamic and perhaps even antagonistic relationship between the copious written and the sparser visual record of educational changes in Mysore in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This investigation of the visual field in the service of education also allows us also to speculate about the specific aesthetic achievements of missionary photography, with its own pedagogic goals.

中文翻译：

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像传教士一样看：迈索尔教育肖像，1840-1920年

与印度其他地方一样，在迈索尔工作的传教士们热情地学习了1840年代的新摄影艺术，记录了他们对自己所要改造的社会的“看法”。然而，传福音最早是与教育联系在一起的，这是传教士进入具有自己的学习传统的复杂，等级制社会的一种方式。传教士如何“看”印度教室，并邀请照片的观看者参加其“改善”故事？在教育任务领域中，一丝不苟的书面记录保持胜利和颠倒的时候，照片的位置是什么？在协助传教工作中揭示照片的工作必须从这种新艺术的更多器乐性使用开始，因为这种技术可以录制卓越的唱片，在探讨可能的照片查看方式之前，无论是那些与该地区实际相距遥远，但仍与他们在印度的工作有联系的传教士们，还是当他们成为当代历史学家档案的一部分时。在这里，人们可能会利用摄影的“取之不尽，用之不竭的演绎，推测和幻想的邀请”，而不是用其讲真话的能力。我恰恰是在19世纪和20世纪初迈索尔的文学变化与稀疏的视觉变化之间，形成了一种动态的甚至是敌对的关系。这项对教育服务领域的调查也使我们也能够推测出具有自己的教学目标的传教摄影的具体美学成就。