This article analyses how past and contemporary Adivasi voices are expressed in colonial photographs, and how they have—and continue to—both enable and restrict speaking through visual representation. It examines the collection of the German anthropologist Egon von Eickstedt, who in the 1920s took about 12,000 photographic images and 2,000 objects from Adivasi communities in India, Ceylon, and Burma. As a racial anthropologist he defined and framed the photos and created the collection according to his own preconceptions. The photographs, embedded in a colonial context and an increasingly racial/racist German anthropology, reveal very asymmetric power relations. Yet, the voice of the Adivasi is not completely suppressed, as the photographed people are not mere objects, but find various ways of expressing sentiments in the photographs. Ninety years on, the images and objects have lost none of their ambiguity. They continue to resonate when newly arranged and criticized in the permanent exhibition of a German museum, as well as when curated at the Museum of Voice of the Adivasi Academy in Gujarat.

本文分析了过去和当代的原住民声音是如何在殖民地照片中表达的，以及它们如何——并继续——通过视觉表现来实现和限制说话。它检查了德国人类学家 Egon von Eickstedt 的收藏，他在 1920 年代从印度、锡兰和缅甸的原住民社区拍摄了大约 12,000 张照片和 2,000 件物品。作为一名种族人类学家，他根据自己的先入之见对照片进行定义和构图，并创建了这个系列。这些照片嵌入了殖民背景和日益种族/种族主义的德国人类学，揭示了非常不对称的权力关系。然而，原住民的声音并没有被完全压制，因为被拍摄的人不仅仅是物体，而是在照片中找到各种表达情感的方式。九十年过去了，图像和物体丝毫没有失去模糊性。在德国博物馆的常设展览中以及在古吉拉特邦阿迪瓦西学院之声博物馆策展时，它们继续引起共鸣。