ABSTRACT
By looking specifically at the relationship between photography, anthropological science and re-enactment, this chapter explores how, while it is only part of a wider methodology with historical implications, re-enactment was a central tool in visualising anthropological, scientific data, which came out of science itself. It also explores the methodic practices that transform an unseen or unseeable cultural past into a visual representation for 'seeing' and 'knowing'. The chapter argues that re-enactment became a significant mechanism through which to write or control their own ethnography within the parameters of the colonial situation. Kwoiam was the totemic hero, whose mythic cult, centred on the island of Pulu, was central to all western Torres Strait initiation and death ceremonies. The images related to the death of Kwoiam open a much deeper reading of the agendas of salvage ethnography, in terms of the whole notion of re-enactment and historical truth, the fluidity between past and present and its inscriptions.
