This book looks at photographs published in travel accounts and government documents of the early American colonial period in the Philippines. It takes as its premise photography's power as an instrument unusually effective for the presentation of colonialist ideology, and discusses its role in the legitimation of the American colonial enterprise in the Philippines.
Drawing upon diverse examples of American representation of the Philippines - ranging from travel books, photographic albums and ethnological research papers to the 1903 Census of the Philippines and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 - this book seeks to show that the production and publication of these photographs is predicated on the same, predetermined colonial narrative, which both engendered and informed the production of colonial photographs. The mass circulation of these photographs as commodities, augmented by their reproducibility, helped to shape stereotype images of the Philippines and Filipinos under colonial rule. This book then attempts to provide deeper insights into the nature of American colonialism and representation of the Philippines.