Life, Labor, and a <i>Coolie</i> Picturesque in Jamaica

Although the signs of Indo-Jamaican and Afro-Jamaican cohabitation are present in a late-nineteenth-century photographic archive, visual power an imperial picturesque obscures evidence that exists plain view. The illusion self-contained villages imported Indian workers photographs create is informed by even as it reinforces colonial order racial segregation. By identifying traces Indians’ indentureship, this essay introduces time motion into still photography reduces lives to single ethnographic instances. It also deploys dougla—the name for people mixed African descent who exist “flaw” British hierarchy race—as critical lens exposing flaws rupture smooth surface tableaux “coolies” Orientalizing portraits “coolie belles.”