Robert J. Gordon has worked for long periods in South Africa, Papua New Guinea, and Lesotho. His other books include Mines, Migrants and Masters: Life in a Namibian Mine Compound, The Bushmen Myth and the Making of a Namibian Underclass, and Law and Order in the New Guinea Highlands (with Mervyn Meggitt). He is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont.
Listed in: South Africa · African History · Anthropology
Picturing Bushmen
The Denver African Expedition of 1925
By Robert J. Gordon
The Denver African Expedition of 1925 sought “the cradle of Humanity.” The explorers returned claiming to have found the “Missing Link” in the Heikum bushmen of the Kalahari—and they proceeded to market this image. As Robert J. Gordon shows in Picturing Bushmen, the impact of the expedition lay not simply in its slick merchandising of bushmen images but also in the fact that the pictures were exotic and aesthetically pleasing.
