Poignant, Roslyn (1927–2019)

Abstract

Roslyn Poignant (1927–2019) was a visual anthropologist and historian who analyzed ethnographic photography and its links with colonization. A graduate of the University of Sydney, she was based in London for much of her life. She trained as a film editor and was married to the photographer Axel Poignant. Her work was informed by a practical understanding of photography's conditions of production. She curated the groundbreaking exhibition Observers of Man , drawn from the collections of the Royal Anthropological Institute, of which she was honorary secretary. In the 1990s Poignant developed a consultative methodology for the study of photographic archives. This involved the repatriation of images taken by her late husband to Arnhem Land, northern Australia, where he had worked in the 1950s. Her major publication is Professional Savages (2004), a study of Aboriginal Australians who were abducted and exhibited as racial curiosities in the United States and Europe. Show more