Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s Photographic Reports in Afghanistan 1939-40: The Strategy of Metonymy in the Context of Contemporary ‘Orient Photography’

The paper examines the photographic work of the Swiss historian, writer, and journalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) in Afghanistan, a journey she made via Italy, the Balkan countries, Turkey, the Black Sea, Iran, and Iraq. The trip resulted in the photographic report Vorderasiatische Auto-Anekdoten (Southwest-Asian Car Anecdotes), one of eight reports from Afghanistan published in 1940. As female drivers, Schwarzenbach and Ella Maillart (1903-1997) were among the first travelers to cross the “Road of the North” and to provide photographic reports from this particular region. I examine how the report introduced visual and technical innovations to the genre of reportage and to dominant discourses on travel photography in the Swiss illustrated press, which determined expectations of both the production and the reception of the photographs, treating them as part of a visual "orientialist" discourse. I further consider how the publication of the photos privileged the automobile as the main protagonist of the reports, whereas Schwarzenbach and Maillart are not bodily present within the images. This metonymy – substituting automobile for female body – is one way, I argue, that we can consider Schwarzenbach's reports from a postcolonial perspective, how they might operate beyond the topoi of the contemporary touristic journey to emphasize instead a poetic photographic gaze.