On the most objective level, the West African woman in the sepia picture is beautiful.
Photographed in Paris more than a century ago, she is wearing a beaded top and wrap skirt. Her arms are sculpted as if she's spent ample time with a personal trainer. But the portrait, taken by Prince Roland Bonaparte, a grand-nephew of Napoleon, is far more open to interpretation. Is she despondent or angry? Defiant or resigned? Is she someone's slave?
Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage is as uncomfortable and curious an exhibition as its name suggests.
The exhibition at Paris's Musée du quai Branly examines racism – and the broader concept of "otherness" – by exploring the historical and cultural factors that shaped attitudes.
With more than 600 artifacts, many on loan from other European institutions, the exhibition is a visual exploration of sometimes inhuman practices that were once considered entertainment. There are depictions of "lion men," bearded women, "Chinese giants" and pygmies – just a sampling of the estimated 35,000 individuals who, between 1800 and 1958, helped fuel a massive industry that attracted more than a billion spectators.
Consider a 19th-century poster of a black man that poses the question: "What is it? Animal, Human, Freak of Nature – missing link between man and ourang-outang?" In fact, his name was William Henry Johnson; he was born in the United States in 1846, sold to Barnum's circus as a baby and forbidden to speak in performance.
The exhibition, which opened in November and runs until June, is a study in cognitive dissonance: The unsettling subject matter is conveyed through lighthearted and elaborately illustrated theatre posters, postcards, early black-and-white films and costumes. Collectively, they reconstruct both sides: the indentured performer and the passive observer.
That the curator of Human Zoos is former French soccer star turned social activist Lilian Thuram adds another layer of meaning.
"To understand history, you have to go through a process of asking questions about it," Thuram explains during a recent interview. "Racism is born out of an intellectual construct. It's important to emphasize that we are not born racists. We become racists. It is cultural because our cultures are born of this ideology."
The Guadeloupe-born Thuram, who has been outspoken about racism in football, says he did not realize the scope of the cultural ideology until he began reading the work of historian Pascal Blanchard, an expert on colonialism.
"It taught me about the scientific notion of racism," says Thuram. "And I think it's really important to have an exhibit like this to show us why prejudice still exists."
Blanchard and anthropologist Nanette Jacomijn Snoep are credited as the show's scientific co-curators. They trace the growing popularity of these displays, first in Europe and then in North America. Records span four centuries, from the 1600s, when explorers returned to royal courts with human cargo from the New World, to the 19th-century villages set up in zoological gardens, where visitors would gawk at performers who were expected to play up racial stereotypes. It wasn't until the mid-20th century that tours of "exotic immigrants" became the subject of widespread criticism.
To revisit these displays raises an obvious challenge: Even in a culturally sanctioned setting, aren't visitors experiencing an "us"-versus-"them" relationship all over again?
Snoep acknowledges as much.
"It gave me nightmares for two years. I was afraid," she admits. "Then I asked myself, 'What is a savage? What is construction of savageness?' To take their names away, their lives away … So if you give their names back and give historical context, then you don't exhibit the same way as a century ago."
Context, in other words, makes all the difference. Indeed, Human Zoos is heavy on supplementary reading; to skip over it would be to miss the objective altogether.
There are occasions when an image does not require words. One depiction of Saartjie Baartman (better known as the Hottentot Venus, a curvaceous South African woman displayed in freak shows during the early 1800s) consists solely of her shadow projected onto a wall. Here, she is simply a sculptural form; her skin colour becomes irrelevant.
And then there are the mirrors between the displays, designed, Snoep says, to create literal moments of reflection. "Maybe you recognize yourself in the exhibit more than just as a visitor," she explains.
If the show provokes distress or shock, Thuram says, bring it on. "Primarily, humans are not rational. They are emotional. So the process of understanding history through our emotions is good, because it's our emotions that allow us to say 'no.' "
By the umpteenth poster or display, the response becomes one of amazement: How did these shows go on for so long without resistance?
Thuram says this is revisionist thinking. "We have to acknowledge that this fascination existed. We have to put ourselves in their shoes. There was no television. There was no radio. People did not travel. So they were fascinated by what they saw in these exhibits."
He insists the take-away message is even bigger. "After seeing the exhibit, every viewer can take a step back but – and this is what interests me the most – they must do this without feeling like they're victims of the past, without feeling guilty."
Hence the video by Vincent Elka that closes the exhibition. Projected onto three sides of a dark room, it features groups who are stigmatized today and asks them how they feel and whether they view themselves as "other."
"We need many entry points to this discussion, such as social class, the colour of a person's skin, gender," says Thuram. "Because ultimately we have to understand that these things have no connection to a person's qualities or weaknesses."
Also, he maintains that looking back is invaluable in learning how we should handle the unknown others of the future.
"I'm persuaded that this could happen to us in the present," Thuram says. "Like, if tomorrow you heard of the existence of little green men, and we put them into a garden and told you, 'Be careful, they are dangerous.' "
Human Zoos runs until June 3 at Paris's Musée du quai Branly.
Amy Verner