The Dean C. Worcester Photographic Collection

The Dean C. Worcester Photographic Collection
From 1890 to 1913, Dean Conant Worcester took thousands of photographs of people and places throughout the Philippines. The majority was taken while Worcester served as the controversial Secretary of Interior in the US colonial government from 1901 to 1913, responsible for economic development and “non-Christian tribes and people.” Simultaneously disturbing and beautiful, these photographs portray the perspectives and emphases of a leading proponent of the colonial mission. This exhibition features a subset of the nearly 5000 glass negatives and lantern slides in the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology’s Worcester Collection.

For a biography of the man whose photographic activities had a profound influence on the way that Americans perceived the Philippines throughout the twentieth century, see Dean Worcester's Fantasy Islands: Photography, Film, and the Colonial Philippines, by Mark Rice.