Amami in colour: returning Douglas Haring’s post-WWII photographs to Japan

Using archival research together with interviews, screenings and the exhibition format, this talk documents the return of anthropologist Douglas Haring’s photographic slides of 1950s Amami Ōshima, to the community in Japan over 70 years later. Haring assessed the provisions necessary to return the island to Japanese from U.S military control, who occupied the island post-World War II. Alongside an extensive report, Haring’s research is significant since he recorded Amami in colour before modernization and Westernization changed the island’s social, cultural, economic and environmental landscape. Using the photographs for elicitation, this research seeks new perspectives on Amami’s colonial history and tracks how post-war economic development continues to impact Amamian life today.

Charlotte Linton is an anthropologist and designer whose work is situated at the intersection of visual, material and economic anthropology, textiles and ethnoecology. She is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at All Souls College, University of Oxford. Charlotte has carried out ethnography with Harris Tweed weavers in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland (2016) and natural dye craftspeople on the island of Amami Oshima, southern Japan (2021 & 2023). Her monograph titled Dyeing with the Earth, based on her Amami fieldwork, will be published with Duke University Press in 2025. Her current research explores the intersection of textiles and agriculture in the UK, USA and India.

The presentation will be followed by discussion.

If you cannot attend in person, you can join via Zoom here.