Appropriating anthropology? Document and rhetoric

The use of Copyright Registers by photographers and other artists provides a useful barometer of cultural assumptions over the period from the 1870s t o the 1950s. This paper will explore images that both appropriate and subve rt anthropological claims about Aboriginality. It is possible to demonstrat e that whilst the held appears to require an engagement with anthropologica lly-derived visual constructions of 'authenticity' and 'Aboriginality', com mercial photographers used this anchoring as a base from which to project d iverse and contested claims of Aboriginality. I will argue, however, that c ommercial photographers did not so much diminish or contaminate an anthropo logical paradigm as extend a rhetorical activity of inventing and reinventi ng authenticity.