Autochromes by Franklin Price Knott (c. 1916) Now Deemed Sensational and Exploitative

Franklin Price Knott (1854 - 1930) is remembered for taking some of the first color images to appear in National Geographic magazine. In 2018, National Geographic issued the following statement: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”

A Geisha poses in Kyoto, June 1927 by Franklin Knott

Franklin Price Knott, Nine-year-old dancer, Bali.
Photographed on Autochrome, via US Department of State.

Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis in performance, 1916

“People of colour were often scantily clothed, people of colour were usually not seen in cities, people of colour were not often surrounded by technologies of automobiles, airplanes or trains or factories. People of colour were often pictured as living as if their ancestors might have lived several hundreds of years ago and that’s in contrast to westerners who are always fully clothed and often carrying technology. [White teenage boys] could count on every issue or two of National Geographic having some brown skin bare breasts for them to look at, and I think editors at National Geographic knew that was one of the appeals of their magazine, because women, especially Asian women from the pacific islands, were photographed in ways that were almost glamour shots.”

– John Edwin Mason

Read more: Autochromes by Franklin Price Knott