Key colonial-era historical photographs were restaged reconstructions rather than authentic records.

Evidence

The Gazette reporter first attributed the taking of the photo to General Kitchener, at the very moment in which he liberated the Omdurman jail, but corrected this statement in response to several letters from readers, saying instead that the original was so faded that “it was decided to have it retaken in Cairo.” Neither Ibrahïm Fawzï nor Neufeld could remember who took the photo. Several letters had also claimed that the costumes had been rented, later, in Atbara, but the reporter asserted that the costumes and the arms were “exactly what the two prisoners wore on the day of the entry of the troops into the city and are at present still in their possession here.” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 571

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the well-documented phenomenon of re-staged ‘historical’ photographs, connecting to Errol Morris on the Crimean war ‘valley of the shadow of death’ and similar debates.
• SEED: An essay on how colonial ‘evidence’ photographs were retaken and costumed in Cairo — the staging of imperial memory through re-photography.