Carl Gustaf Mannerheim photo exhibition press release
C.G.E Mannerheim’s Travel Photos
In the spring of 1906, the 38 year old colonel Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim from the Grand Duchy of Finland received a task from Russian Army’s General Staff Office. He was to conduct a military-geographic journey from Russian Turkestan, through almost all of China, all the way to Beijing. His principal assignment was to gather up-to-date political and military intelli- gence, especially concerning China’s border provinces. Russia had suffered a humiliating defeat to Japan in Manchuria only a couple of years before, and an intricate political gameplay was now in progress throughout Central Asia. The main actors were Russia, Japan and Britain, and spies, agents, and investigators of various nationalities were active in the region.
In order to cover up his task, Mannerheim posed as an explorer. The Russian Army’s General Staff Office had organized him a place in an expedition led by the famous French sinologist Paul Pelliot. However, for different reasons, their paths soon separated and Mannerheim con- tinued with an expedition of his own. During the more than two year-long journey, Manner- heim travelled 14,000 km, mostly by horse, in very varying circumstances with his entourage. The small expedition–Mannerheim, one or two elite Cossacks, a translator and a chef, occasio- nally a few more–crossed large rivers, climbed high mountains and rode through steppes and deserts. Throughout the journey Mannerheim took measurements, drew maps and document- ed what he experienced by writing and photographing.
Exploration was more than merely an excuse. The journey included genuine scientific goals. Before the trip, Mannerheim read books about the region, studied the results of past similar expeditions and negotiated with representatives of the Finnish scientific community about the scientific goals of the journey. Among other things, he agreed to collect archeological and ethnographic items and old manuscripts. In the name of comparative anthropology, he was also given a task to photograph and take measurements of different human types.
Mannerheim returned in September 1908, and his military report was published the following year, but it soon expired due to changes in world politics. His scientific work, on the other hand, was a success and is important still today. Despite his inexperience, he performed well in it, and his collection in the National Museum of Finland consists of more than 1,100 items. In addition, he brought a unique photo collection with its precise photo diary, where almost every photo was carefully documented. Mannerheim used a 9 x 12 cm field camera, and there were 1,200 negatives in total. Some of the photographs–mountain passes, rivers, roads–were taken for military purposes, but most of the pictures Mannerheim took as a part of his his anthropological work. With these he illustrates the lives and cultures of the peoples from who he collected ethnographic items (Uyghurs, Kalmyks, Torghuts, Yugurs and Kyrgyz and Tangut people). He continued to take pictures all the way through China, but the weight of his photo- graphy is more at the earlier parts of his journey.
The photo collection provides a huge amount of information and it forms a unique travelogue of Central Asia and China that tells of peoples and cultures that are now largely defunct, or at least very much changed. Life as it was more than a hundred years ago is preserved in these images, from everyday drudgery to festive occasions, and Mannerheim gives evidence of his interest in a wide variety of things. Compared to other explorers of the time, Mannerheim was exceptionally versatile. We meet with haughty mandarins and lowly beggars, local constabula- ry and opium smokers, with soldiers and mothers, with nomads of the steppes and merchants of the oasis towns.
No matter the situation, Mannerheim always kept a certain distance of a researcher.
As a photographer, Mannerheim is at his best in his portraits. He travelled in an area and among peoples, where at the time only few photographers had been, and many of the persons he photographed had never seen a camera before. Despite the often unfamiliar situation, it seems he managed to build trust between himself and the persons he photographed. These pictures still exude a refreshing spontaneity: the persons appear so present and the situations so vivid every time you look at the photos. Besides his portraits, the perhaps most interesting of Mannerheim’s pictures are those that represent what today might be classified as reportage photography. He photographed horseriding games of the steppes and funeral processions of the towns, street views and workshops. He photographed festivals and scenes from every-day life in Imperial China. In these photographs his touch was astonishingly modern, and he worked as a reportage photographer ought to: without interfering in any way, keeping a certain distance. He somehow managed to be invisible, even though the sizeable camera must have attracted attention, and the act of photographing itself was a much slower and more cumberso- me procedure than it is nowadays. Mannerheim’s photography was clearly documentative and he handled as well the technical part as the picture composition.
Mannerheim wished he could return to anthropology and his photographs later on, but for different reasons, there was no time. The photographs only got publicity in 1941−1942, when his travel report was published as a popular book. In this the photograps were quite small and printed with the technology of the day, and they were there mainly as a support for the text. It was not until 1990 that the first book that concentrated on the photographs was published and an exhibition with these pictures toured Finland. In early 2000’s, the photographs were shown in exhibitions in Almaty, Urumchi, Lanzhou, Xian, Beijing, Soul and Hong Kong.
Helsinki July 14th, 2021
Peter Sandberg, curator