Figure060

Citation

Unknown Photographer Photographer. “Moung Kyau.” circa 1865. Greg French Collection. Mirror of Race, 11 Feb. 2021, mirrorofrace.bc.edu/items/show/264. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.

Title

Moung Kyau

Subject

Moung Kyau

Creator

Unknown Photographer Photographer

Date

circa 1865

Type

studio portrait

Identifier

Figure060

Rights Holder

Greg French Collection

Original Format

carte de visite: albumen print

Physical Dimensions

cdv standard

Factual Commentary

In this double-exposure portrait, Moung Kyau (1841-1883) poses in traditional Burmese clothes on the left and European on the right. Kyau belonged to the Karen people of Burma (modern Myanmar).

Moung Kyau converted to Christianity and came to the United States for education as a Baptist minister. Kyau seems to have lived in in Waterville, Maine, before returning with a large group of missionaries to preach in Burma. In Burma, he composed hymns as part of his missionary work, and he later became a schoolteacher. He died of consumption.

A double exposure is a photograph produced by exposing the photographic plate or negative twice, so that two separate impressions from the light are made. In this case, the photographer probably covered half of the light-sensitive plate plate while exposing the other half so that Moung could appear twice in the same image.

Interpretive Commentary

We do not know if it was the photographer’s or Moung Kyau’s idea to produce this unusual double-exposure portrait. What was its intended meaning? Did he seek to show his double identity both as a Burmese man and as a Christian who had understood the ways of the Europeans well enough to dress like a gentleman and earn an education as a missionary? Are we meant to read this image as a progression, from left to right, from “heathen” to Christian? Is this then an example of European colonialism and triumphalism, working through the respectable front of Christian evangelism? Is Kyau a victim of cultural imperialism? But if Kyau had completely rejected his origins, why would he keep his traditional clothes? Did he understand himself as having a double or multiple identity, rather than a divided one?

Kyau studied in the eastern United States, after what must have been a very long voyage from Burma, probably supported by the Baptist missionaries who converted him and saw his potential as a preacher to his own people. Asian visitors were not common in the eastern part of the United States at this time (the 1860s), and especially if they were involved in education and religious work, they might well gain some acceptance in white society. Isolated individuals such as Kyau were not perceived as a racial threat and might even gain respect as exotic curiosities or as signs of the global triumph of white Christian civilization.

In California, by contrast, where tens of thousands of Asians, mostly Chinese, immigrated for the Gold Rush, their sheer numbers and competition for jobs with whites exposed them to prejudice and abuse.

Alternative Title

Collection

Mirror of Race