Photographs of Interpreters

This book rescues photographs of interpreters: from the 19th century, French diplomat and sinologist, Arnold Vissière, and Julius Meyer, a Jewish trader in Wyoming and interpreter for native American groups; John Brown, the African-American who interpreted for travellers to the Putamayo region in Peru, witness of the mistreatment of indigenous rubber extractors in the “Devil’s Paradise”; Viktor Sukhodrev, Russian diplomatic interpreter, whom Richard Nixon trusted more than his own White House staff.

From Brazil there are the boy interpreters from the Xetá indigenous group; Euvaldo Gomes making the first contact with the Xavante in 1949, after the participants in previous attempts were killed; the first communication with the Korubo in the Amazon in 1996; the familiar figures of Raoni and his interpreter, Megaron; and General Vernon Walters, the American military attaché and linguist, a key actor in the 1964 military coup.

Photographs are analyzed as a formal visual composition; a performance; an act of interpreting, a moment in history that expresses geopolitical and economic power, social habits, and fashions; and salvaging lives lost in the sea of history.