22.11. Naoko Shimazu (National University of Singapore):

A Photograph with Two Stories: Lisa Larsen and the Bandung Conference of 1955.

The striking image of three local Chinese women spectators at the Bandung Conference of 1955 was taken by Lisa Larsen who was a photographer commissioned by LIFE Magazine to cover the conference. What does this photograph tell us about international diplomacy? Was it a coincidence that the female photographer happened to take one of the most visually arresting photographs of women as diplomatic spectators? In this paper, I propose to probe further the significance of gender in constructing images of international diplomacy. In general, visual sources on international diplomacy tend to portray women in multiple capacities as actors on the international stage. However, this stands in stark contrast to textual sources which reveal very little female agency, mostly due to the narrowly defined notions of who constitutes a diplomatic actor in traditional approaches to studying diplomacy. Elsewhere I have argued that the invisibility of women in diplomacy can in itself be seen as a performative stance. In this study, we explore how we can ‘recover’ the lost female presence in diplomacy by privileging the female gaze, through the iconic female photographer.
Naoko Shimazu is Professor of Humanities (History) and Associate Dean of Faculty at Yale-NUS College. She is a global historian of Asia and her current major work centres on the cultural history of global diplomacy.