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His Name Was Don Francisco Muro: Reconstructing An Image Of American Imperialism, Mark Rice

American Studies Faculty/Staff Publications

Visual culture played a significant role in the debates surrounding American colonialism in the Philippines in the early twentieth century. One of the most important photographers working the Philippines at that time was Dean Conant Worcester, who also served as a colonial administrator. Worcester's three-part sequence of photographs supposedly showing an Igorot man becoming civilized through his contact with Americans is one of the more iconic sets of images from that time period.

In recent years, many historians have reprinted the "Igorot sequence" to illustrate American imperial ideologies. However, neither the identity of the subject, nor the circumstances surrounding the …