13651

Histories of Photography in Africa

N.N.

Kommentar

Soon after the invention of photography in Europe, the new technology travelled to Africa where, in coastal towns, photography studios were established. Simultaneously, European anthropologists used the new technology to document ethnographic “types” for the purpose of racial science. From the start, therefore, photography, with its multiple affordances, has been used for different purposes. In line with an important essay by Allan Sekula, one might say that photography in Africa was used for both its “honorific” and its “repressive” affordances. In the struggle for African independence, photography also assumed the role of documentary, expanding the sphere of the political imagination as Jennifer Bajorek has recently argued. In this module, we will focus on the different affordances of photography in Africa. The aim of the module is to study these affordances thematically and historically. We examine how anthropologists used photography in the production of colonial knowledge. Then we examine the appropriation of photography by African photographers in studio photography and the role photography played in the struggle for political independence. We also pay attention to the important role of photography in resistance against apartheid in South Africa. The module will also look at art photography, still a rather marginal phenomenon on the African continent. Finally, we look at photographers that use the archive as a method to explore the history of the continent. The module aims to define the canon as widely as possible and includes the work of LGBTQ activists as well as White South African photographers. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

Bajorek, Jennifer. Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa. Duke University Press, 2020. Buggenhagen, Beth Anne. The Future is in Your Hands: Portrait Photography from Senegal. Indiana University Press, 2023. Haney, Erin. Photography and Africa. Reaktion Books, 2010. Landau, Paul S., and Deborah D. Kaspin, eds. Images and Empires: visuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa. University of California Press, 2002. Mofokeng, Santu. "The black photo album/look at me: 1890-1900s." Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 4, no. 1 (1996): 54-57. Newbury, Darren. Defiant images: photography and apartheid South Africa. Unisa Press, 2009. Paoletti, Giulia. Portrait and Place: Photography in Senegal, 1840–1960. Princeton University Press, 2024. Peffer, John, and Elisabeth Lynn Cameron. Portraiture and Photography in Africa, Indiana University Press, 2013. Sealy, Mark. Decolonising the camera: Photography in racial time. Lawrence and Wishart, 2019. Vokes, Richard, ed. Photography in Africa: Ethnographic Perspectives. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2012. Schließen