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An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

David Killingray  and
Andrew Roberts
David Killingray
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths' College, University of London
Andrew Roberts
Affiliation:
SOAS, University of London
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Extract

Photographs are attracting growing interest among Africanists. A bibliographical essay in the Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 7, drew attention to the value and availability of photographs of colonial Africa. The critical use of such documents has been discussed in this journal by Christraud Geary, and historical photographs have been a prominent feature of several recent publications. In May 1988 an international workshop at SOAS considered the problems and possibilities of using photographs as sources for African history. It is hoped that a larger conference on photographs and Africa will be convened in the near future. Meanwhile, the papers for the SOAS meeting have been distributed to interested scholars, librarians, and archivists. A version of the present paper forms part of this collection; since there is as yet no recommendable history of photography in Africa, it seemed worthwhile to republish this modest sketch of the more important developments in the practice and uses of photography in Africa. We conclude with the Second World War, since to have pursued the subject further would have asked too much of the authors' knowledge and readers' patience.

It may be helpful to begin with a reminder of the major technical developments in photography during the nineteenth century. The daguerreotype, introduced in 1839, yielded only a single image, on a sensitized metal plate. The calotype, introduced two years later, yielded multiple paper positives from a paper negative, but like the daguerreotype required exposures of one to three minutes.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 16 , 1989 , pp. 197 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1989

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References

NOTES

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5. Bensusan, A. D., Silver Images: the History of Photography in Africa (Cape Town, 1966)Google Scholar, is almost wholly about white photographers in South Africa.

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38. The Royal Geographical Society has some of Rowland's work in west Africa in 1883-84.

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49. Cf. Macmillan, Allister, The Red Book of West Africa (London, 1920)Google Scholar; Skota, T. D. Mweli, The African Yearly Register. Being an Illustrated National Biographical Dictionary (Who's Who) of Black Folks in Africa (Johannesburg, n.d. [1930; second ed. 1932]).Google Scholar

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59. Hilton-Simpson, M. W., “The People of the Aurès Massif,” Geographical Journal, 65 (1925):24–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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62. Bernatzik, H. A., The Dark Continent: Africa, the Landscape and the People (London, [1931]), vi.Google Scholar

63. Gernsheim, Helmut, A Concise History of Photography (3rd ed.: New York, 1986), 114.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., 114-18.

65. Tafla, Bairu, Ethiopia and Germany (Stuttgart, 1981), 68.Google Scholar

66. Man, Felix H., Man with Camera (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, A., Witness to our Time (New York, 1966), 162–63.Google Scholar Man moved to England in 1934, and Eisenstadt to the United States in 1936.

67. Cf. Goglia, Luigi, Storia fotografica dell'Impero fascista 1935–1941 (Rome, 1985)Google Scholar; Becker's, Lutz compilation film, Lion of Judah (1981) (Copy in Imperial War Museum, London).Google Scholar

68. Jeffrey, Ian, “Photojournalism” in Thirties (Arts Council exhibition catalog) (London, 1979), 118.Google Scholar

69. Hoyningen-Huene, G., African Mirage (New York, 1938).Google Scholar

70. This was Wide World Photos, from which the New York Times derived the collection which it sold to the U. S. Information Agency (U. S. National Archives, RG 306). The U. S. Department of Commerce collected photographs illustrating U. S. exports (motors, tractors, and agricultural machinery) to Africa in the 1930s (RG 151).

71. Rodger, George, Desert Journey (London, 1944), 75Google Scholar; this reproduced some impressive results.

72. Cf. Roberts, Andrew, “Africa on film to 1940,” HA, 14 (1987):189–227.Google Scholar

73. Light, R. U., Focus on Africa (photographs by Mary Light) (New York, 1941)Google Scholar; see also Shantz, H. L. and Turner, B. L., Photographic Documentation of Vegetational Changes in Africa Over a Third of a Century (Tucson: University of Arizona College of Agriculture, Report no. 169, August 1958).Google Scholar This is mostly concerned with South Africa and Kenya.

74. Paul Redmayne, A. R. P. S., The Gold Coast Yesterday and Today (London, 1938), 23.Google Scholar

75. Library of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London.

76. Throup, David W., Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945–53 (London, 1987), 186, 199n42.Google Scholar In the Gold Coast, officially-commissioned photographs which graphically revealed malnutrition were suppressed during the war: F. M. Purcell, “Diet and Ill-Health in the Forest Country of the Gold Coast, 1941,” CO 859/61/1/12605/C/1 (1941-3). Public Record Office. Cf. West Africa (8 June 1946), 512.Google Scholar

77. The Beat of Drum; The Foundation of the Future; Profile of Africa; African Bedside Book; The finest photos from the old Drum; The Fifties People of South Africa (all published by Bailey, J. R. A., Johannesburg, 1982–1987Google Scholar; and distributed in the United Kingdom by Central Books, London). See now Woodson, Dorothy C., Drum: An Index to ‘Africa's Leading Magazine,’ 1951–1965 (Madison, 1988)Google Scholar, which provides access to the major photographic materials in Drum.