Photography

Photography was invented in the late 1830s, and can be found in Africa from the 1840s. It was initially focused in Freetown, Sierra Leone, an important centre of trade and the transfer of people. Later in the 19th century, Lagos and Accra replaced Freetown as Africa's most prolific sites of photography, as the cities' middle classes seized upon portrait photography as the new must-have status symbol . Until the invention of the portable Kodak Brownie at the turn of the 20th century, photography equipment was bulky and able to be used only by professionals or semi-professionals. Photographers often had mobile studios and moved between cities, producing personal and family portraits for the urban elites.

Photography in Africa in the 19th century was not just practised by African portrait photographers. Colonial administrations were fascinated by the technology and its uses, and saw it as an important documentary tool which offered a claim to 'truth' in its depictions. Photography was used to classify and record 'types' of Africans (subjects were almost never named), overwhelmingly by what was considered to be the subject's ethnicity. Such photography inevitably exoticised, primitivised, and sexualised its African subjects.It was not just used for colonial records, but also informed postcard imagery, illustrations for newspaper reports and books on Africa, and later, films.

19th-century photography in Africa, whether practised by Africans or Europeans, played a big role in the creation of modernity. The flow of knowledge and equipment both locally and internationally was just one of the markers of this process. In the 20th century, portrait photography continually evolved new conventions that marked its important relation to the notion and meanings of modernity for the increasingly widening sections of society that engaged with the practice. The self-presentation of the subject was (and continues to be) a critical element, to be negotiated with the photographer. Unsatisfied clients did not pay for portraits. Clients often brought in objects of modernity (radios, cars, televisions, phones, and so on) that they wished to be photographed with. The option of using fantasy backdrops - for example, a kitchen with all mod cons - has been in place for the past few decades to create an image of aspiration. The use of textiles and clothing to convey messages of status has always been important. Other creative techniques, such as collage and  manipulation, may also be incorporated, and are now made easier by digital technology.

Photographs are a visual source which provide very valuable social and cultural information for historians. The work of particular photographers, for whom photography was very much an art form as well as a documentary process, is especially interesting, as their deliberate stylistic choices and form provide a fascinating window into the 'historical imagination' of both the photographers and their subjects. Famous photographers such as Seydou Keita (b. Mali, 1921), Malick Sidibe (b. Mali, c. 1935), and Samuel Fosso (b. Cameroon, 1962) have produced bodies of work that provide us with beautifully-executed records of the mid-20th-century urban social life of their societies, and in particular, youth culture.

Seydou Keita, Untitled, 1958

Malick Sidibe, Untitled, April 1970

Samuel Fosso, Untitled, c. 1977

To see more of Samuel Fosso's work, including his iconic drag portraits, go here. (Thanks to Sam Daly.) To read a Frieze Magazine profile on him, go here. 

To watch a slideshow with an interesting commentary on Seydou Keita, go here. 

To see more of Malick Sidibe's work, go here; there is also a biography of him here.