Generation: primary source handout

The Soweto Uprising

Urban cultures: primary source handout

The cinema in urban Africa:

Divided cities

An aerial photo of Algiers in the 1930s: the French quarters on the left, the casbah on the right. Similarly stark urban divisions can be seen in other settler colonies. Aerial photos are a dramatic demonstration of how settler societies planned and built racial segregation - but this did not necessarily equate to everyday segregation on the ground.

Murid imagery

Amadu Bamba meme
From photo by a colonial administrator to a wall in Dakar.

Then:

Now:

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.

Swahili Architecture

The Swahili coast of eastern and south-eastern Africa has had a very long history as a locus within extensive interior and international trade networks. The region has acted as a 'middleman' between Indian Ocean and African trade routes for over 2000 years. As Islam spread out from the Arabian peninsula, trade became easier and more extensive, and wealthy Islamic merchants rose to form an elite group on the coast. The first evidence of Islam in the area is found in the 9th century,  and the creation of a shared African-Islamic identity became an important part of Swahili culture, cementing economic relationships through architecture and material culture.

Architecture and status became very intertwined. The houses built by the merchant class were often constructed from stone and dehydrated coral, and show very strong Islamic and Portuguese influences that starkly contrast to the more traditional mud and wattle buildings that were prevalent further inland. Doorways were very ornate to reflect the social symbolism with which they were imbued: only suitably wealthy and well-connected kin could enter, and high-status women were kept in the warrens of courtyards and secret passages within, literally never setting foot in the street. Trading deals, the lifeblood coastal culture, were conducted just within the doorway, according them a further level of importance.

The houses' interiors were also highly reflective of the area's deep cultural mix. Typically-Arabian niches were carved into the walls to house their owners' collection of goods traded from all over the world: artefacts from China, Iran, India and Indonesia have all been found, as well as from the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Old, ornately-carved wooden doors from merchant houses in Lamu, Kenya's oldest occupied town.

Exterior of old house, date unknown (but looks 19th century) Tanzania.

Interior (note niches) of 19th-century house, Lamu.