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Photographs as Materials for African History: Some Methodological Considerations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Christraud M. Geary
Christraud M. Geary*
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in source materials on African history in African and European archives. The registration of documents and the methodology used in their interpretation have become a major issue of many scholars. While much progress has been made concerning the written materials, another category of archival documents has received little attention. These are pictorial records in general and historical photographs in particular. Considering that photography, beginning with the daguerrotype in 1839, virtually accompanied the exploration of the interior regions of Africa, the failure to exploit photographs systematically as source materials seems rather astonishing. One explanation for this neglect may lie in the fact that historians have traditionally been preoccupied with the written word. Despite this bias, historical photographs from Africa have been used ever more frequently as illustrations by art historians, historians, and anthropologists in recent years. The lack of systematic work with the images, however, often results in an impressionistic approach and serious errors.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 13 , 1986 , pp. 89 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

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References

NOTES

1. One example are efforts in Great Britain described recently by Gibbs, James, “Preserving the Archives,” West Africa (28 January 1985), 152–53.Google Scholar

2. I use the term “historical photograph” in the broadest sense to refer to any photographic image taken in the past. Any photograph can be potentially of use to the historian, not just images produced for documentary purposes.

3. Typically, in classic introductions to history such as that of Handlin et al, pictorial records are only briefly mentioned under “Materials of History.” Among them photographs usually receive little attention. In Handlin's introduction, the word “photographs” occurs exactly once. Handlin, Oscaret al, eds., History (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 64ff.Google Scholar See also Pitt, David C., Using Historical Sources in Anthropology and Sociology. Studies in the Anthropological Method (New York, 1972), 31.Google Scholar

4. The term “photographer” denotes anybody who photographed, and is not limited to professional photographers. Indeed, many of the photographers in Africa were amateurs. Studio photography existed only in the major colonial centers.

5. Among others the following archives and museums with photographic collections from Cameroun were visited: Basel Mission Archives, Basel; Bundesarchiv Koblenz; Linden-Museum Stuttgart; Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin; Museum für Völkerkund Leipzig; Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg; Museum für Völkerkunde Wien; Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Köln; übersee-Museum Bremen.

6. Major contributions to the preservation and study of historical photographs in general have been made by American scholars and archivists. The increased awareness of the value of photographs for local history and the history of the American Indians led to the establishment of largescale cataloging efforts (see Newsletter of the Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 8 [1980]Google Scholar, with a description of cataloging projects for ethnohistorical and ethnographic photographs). With the help of computer and video disk technology, major collections have been made accessible, such as the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution and the Harvard Peabody Museum (see Banta, Melissa, “Hidden Treasures: The Peabody Museum Photo Archives,” The Journal of Photography in New England, 3/4 [1982], 8–10.Google Scholar In the German-speaking countries efforts are under way in the Basel Mission Archives (see Jenkins, Paul and Geary, Christraud, “Photographs from Africa in the Basel Mission Archive,” African Arts, 18/4 (1985), 56–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar), in the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna under the guidance of Dr. Feest, and in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz.

7. Steiger, Ricabeth, “Bilder aus Bamum. Fruhe Fotografien aus dem Kameruner Grasland als Spiegel europäischer Interessenrichtungen” (Master's thesis, Basel University, 1982).Google Scholar

8. Steiger, Ricabeth and Taureg, Martin, “Körperphantasien auf Reisen. Anmerkungen zum ethnographischen Akt” in Das Aktfoto. Ansichten vom Körper im fotografischen Zeitalter; Aesthetik, Gesahichte, Ideologie, ed. Köhler, Michael and Barche, Gisela (Munich, 1985).Google Scholar

9. Müller, Hartmut, So sahen wir Afrika. Afrika im Spiegel früher Bremer Kolonialfotografie, 1882-1907 (Bremen, 1984).Google Scholar

10. Poignant, Rosalyn, Observers of Man. Photographs from the Royal Anthropological Institute (London, 1980).Google Scholar A German translation of the catalog appeared in 1982, entitled “Frühe ethnographische Fotografie” in Fremden-Bilder, ed. Brauen, Martin [Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zürich 1] (Zurich, 1982), 11–43.Google Scholar

11. Edwards, Elizabeth and Williamson, Lynne, World on a Glass Plate. Early Anthropological Photographs from the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar

12. Forlacroix, Christian, “La photographie au service de l'histoire d'Afrique,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 10 (1970), 125–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Wass, Betty M., “Yoruba Dress in Five Generations of a Lagos Family” in The Fabrics of Culture, ed. Cordwell, Justine M. and Schwarz, Ronald A. (New York, 1979), 331–48.Google Scholar

14. Calliconos, Lulli, Gold and Workers (1886-1924). A People's History of South Africa, 1 (Johannesburg, 1980).Google Scholar

15. Forlacroix, , Photographie, 125.Google Scholar This quality of the photographic image is also stressed by scholars of American history: Borchert, James, “Analysis of Historical Photographs: A Method and a Case Study,” Studies in Visual Communication, 7 (1981), 59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThomason, Michael, “The Magic Image Revisited: The Photographs as Historical Source,” Alabama Review, 31 (1978), 89.Google Scholar

16. Soulillou, Jacques, Douala, un siècle en images (Paris, 1982).Google Scholar

17. Geary, Christraud and Njoya, Adamou Ndam, Mandu Yenu. Bilder aus Bamum, einem westafrikanischen Königreich, 1902-1915 (Munich, 1985).Google Scholar

18. Venice, and Lamb, Alistair, Weaving, Tissage au Cameroun (Roxford, 1981)Google Scholar; McLeod, Malcolm, The Asante (London, 1981).Google Scholar

19. Timm, Uwe, Deutsche Kolonien (Munich, 1981).Google Scholar

20. Petschull, Jürgen and Höpker, Thomas, Der Wahn vom Weltreich. Die Gesahiahte der deutschen Kolonien (Hamburg, 1984).Google Scholar

21. A good example is a picture of king Njoya of Bamum (Petschull, , Wahn, 143Google Scholar). The caption in the book is: “The 'King of Bamum' poses proudly in full dress, a present of Emperor Wilhelm II” (translated from the German; the quotation marks were added by the authors and seem to indicate that they did not take the title “king” seriously). The copyright of this photograph is now with the Süddeutsche Bilderdienst, a picture agency. However, it is taken from a contribution in an older book (von Ramsay, Hans, “Entdeckungen in Nordwest=Kamerun” in Das deutsche Kolonialbuch, ed. Zache, Hans [Berlin, 1925], 293).Google Scholar Here the picture has a more accurate caption: “Chief Joja [Njoya] of Bamum (Kamerun)” (translated from the German). Such examples show how the use of photographs in new contexts can lead to a loss of information.

22. Several papers by specialists in American and British history are very helpful. Most of these historians are interested in local history and consider photographs a means to capture the details of everyday life. Hurley, F. Jack: “There is more than meets the eye: Looking at Photographs Historically,” Center for Southern Folklore Magazine, 3/3 (1981), 6–7Google Scholar; McCord, Norman, “Photographs as Historical Evidence,” The Local Historian, 13 (1978), 23–25Google Scholar; Peters, Marsha and Mergen, Bernhard, “‘Doing the Rest’: The Uses of Photographs in American Studies,” American Quarterly, 29 (1977), 280–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walter, Rundell Jr., “Photographs as Historical Evidence: Early Texas Oil,” American Archivist, 41 (1978), 373–98Google Scholar; Thomas, Schlereth Jr., “Mirrors of the Past: Historical Photography and American History” in Artifacts and the American Past (Nashville, 1980), 11–47Google Scholar; Thomason, Magic Image. I found the Peters/Mergen paper particularly helpful. An interesting study on a corpus of photographs, extensively discussing methodological questions, is Borchert's paper on the life in the alleys around the White House (Borchert, Analysis). Visual sociology and anthropology also have contributed much to the subject of photography. Visual anthropological findings are important for this discussion because in the African context we deal frequently with cross-cultural photography, this is, European photographers photographing members of other cultures. Traditionally, though, visual anthropology emphasizes the use of photography and film-making in research design and only as an afterthought concerns itself with the type of random photographic materials, produced by amateurs, which constitute the basis for this study. Among the most prominent representatives of this field are Collier, Bateson and Mead, and Worth. See John, Collier Jr., “Photography in Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, 59 (1957), 843–59Google Scholar; idem., Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method (New York, 1967); Gregory, Bateson and Margaret, Mead, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; Larry, Gross, Sol Worth: Studying Visual Communication (Philadelphia, 1981).Google Scholar

23. Helmut, and Gernsheim, Alison, The History of Photography Englewood Cliffs, 1970)Google Scholar; Newhall, Beaumont, The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (New York, 1964).Google Scholar Important reading is also Bourdieu's essay on the social uses of photography in Pierre Bourdieu, Boltanski, L., Castel, R., and Chamboredon, J.-C., Un art moyen. Essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie (Paris, 1965).Google Scholar It should be mentioned that one of the bestsellers in photographic criticism was Sontag's, Susan book, On Photography (New York, 1977)Google Scholar, which was translated into many languages. Thus, Sontag's theories have influenced recent photographic studies. Her approach has also met with considerable criticism (e.g., Cheatwood, Derral, “Review of On Photography by Susan Sontag,” Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 5 (1979), 140–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Buckland, Gail, Reality Recorded. Early Documentary Photography (Greenwich, Ct., 1974).Google ScholarThomason, , Magic Image, 88Google Scholar also oversimplifies the issue when he states: “Photographs have rarely been made for the future use of historians. The result is that we have a large body of “unconscious” primary sources spanning the last century or more. They are revealing and honest because no one involved in their production ever imagined that someday a scholar would use them to write history. Few primary sources are so detailed, so numerous, or so honest. Because this source was made unconsciously, it is also more objective. A different picture might have resulted had the photographer thought that it would be used to write history.” On the surface the statement seems convincing. However, the “innocence” of the creator of the image does not imply that it is a more objective rendition of reality than, for example, a written document such as a diary. In fact, photographs taken in Africa often served a number of purposes, as shown below. The photographer's possible bias, no matter whether he was a professional or an amateur, is a major factor that must be carefully investigated when working with historical photographs.

25. See Peters, and Mergen, , “‘Doing the Rest,’” 286ff.Google Scholar, who apply Szarkowski's model of the elements of photographic vision, as enunciated in Szarkowski, John, The Photographer's Eye (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

26. Steiger, and Taureg, , Körperphantasien, 121ff.Google Scholar

27. Eder, a pioneer of photography, addressed this issue in a book entitled “Moment-Photographie” which appeared in 1884 and went into a second printing in 1886. This text demonstrates the severe limitations that photographers faced when they tried to capture movement. Eder, Josef Maria, Die Moment-Photographie in ihrer Anwendung auf Kunst und Wissenschaft (Halle, 1884).Google Scholar

28. This picture is reproduced in Weinstein, Robert and Booth, Larry, Collection, Use, and Care of Historical Photographs (Nashville, 1977), 15.Google Scholar Some of the earliest documentary photographs abroad were taken during the Crimean War.

29. For the German-speaking areas, Baier's extensive history of photography traces these developments. Baier, Wolfgang, Geschichte der Fotografie (Halle, 1964).Google Scholar A doctoral thesis on the photographic industry in Germany, which was mainly located in Saxony, was published in 1928. Kühn, Willy, Die photographische Industrie Deutschlands wirtschaftswissen-schaftlich gesehen in ihrer Entwicklung und ihrem Aufbau (Schweidnitz, 1928).Google Scholar

30. Steiger, and Taureg, , Körperphantasien, 125ff.Google Scholar explain this lack by pointing out that anthropological and ethnographic “field research” consisted mainly of expeditions and travelling. Consequently, the photographer was not well acquainted with the people he photographed; he was often unable to understand or even to witness rituals and festivals. While this argument is certainly valid, I would also suggest that technical innovations did not spread rapidly to all photographers. Thus, even if the technology for snapshots was available, not all photographers used it. Secondly, even photographers who were well acquainted with the Africans they photographed rarely showed an overwhelming interest for rituals and festivals. In fact, it seems to me that we deal here with a preoccupation of the modern anthropologist and photographer, a new convention for photography in the field.

31. It seems that cellulose nitrate film, which was first used after 1888, is especially hard to preserve. Of all the negatives that I have seen in archives, the celluloid ones were usually seriously damaged and frequently beyond repair. Often, photographers took several different kinds of cameras with them. Large and small glass negatives of the Thorbecke collection in the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne indicate that the members of the expedition used at least two different cameras. The anthropologist Pöch recommended using a camera for larger formats for anthropological portraits and a smaller, hand-held model for spontaneous photography. Pöch, Rudolf, “Das Photographieren auf anthropologischen Forschungsreisen,” Photographische Correspondenz, 57 (1910), 107.Google Scholar

32. From the second edition of Notes and Queries in Anthropology (London, 1892), 235.Google Scholar “In addition to the ordinary information of photographic hand-books, a few special details for travellers may be noted. A tin-plate camera is desirable, as it cannot be broken or cracked by heat, but it must be specially ordered…” In this edition only technical problems are discussed. In the fourth edition of 1912, more space was alloted to photography in the Appendix and under the heading of “Methods of taking pictures” arrangements and motifs are discussed.

33. Pöch, , Das Photographieren, 106ff.Google Scholar

34. Such advertisements can be found, for example, in the Deutsche Kolonialblatt. However, these were usually in a special section at the end of the journal or even on the covers, parts that were frequently removed when the journal was bound for library purposes. Fortunately, the Widener Library of Harvard University owns a cover to cover set of the journal. See for example the rear cover of the issue of 15 November 1906 of Deutsche Kolonialblatt, with an advertisement for the firm of Georg Seltmann in Dresden, offering tripod and travelling cameras.

35. Letter of 18 January 1903, Adolf Diehl to director Weule of the Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig. Archives of the Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig, File 1903/45.

36. Rohrbach, Paul, ed. Die deutschen Kolonien. Ein Bilderbuch aller deutscher Kolonien mit 168 photographischen Aufnahmen, Karten und Text (Dachau, [no date but before 1915]).Google Scholar On p. 6 the model is pictured bare-breasted as “Chief's wife in the Cameroon Grassfields. The loin cloth is colorful German calico” (translated from the German). On p. 22 (left), the same woman poses in the nude as “Hausa maiden at the source” (translated from the German).

37. See Scherer, Joanna Cohen, “You Can't Believe Your Eyes: Inaccuracies in Photographs of North American Indians,” Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 2 (1975), 67–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This paper is highly instructive for critical work with any photographic image.

38. An interesting study of this kind has been undertaken by the Harvard Semitic Museum on the studio of the Bonfils family in Beirut. Gavin, Carney E.S., The Image of the East. Nineteenth-Century Near Eastern Photographs by Bonfils (Chicago, 1982).Google Scholar See also studio photographs from Ghana in Jenkins and Geary, Photographs.

39. A good example for differences in photographic conventions between then and now is the issue of smiling. When looking at historical portraits of Africans, one might conclude that their non-smiling faces express fear. This may sometimes be the case, of course. However, smiling was generally considered undesirable by the portrait photographer at the turn of the century. “Only children could be pictured with a smile on their face. Adult persons should not be photographed when laughing; even the smile at times seems unpleasant and ugly, as soon as it is captured permanently on the image.” Eder, , Moment-Photographie, 46Google Scholar; translated from the German. This convention began to change in the 1930s.

40. The typical anthropological series of portraits consisted of three shots: profile, half-profile and full-face. Missionary photographers sometimes photographed in a similar fashion.

41. The major early work on police photography was published in 1895, a German translation of the French original by Bertillon, Alphonse: Die Gerichtliche Photographie. Mit einem Anhange über anthropometrische Classification und Identificierung (Halle, 1895).Google Scholar It also contained recommendations for anthropometric measurement-taking. Pöch mentions Bertillon's study as an exemplary work. It is interesting to note that Poch not only expects to produce a photograph useful for anthropological purposes, but also expects an image to provide a “good picture of the character” of the person photographed (Pöch, , Das Photographieren, 111Google Scholar).

42. Wirz discusses these issues in his paper on the photographic exhibit from the collections of the Royal Anthropological Institute, which after its initial showing in Great Britain, was shown again in Switzerland (see Poignant, Observers). An entirely new catalog was edited, which contains papers by Swiss scholars about the subject of cross-cultural photography (Wirz, Albert, “Beobachtete Beobachter: Zur Lektüre völkerkundlicher Fotografien” in Brauen, , Fremden-Bilder, 47–49.Google Scholar

43. Bochert has done this in exemplary fashion with photographs of the “alleys” around the White House. He states that only the largest possible number of photographs of a given research topic will allow conclusions about an individual photographer's work and his bias (Borchert, , Analysis, 35Google Scholar). For the African context I would suggest that the complete oeuvre of a photographer, or as many photographs as are available on a topic, should be studied.

44. I am presently working on an index of themes for the pre-World War I Kamerun material. The pictures were assigned to different categories. I chose the most obvious theme or used the original caption in determining where to put the picture. The categories are general. “Colonial life” refers for example to harbors, building of roads, telegraph lines, railways, as well as the emperor's and the empress' birthday, raising of flags, parades, and portraits of the colonialists. The category “Portraits of Africans” is divided into two subgroups. Some portraits are clearly anthropological types, while others picture individuals who were known to the photographer. The categories “African elite” and “Ordinary people” contain information on pictures already registered in other categories. Due to rounding, the percentages may not add to exactly 100%.

45. Ernst, Ferdinand, “Die öffentliche Anerkennung Fonyongas als Oberhäuptling,” July 18, 1905 (Archives of the Basel Mission, Kamerun 1905 II).Google Scholar The pictures taken by fellow missionary Martin Göhring are kept in the Basel Mission Archives and in the collection of the Linden-Museum at Stuttgart. In all archives I visited, the written and pictorial records were separated and there is typically no cross-referencing. At times, the written and visual records are stored in different archives. In fact, in the case of the records from the Cameroun Grassfields, complementary written and photographic materials exist more often than I first assumed.

46. Romeyk, Horst, Bildliche Darstellungen (Düsseldorf, 1975).Google Scholar The book provides a methodological introduction on the cataloging of pictorial materials in the archives and discusses archival bias. It addresses the archivist, but is also very helpful for the historian. Weinstein and Booth, Collection, also deal with the problems of archival treatment of these materials.

47. See records on Rudolf Oldenburg, items Post X, 1929 and Post XXI, 1933; Museum für Völkerkunde Wien.

48. In my work with photographs from the Grassfields I also studied collections of images taken between the two World Wars. One of the missionaries, Wilhelm Schneider (who worked in Weh in the present Menchum Division), possesses a marvelous collection of images he took between 1931 and 1940. Few of them with topics of interest for the Basel Mission were deposited in the archives. Between the two World Wars, nobody seems to have been in charge of the acquired pictures. Thus these collections are in worse shape than earlier acquisitions.

49. The picture service of the Kolonialkriegerdank advertised photographs. The association saw its task in gathering and conserving the “valuable, but widely scattered picture materials especially from our colonies,” and making them accessible in technically excellent execution to interested parties (letter of the Kolonialkriegerdank of 6 January 1911. Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, E. No. 36/11).

50. Such a faulty caption can have some rather amusing effects, if taken too literally. One of my colleagues traveled all the way to Esu and hoped to find evidence there which would support the written information on the photograph, namely, that Esu was the artistic center where the king and queen figures for Kom had been carved. As a specialist for the area, he knew of course that some of the statues on the photograph were now in Kom. Furthermore, Esu was once a very prolific carving center. When he arrived there, he was indeed introduced to some carvers who happily, but falsly, corroborated that the picture showed their “fathers” at work. This photograph has been published later with a correct attribution. Northern, Tamara, The Art of Cameroon (Washington, 1984), 95.Google Scholar

51. Nkwi, Paul N. and Warnier, Jean-Pierre, Elements for a History of the Western Grassfields (Yaoundé, 1982), 178ffGoogle Scholar; Geary, Christraud, ed., “Ludwig Brandl's Historical Notes on the Kingdom of Kom (Cameroon),” Paideuma, 26 (1980), 62ffGoogle Scholar; Northern, , Art of Cameroon, 94ff.Google Scholar

52. The original photograph was given by Adolf Diehl to the Leipzig Museum in 1912, the year in which foyn Yu died. At this point I do not know when Adolf Diehl had left Kamerun for good--perhaps a couple of years earlier.

53. Archives of the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg, Box K 65 a, no. 92.

54. The records on the Spellenberg affair are numerous, but not easily accessible. See for instance Cameroon files 1912, E-2, 36, no. 1, item 5.

55. Lips, Julius E., The Savage Hits Back (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, frontispiece; the original edition appeared in 1937.

56. Northern, Tamara, Royal Art of Cameroon. The Art of the Bamenda-Tikar (Hanover, NH, 1973), 22.Google Scholar

57. Gebauer, Paul, Art of Cameroon (Portland, 1979).Google Scholar

58. Northern, , Art of Cameroon, 97.Google Scholar