Michael Stevenson Fine Art

Surviving the Lens Essay

These photographs ... have a hold over those of us who, in a different time and place, are often unaware of their original purposes and the meanings. Many of the images are remarkable works of art, provoking an aesthetic response and thus becoming meaningful in yet another way. 1

Christraud Geary remarking on photographs taken at the court of King Njoya, Cameroon, 1902-15

Over the past decade we have actively collected photographs of people from south and east Africa. Amongst the thousands, there are a few which for us have retained a lasting and intriguing engagement. It is these that form the focus of this book. They almost all date from the period between 1870 and 1920, a time-frame that coincides with high European imperialism in the region. The attitudes that are associated with imperialism permeate the images of the period: superiority, arrogance and certainty on one side, and suspicion, resignation and resistance on the other. In later years - as African states achieved independence - nationalism and self-determination shifted attitudes and altered power structures, and changed the tone of photographic portraits and the demeanour of the subjects. The later political protests and post-colonial celebrations coincided with the growth of photo-journalism, which portrayed the people of the region in a very different spirit from the earlier images.

In order to situate colonial photographs meaningfully in the contexts in which they were conceived, the many strands of influence on their making need to be carefully considered. As James Ryan in his recent book on colonial photography concludes, these images are 'dynamic objects with entangled histories whose surfaces reflect different meanings within different historical and cultural settings.'2 In this introduction the impact of the theories of ethnography and anthropology on such photographs will briefly be discussed, as well as the influence of the technical limitations of the photographic process. The demand by potential customers for stereotypical images, and the complex interplay between these factors and pictorial and art conventions of the period will also be examined.

Christraud Geary, the curator of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives at the National Museum of African Art in Washington, observed in 1986 that 'research on historical photographs from Africa is more or less in its infancy.'3 Although there has been a proliferation of publications in the field of visual anthropology in recent years, many other aspects of nineteenth-century African photography remain unexplored.

In addition there has been limited investigation into the actual production and consumption of images, and consequently the analytical and theoretical debates are often constructed around fragmented information. Too little is known about the identities of the photographers, how they operated and traded images, how the studios competed in the principal centres, what equipment and materials were available, and who the primary consumers of the photographs were. Furthermore, exposure to the full range of the images that a photographer produced is central to understanding an individual practitioner's intent and skill. As Geary observes, 'Only if the record of one photographer's oeuvre is more or less complete can we detect the distinctiveness of his photographic style, the emphasis of his photographic activity, and his bias within a given framework.'4 Only in rare instances have art historians started to approach nineteenth-century photography from south and east Africa in this way. Reconstructing such oeuvres and contexts is time-consuming and unfashionable, and it is indicative of the state of research that only one thorough study of photographers in this region has been published, more than thirty years ago: Marjorie Bull and Joseph Denfield's Secure the shadow: the story of Cape photography from its beginnings to the end of 1870 (Cape Town, 1970).

Publications specifically about nineteenth-century south and east African photography are few, and most of them fit the stereotypical niche of lavish nostalgic coffee-table books that focus on historical buildings or topographical views, contrasting the landscape as it looked 'then' with how it looks 'now'. There are of course very many new publications that use photographs to illustrate and document aspects of south and east Africa's history, but there are few anthologies of photographs whose focus is on individual powerful and engaging images.5 In the few anthologies that there are which relate to Africa, such as Nicolas Monti, Africa then: photographs 1840-1918 (London, 1987), the pattern is generally to omit south and parts of east Africa from the selection. The only recent book on this region that is concerned with the photography of people across divisions of colour and class is The face of the country: a South African family album, 1860-1910. Photographic portraits from the collections of the South African Library (Cape Town, 1996) by the novelist and historian Karel Schoeman. This work contains examples of the genre in which we have collected and selected images; sadly, the quality of the reproduction seriously undermined Schoeman's objective.

Public galleries and museums are powerful catalysts in shaping perceptions of what constitutes 'art', and in other 'new world' countries art institutions have actively collected and exhibited nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs as an art form in their own right, and not merely as illustrations of the dress, lifestyles and landscapes of yesteryear.6 In south and east Africa, however, no art institution has systematically collected or exhibited historical images. Even on the occasion of the 1999 'Encounters with photography' conference in Cape Town, the associated exhibition at the South African National Gallery comprised only twentieth-century and contemporary images. In the libraries and historically-orientated museums there are collections that extend to hundreds of thousands of images,7 but these are catalogued only in terms of the historical information they offer. This has also been the case in other countries, prompting an Australian researcher to observe that 'The process of cataloguing ... [the] material [in libraries and museums in many parts of the globe] is in its infancy and so is the work to trace the links back to the original subjects. Limited record keeping by photographers; limited knowledge, sometimes, of who the photographers were and their exact motives for photographing their subjects; dispersal of groups of indigenous people - all make for an area which is rich to work in.'8 This is a process that must still be initiated in south and east Africa.

In South Africa, comparisons can be drawn between the collecting of photographs by public galleries and the history of their acquisition of art works by black artists. There were only sporadic purchases of works by contemporary black artists until the 1980s, when more inclusive acquisition policies were developed. In addition, historical southern African art produced by black people was confined to museums that had for more than a century focused on ethnographic and anthropological 'material culture'. But in the past decade the art galleries have recognised the significance and aesthetic merits of these works of the past, and they have been scrambling to rectify previous imbalances. Since the demise of apartheid, the field of contemporary photography in South Africa has also evolved dramatically, and in the past decade some public galleries have actively sought such work. Now is perhaps also an appropriate time for public galleries to start re-looking at earlier south and east African photography in a framework much broader than social and ethnographic history.

With the intention of initiating a dialogue in this regard we have selected 50 photographs, most of them unpublished, for inclusion in this book. While collecting, one is always looking and seeing, making connections, thinking about contexts. Returning to the images many times over, some which we at first had thought astonishing, we later found diminished in intensity. Others unfolded, displaying a compelling and sometimes disturbing poignancy. This process of sifting and sorting has brought to the fore a particular group of images, which individually can be seen as art, ethnography, anthropology, amateur snapshots or visual souvenirs, and sometimes even pornography. The selection spans work by both amateurs and professionals, with images taken in studios as well as in the field. It includes photographs of people carefully positioned in rustic and makeshift outdoor settings as well as indoors with theatrical backdrops and props and with an overall spatial arrangement conforming to pictorial compositions fashionable at the time. There are formal images by professional photographers and 'snapshots' by amateurs, the latter usually more casual because they were intended as visual notebooks to be shared with friends and family back 'home'. However, there are also images that blur these boundaries, such as those taken by amateur missionary photographers to publicise their religious work with local people and bring it to the attention of their supporters in Europe.

There are some emphases and absences in the present selection that need to be qualified. Firstly, in a decade of collecting we could only acquire such pictures as came on the market, and there are obviously many desirable photographs in institutional or private collections we could not hope to own. Secondly, even though professional and amateur photographers took countless photographs in Africa, it is not possible, however good one's intent, to assemble a representative collection that ranges across barriers of colour and class, in urban and rural settlements. One's choice is limited by what was actually photographed at the time, and the reality is that the bulk of surviving photographs depict middle-class urban whites or are stereotypical views of black people. As Karel Schoeman reminds us, after the South African War 'the military and ecclesiastical pageantry and Royal visits arising from ... [South Africa's forming part of the British Empire] were abundantly photographed to provide future generations with a detailed if distorted vision of the past, masking its many social, economic and political problems.' 9 One wonders what has become of the photographs taken by the 'more adventurous photographers such as the individual who, according to The Cape Argus of 17 October 1874, travelled in a 'unique and commodious travelling wagon', [the] proprietor of which has for the last eight months been taking a colonial photographic tour. It was built specially in England for the purpose, regardless of expense, and cost, we are informed, close upon £400; the woodwork being of mahogany and the metal parts of steel, while the workmanship is evidently of a superior description, lightness being combined with great strength, a quality essential for South African roads. The vehicle inside comprises the conveniences of a small dwelling being fitted with a stove, washing apparatus, small cistern for water, table, and other accommodation calculated to make one feel quite at home while 'on the road'.10

The absence of images of people taken in the course of their daily lives in remote areas was partly the result of the technological limitations of photographic equipment in the nineteenth century - and the rarity of the customised wagon. Now, in the twenty-first century, when disposable cameras and digital photography are part of our lifestyle, we can easily forget how cumbersome the equipment and how slow the photographic process was in those years. Securing clean water for developing plates in the field was one of the many challenges that had to be met by pioneer photographers. H. Anderson Bryden in his book Gun and camera in southern Africa (London, 1893) describes how, 'filter and cleanse our water as we might (and we struggled very hard to evolve purity out of filth), the plates, on being taken out of the bath the next morning, invariably had a film of mud and sand resting upon them.'11 Duggan-Cronin recalls being faced with the usual challenges of cumbersome equipment and processing the plates in situ. But on one occasion he experienced a further and more amusing challenge: 'whenever I put my dishes outside, the dogs would come and upset them. They were ravenous with hunger, and even when kicked they were not discouraged. I had to go to the Chief about it and he gave me a guard.'12 It is Thomas Baines who perhaps best explains the challenges of photography in the field on the occasion of his travels in Namibia and to the Victoria Falls with Chapman in 1864: 'As for the difficulties in the way of a photographer, their name is Legion ... - the impossibility of procuring clean water - the different conditions of atmosphere and intensity of the sun - the constant dust raised either by our people or the wind, the whirlwinds upsetting the camera, and no end of other causes - combine to frustrate the efforts of the operator, and oblige us (myself with greater reluctance than Chapman) to condemn many and many a picture.'13

The clean water mentioned by Baines was for washing the plates for 'wet-plate' photography, the standard process from about 1852 until well into the 1870s. In this process - which required patience, especially away from a studio - a glass plate was dipped in collodion (a light-sensitive chemical solution), placed in the camera while still wet, exposed for a few seconds, and developed immediately before the collodion had dried. In the 1870s the 'dry plate' was introduced, and because these glass plates were already covered with a dry light-sensitive emulsion they did not need to be prepared or (if stored correctly) developed immediately after use. The popularisation of high-speed cellulose film at the turn of the twentieth century liberated professional photographers from the studio and also opened up the field to amateurs.

The audience who viewed these images constituted another profound influence on the content and composition of most of the photographs of people from this region. The travellers, traders and tourists, often in the service of (predominantly British) colonialism, who passed through the east and south African ports of Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, and through towns in the interior such as Johannesburg, Kimberley and Bulawayo, usually wished to take away with them some reminder of people and places. To meet this demand, photographic studios flourished in these centres, and each studio tried to imitate or set itself apart from the opposition. We know little about the studios and how they operated, but a description of A.C. Gomes & Son in Zanzibar in the early twentieth century offers some insight:

For over forty years now their business has been carried on in those parts, and as they move with the times the tourist or collector can always find what he wants [at] their branch premises in the Main Road (opposite the G.P.O.), Zanzibar. Camera pictures of all subjects, from Aden to Zanzibar, can be supplied, coloured picture postcards are a speciality, and a great variety of native studies is open to inspection. A distinct feature is made of developing, printing and enlarging customers' own negatives; and orders of this nature urgently required are carried out at the shortest notice. ... Messrs. Gomes & Son have by them constantly a varied and fresh stock of Kodak films, Ilford plates and papers, developers, lamps, dishes, and printing frames - in fact anything the camera-owner can possibly desire.14

It would appear that many more photographs, and of a greater variety, were taken and sold to Europeans in these parts of Africa during the last part of the nineteenth century than elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. The fact that almost every photograph in our collection was acquired in the UK is confirmation that they were mostly bought to be taken away from Africa. However, the provenance of the images has in most cases been lost, which limits any real understanding of the profile and identity of the consumers.

As the description of A.C. Gomes & Son's business confirms, studios offered for sale 'a great variety of native studies', these images of people being a staple of photographers' sales at the time. An advertisement for C.W. Smart's Photographic Art Gallery in Port Elizabeth reads: 'Large stock of new views of Port Elizabeth, and the principal towns of the colony; also views of native life. Always on hand.'15 Because such photographs needed to meet the preconceptions of the early tourists who took them away as illustrative souvenirs, they invariably stereotyped the subjects. Differences in language and culture were glossed over in these depersonalised images that sought to portray cultural and racial essences as understood by curious foreigners. Consequently, such images reinforced myths and preconceptions; for example, thousands of photographs included Zulu-speakers' beadwork and artefacts as studio props to construct images that Europeans could label as 'Zulu'. Such contrived stereotyping upheld the pretence that the lives of the subjects were untouched by colonialism, and photographers often went to great lengths to ensure that their images did not allude to cross-cultural influences or the effects of colonialism on their subjects' traditional way of life.

Most of these images suggested that all men were fierce warriors and all women nubile maidens. The photo-historian Deborah Willis remarks that in her research she has come across 'countless nude photographs of African women. From 1839 to well into the twentieth century, photographers roamed the continent making such images. In looking at these one sees that the face of the woman often was unimportant as an element of the picture. Her buttocks and breasts are the primary focus.'16 Such photographs were often meant to be not only erotic but also exotic. The African-American artist Carla Williams judiciously points out that in the mid-nineteenth century the popularity of erotica and the invention of photography coincided with a period of fascination with exotic subject matter, at a time of colonial expansion into Africa; and this convergence 'developed broadly to include in the various media all imaginable permutations alien to the notion of personal intimacy.'17 Although the photographers tried to suggest that these images were of ethnographic interest through the inclusion of beadwork and other items of material culture, the sexually suggestive poses and careful placement of the beadwork ensured that there was usually a salacious, even pornographic undertone. There was often a self-conscious attempt by these photographers to suggest that their photographs were 'art' through overt allusion in composition and poise to the odalisque and harem scenes fashionable in nineteenth-century painting.18 Images in this vein tend still to be presented as the 'finest' of photography from the region. For example, in the seminal book by Bruce Bernard, PhotoDiscovery: a century of extraordinary images, 1840-1940 (London, 1980), the only southern African image included is of a naked woman reclining in a studio setting (entitled 'Zulu girl', it was taken by Lloyd of Natal).

These voyeuristic images, which suggest that African women were compliant subjects living in a land of sexual freedom, 'were common all over the colonies of the Cape and Natal' according to Frederick Mackenzie, a journalist for the Standard in the Anglo-Zulu War.19 Even at that time such images were considered problematic, although for reasons related to prudish Victorian morality rather than to the exploitative and racist treatment of black women in the photographs. An example of the former is a court case in London in 1879 when a Mr T.T. Philpotts was charged with selling 'photographs of Zulus in a state of nudity', which he displayed in the window of his shop in King William Street in the City. He was prosecuted to 'protect the morals of the city of London and the rising generation', and the case 'excited a great deal of interest.' In the end, the testimonies of the witnesses convinced the judge that the photographs were not indecent because this 'was the ordinary dress of the women, and ... it was a natural position which they themselves assumed against one of their own kraals before a camera.'20

At the outset we referred to the pervasive influence of anthropology and ethnography on the composition and tone of many of the photographs made in the late nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century. At the time, these images provided an important means of assisting with the classification and visualisation of people living outside the Western world. Organisations such as the Royal Anthropological Institute, which was preoccupied with 'types' of people and physiognomy, actively promoted the 'scientific' use of photography. A pamphlet was issued by it in about 1925, 'with the earnest request that all who read it will help towards the formation of a reference collection of photographs.' It specified that the 'physical types' should be photographed either 'full-face' or 'true profile' in both portrait and full-length format. It also recommended 'salvage anthropology': 'In view of the effects of modern developments, affecting the races of the Empire, from the point of view of miscegenation and the rapid disappearance of primitive crafts, it is very desirable that a permanent record of racial types, and the methods employed by the primitive craftsman, should be made as soon as possible.'21

The assumption that such anthropologically-informed images were faithful and accurate records of non-Western people has regularly been challenged in recent years, and, increasingly, the probability that they are rhetorical constructs and symbols of white imagination, rather than sensitive and accurate depictions of the inner life of the subjects, is being explored. In our viewing and re-looking, we have steered away from images taken expressly for anthropological use, although the composition and tenor of many of the images were unequivocally influenced by the demands of anthropology.

While the impact of anthropology and ethnography on images of black people is now acknowledged, the influence of art conventions in the minds of the photographer and the viewers, then and now, is seldom alluded to. A comparison can be drawn between the limited references to art historical themes in reading such photographs, and the present-day reception of the extraordinary series of portraits painted by Albert Eckhout (c.1607-1665) in Brazil between 1641 and 1643 (now in the National Museum of Copenhagen). As a critic recently observed, these 'paintings have tended ... to be seen as authentic ethnographic records rather than as works of art ... [and] have always attracted interest and admiration for their ethnographic accuracy rather than any intrinsic artistic worth.'22

In photographs informed by artistic conventions, the personal subjectivity of the photographer is crucial, whereas anthropological photography was informed by science and thus sought to offer objective representations. Even if a colonial photographer did not intend to produce 'art', the pictorial conventions and the art aesthetics of the time had a pronounced effect on photographic portraiture. These inherent qualities in photographs of the period are usually overlooked in the search for the information and documentation that an image may contain, and the artistry and skill of the photographer tend to be viewed as secondary to the 'content'. An image of a person is thus seen primarily as a depiction of a 'type' rather than an individual portrait study; a landscape is viewed more as a source of historical topographical information than as an evocative and picturesque vista. In making our selection, we have tended to avoid images that may contain fascinating information about the life and times of the sitters but which are pictorially dull and do not display the craft of the photographer. However, the distinguishing line between photographs that can arguably be appreciated within a formal aesthetic framework and those that are primarily historical documents, is sometimes thin. This crossover is made more difficult by the fact that the photographer is often unidentified, and in the canons of Western art the identity of the maker is always paramount in the evaluation of a work. Such works by unknown photographers can, in some respects, be compared with 'traditional' African art where the maker is also seldom identified, but art historians and collectors are able to appreciate these pieces without knowing the identity of the producer.

The pictorial conventions that informed these photographic images in south and east Africa relate to the manner in which black people were depicted in European painting.23 At the time when these photographs were taken, the approach in fine art was still heavily influenced by the concept of the 'noble savage', which originated in the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment view of the non-Western world and sought to heighten the exotic nature of the subjects. Also, as we have pointed out, the influence of the Orientalist aesthetic can often be seen in the colonial photographs of black women. More generally, photographers adopted the aesthetic practices of portrait painters, especially in studio work. Careful consideration was given to modes of lighting, spatial arrangements, perspectives and the construction of the various picture planes. The conventions of classical sculpture are also commonly self-evident in the formal pose, poise and drapery of the subjects. There is ample evidence of these influencing factors in our selection.

It is now often overlooked that both photographers and their customers at the time were sensitive to the aesthetic qualities of their images. An apologetic remark by H. Anderson Bryden illustrates this point: 'I cannot pretend that my pictures represent a high order of photographic art. But I will ask the reader to remember that the originals were taken and developed ... usually under very trying conditions.'24 The colonial amateur photographic organisations and journals actively debated the pictorial qualities of photographs. A photograph by H. Reid Thorp entitled 'The outpost', which was entered in a South African Photographic Journal competition in 1908, drew this criticism: 'the vigorous attitude of a watchful Zulu is harmoniously surrounded by the rocks and wild bush of a hilltop. The work is full of atmosphere and excellent quality, and there is much dramatic purpose in the composition, but structurally it falls to pieces, and demands too much credence in its obvious artificialities.25 The efforts of colonial photographers to incorporate aesthetic references were in general positively received. However, the British Journal of Photography was perhaps unnecessarily critical of the standard attained at the 'Exhibition of pictures by colonial photographers' in London in 1909: 'Naturally it challenges comparison with the work of the Mother Country, and if it really represents the best from all parts, we at home may plume ourselves upon the fact that whatever our prowess in cricket and tinned provisions, in camera work we still hold the palm.'26

The skill with which photographers drew on these pictorial references obviously determined whether the image was a pastiche or an accomplished work of art.27 Karel Schoeman is of the opinion that most of the photographs taken in southern Africa were of a poor quality compared with those produced in other colonial localities such as Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia and the Americas.28 The British photographer Ellerbeck who travelled through South Africa in 1892 shared this view: he wrote that the large towns teemed with studios whose prices were very low, and 'real artist portraitphotographers ... could be counted on the fingers of one hand. The average photographer is quite content while he can keep his negatives pretty black and white, retouch up to an appalling degree, and give as much gloss on the finished photograph as possible.'29 However, one might argue that the apparent inferior quality of southern African photographs can be ascribed to the fact that we are only now starting the process of sifting, cataloguing, trading, and otherwise exploring the field. In other former colonial regions there has been a very visible interest in such photography for a decade or more, and the powerful and extraordinary images have already been separated from the mass of commercially produced photographs. We believe that the present selection will show that there are images which illustrate that certain south and east African photographers were sufficiently skilled in interpreting the contemporary aesthetic to warrant special attention.

Another factor that has coloured our re-looking is not easily articulated or quantified, but relates to Geary's comment quoted as an epigraph to this essay about images that are aesthetically provocative. Some of these photographs of south and east African people have a subliminal and enigmatic intensity. They transcend the narrow confines of art or anthropology, and offer a view of the humanity of the subjects that reaches out across time and space. In our experience, a dialogue develops in such photographs between the present-day viewer and the subjects, and one is repeatedly struck by the contained stoicism of the people in the images. They are rooted in their own lives. Even if quizzical or intimidated by the process, their body language and facial expressions suggest that they retain a high degree of dignity and self-possession. Usually the subjects look out at the photographer - and at the modern viewer - strongly and sometimes even defiantly. In our looking back, we seek to understand the dynamic connection (or disconnection) that existed between the subject and the photographer. What usually tells us most about this relationship is the sitter's direct eye contact, which confronts and sometimes even subverts the photographer's attempts to control and construct.

The whole process of taking a photograph entrenched the photographer's position of power and often his alienation from the subjects. We view these images from the position of the photographer, whereas the subjects were looking at a photographer standing behind a box representing a process they seldom understood. Thus, understandably, there was a strong resistance among black people to being photographed. They were rarely willing subjects: as a photographer travelling through South Africa in 1892 remarked, they had a 'strong objection to courting death by coming under the evil eye of the camera (on the tripod).'30 Baines describes 'the restlessness of the sitters, who naturally shrink when the mysteriouslooking double-barrelled lenses are levelled full at them, and cannot imagine what "the shadow catcher" is doing under the black curtain.'31 The explorer Joseph Thomson made use of photography in his East Central African Expedition of 1878-80, and found the local people so frightened of the camera that 'by leaving a camera standing alone he had kept a whole village totally deserted for a day.'32 On a further trip to Mount Kenya and Lake Victoria Nyanza in 1883-84 the people were very reluctant to be photographed:

With soothing words, aided by sundry pinches and chuckings under the chin, I might get the length of making them stand up; but the moment that the attempt to focus [on] them took place they would fly in terror to the shelter of the woods. To show them photographs and try to explain what I wanted, only made them worse. They imagined I was a magician trying to take possession of their souls which once accomplished they would be entirely at my mercy. They would not in the end even look at a photo ... I spoiled several negatives, and finally gave up the attempt.33

Similarly, J.M. Moubray records in his book In South Central Africa: being an account of ... a stay of six years ... (London, 1912) that the people living in the vicinity of Livingstone's grave 'proved to be very shy of my camera. The natives call their photograph their shadow, and when one desires to take a photograph, it is usual to intimate that you wish to put their shadow in the box, i.e. in your camera.'34 And the South African photographer Duggan-Cronin, who photographed thousands of people in southern Africa in the first decades of the twentieth century, recalled that the subjects 'think as soon as I put the black cloth over my head I can see right through them.'35

It is ironic that difficulties of working with slow shutter speeds empowered the subjects because they could not be photographed unless they wished to co-operate. The literature of the time is replete with examples of photographers expressing their frustrations. Baines provides such an instance in a report in the Cape Town newspaper The Standard and Mail on 14 October 1873. On his return from Zululand after seeing the crowning of its king, he recalled that the Durban-based photographer Kisch had limited success because Cetshwayo's subjects 'always baulk the photographer by instituting an abnormal condition of unrest the moment they see him taking sight at them out of the black box.'36 Similar experiences were recorded when Baines travelled with Chapman in the regions of Lake Ngami and Zambezi. Chapman 'would take all his measures beforehand. Knowing the spot on which the ivory market, for instance, would be held, he would get his camera to bear on it, but when he retired a moment to put in a plate they would pass the word to one another, "Keep moving! Don't sit still a moment or he will catch you".'37 The German anthropologist Gustav Fritsch sailed across to Robben Island at the end of 1863 to photograph the Xhosa political prisoners held there. He recalled that he ‘made the acquaintance of the imprisoned ... chiefs: [Maqoma, Xhoxho, Stokwe] of the Ama-Ngqika and [Dilima] of the tribe Ama-Ndhlambe. In return for some tobacco and one shilling per head, they readily allowed themselves to grant me their worthy presence for a while, and I immediately got ready to take the portraits, not without encountering some difficulties, as sitting still by no means seemed necessary to them. For example, while I was exposing, ... [Maqoma] quite cheerfully rubbed his nose. Some of the pictures therefore left much to be desired ...’38

Although most travelogues of the period describe resistance to the photographic process, there are occasional instances where the photographer secured the co-operation of the sitters or they were not intimidated. For example, when Lionel Decle photographed the Ndebele people in the 1890s he asked a man 'if he would like me to take his portrait. He accepted with delight, and led me inside the village to the courtyard of a hut where about thirty men, women and children were assembled ... I was preparing my apparatus, and when it was ready I asked permission to photograph them. They did not understand. All the same they showed no fear, as the natives of other villages had done.'39 Another such instance is recorded in Frank H. Melland and Edward H. Cholmeley's book, Through the heart of Africa: being an account of a journey ... from Northern Rhodesia ... to Egypt ... (London, 1912): 'We had a good hour's entertainment photographing some of the sportsmen ... [who] were "clothed" in typical Lango fashion, and were quite delighted at being photographed, as well as at the interest taken in their ornaments, of which some were very proud.'40

A question that remains unanswered is what did the subjects receive in return for participating in the photographic process? Were they able to negotiate their presence and some compensation or did their subordinated status in the rigid colonial hierarchy preclude such bargaining? It is obviously difficult to generalise because of the scarcity of records on the subject, but presumably there were cases where the subject was in a position to command some payment, even if it took the form of tobacco or beads. Such an instance is described by H. Anderson Bryden: at Masinya's Kraal, the village of a tribe of Bakurutse people, tributary to Khama, 'I had some trouble to get one of the girls to stand to be photographed; eventually a bright-coloured cotton handkerchief worked the oracle for me. The lady who thus honoured me with a sitting ... was quite overcome by the magnificence of the handkerchief (price, in Mafeking, 4d.).'41

Almost every practising photographer in east and south Africa was either of European or Middle-Eastern (or occasionally Goanese) descent. This is unlike west Africa, where Creoles and black photographers were active from the late nineteenth century onwards. In the USA at this time, there were many African-American photographers who Deborah Willis has uncovered in her research, illustrating that black practitioners were able to overcome the barriers of colour and class and produce compelling images. When examining photographs taken in south and east Africa, it is easy to overlook the gulf of class, colour or gender that existed between subject and photographer - the colonised and the colonist. How this social distance between photographer and subject influenced the image is cogently explained in a quotation used by Willis from an article entitled 'A tribute to the Negro', written by Frederick Douglass in 1849, in which he raises the issue in relation to white artists: ‘Negroes can never have impartial portraits at the hand of white artists. It seems to us next to the impossible for white men to take likenesses of black men, without most grossly exaggerating their distinctive features. And the reason is obvious. Artists like all other white persons, have adopted a theory dissecting the distinctive features of Negro physiognomy.’42

This perceptive observation illustrates the prejudiced attitude of Europeans in the second half of the nineteenth century, caused by misinterpretations of Darwin's evolutionary theories and a long legacy of racism. Similar attitudes would have coloured almost every image taken in south and east Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century and arguably well into the twentieth. At the risk of stating the obvious, it also needs to be borne in mind that very few images of the period were commissioned by black people or made for a black audience. If the photographs were not taken for 'scientific' purposes or as stereotypical views, black people were generally only photographed in their roles on the fringes of the white ruling class, as nursemaids, servants, wagon drivers, and so on. Very seldom were they depicted in their own right or at their request, except in a few instances where they were in positions of authority or power such as hereditary chiefs and leaders.

Our distance in time and space from this selection of photographs, and the many thousand of other more compromising images, allows for some reflection on how the descendants of the subjects may view them. A remark made in relation to the history of slavery begs repetition in this context: 'one cannot underestimate the discomfort for anyone of African descent who engages with this material.'43 Yet it would be simplistic to dismiss all images of the period because, as a recent writer remarked about Harry Johnston's photographs of people in the Caribbean: 'To judge the subjects of these photographs as innocent or complicit, or to paint Johnston as a typical "colonial", short-changes a larger discussion about how whites and blacks negotiated each other's identities during this era. Discomfort is an inevitable consequence of really "seeing" these images and the complex investigation they provoke.'44 As we engage in a process of viewing and re-viewing colonial photographs, a way forward might be found in the thoughts of the Native American Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie on the occasion of a major exhibition of photographs of Native Americans in London in 1998: ‘At first when I began reading ethnographic images I would become extremely depressed and then recognition dawned. I was viewing the images as an observer, not as the observed. My analytical eye matured, I became suspicious of the awkward, self-appointed 'expert' narrative ... That was a beautiful day when the scales fell from my eyes and I first encountered photographic sovereignty. A beautiful day when I decided that I would take responsibility to reinterpret images of Native peoples. My mind was ready, primed with stories of resistance and resilience, stories of survival.’45

Notes

1. C. Geary, Images from Bamum: German colonial photography at the court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915, Washington, 1988, p. 13.

2. J.R. Ryan, Picturing empire, London, 1997, p. 225.

3. C. Geary, 'Photographs as materials for African history: some methodological considerations', History in Africa, XIII (1986), p. 93.

4. C. Geary, 'Photographs as materials for African history: some methodological considerations', History in Africa, XIII (1986), pp. 96-7.

5. These include M.W. Daly and L.E. Forbes, The Sudan: photographs from the Sudan archive, Durham University Library, Reading, 1994; P. Kallaway and P. Pearson, Johannesburg: images and continuities. A history of working class life through pictures 1885-1935, Johannesburg, 1986; P.C. Mazikana and I.J. Johnstone, Zimbabwe epic, Harare, 1982; J. Fabb, The British Empire from photographs: Africa, London, 1987; W. Hartmann, J. Silvester, and P. Hayes, The colonising camera: photographs in the making of Namibian history, Cape Town, 1998; and P. Skotnes (ed.), Miscast: negotiating the presence of the Bushmen, Cape Town, 1996.

6. See for instance Portraits of Oceania, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997.

7. For example, MuseumAfrica has approximately 300 000 images in their historical photo archive; the National Library of South Africa in Cape Town has about 100 000 images; and in 1987 the National Archives of Zimbabwe had indexed 23 000 negatives and 26 000 photographs.

8. J. Annear, 'Permission to look: an introduction to portraits of Oceania', in Portraits of Oceania, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997, p.7.

9. K. Schoeman, The face of the country, Cape Town, 1996, p. 91.

10. The Cape Argus, 17.10.1874.

11. H.A. Bryden, Gun and camera in southern Africa, London, 1893, p. 55.

12. Annual report of the Duggan-Cronin Gallery, 1983-4, p. 11.

13. T. Baines, Explorations in South-West Africa, London, 1864, pp. 148-9.

14. S. Playne, East Africa (British): its history, people, commerce, industries and resources, London, 1908-9, p. 419.

15. Port Elizabeth directory and guide to the Eastern Province, 1880, p. 37.

16. D. Willis (ed.), Picturing us: African American identity in photography, New York, 1994, p. 19.

17. C. Williams, 'The erotic image is naked and dark', In D. Willis (ed.), Picturing us: African American identity in photography, New York, 1994, p. 131.

18. This was also the case in contemporary photographs of Oceanic women. See C. Blanton (ed.), Picturing paradise: colonial photography of Samoa, 1875-1925, Daytona, 1995.

19. In his testimony for the defence, 1879, see note 20 below.

20. The Times reported on the proceedings of the case on 24, 30 and 31 October 1879. Some of these quotes are taken from a cutting from an unidentified Irish newspaper.

21. Pamphlet issued by the Royal Anthropological Institute, c. 1925, MGS collection.

22. P. Mason, Infelicities: representations of the exotic, Baltimore, 1998, p. 49.

23. There is a vast and growing literature on this subject, but an indispensable reference remains the Menil Foundation series The image of the black in western art, in particular part IV(2): H. Honour, From the American revolution to World War I: black models and white myths, Cambridge, Mass., 1989.

24. H.A. Bryden, Gun and camera in southern Africa, London, 1893, p. ix.

25. South African Photographic Journal, 1(2), December 1908, p. 233.

26. Where is all the material that was produced and exhibited early in the twentieth century, apart from the examples in the Bensusan Collection in Johannesburg? For example, at the 'Exhibition of pictures by colonial photographers' in London in 1909, 77 pictures from 24 South African photographers were selected as against 83 pictures by 26 photographers from the other colonies. See 'The colonial photographer's exhibition', South African Photographic Journal, 2(7), August 1909, p. 105.

27. See, for example, K. Grundlingh, 'Pictorialism in South African photography', presented at the 'Encounters with photography' conference, Cape Town, 1999.

28. K. Schoeman, The face of the country, Cape Town, 1996, p. 8.

29. H.S. Ellerbeck, 'Photography in South Africa', British Journal of Photography, 21 October 1892, p. 679.

30. H.S. Ellerbeck, 'Photography in South Africa', British Journal of Photography, 21 October 1892, p. 679.

31. T. Baines, Explorations in South-West Africa, London, 1864, pp. 148-9.

32. J. Thomson, 'Comments on photography', Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, IV, 1882, p. 212; quoted by Ryan, p. 143.

33. J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, London, 1887, pp. 46-8, quoted by Ryan, p. 143.

34. J.M. Moubray, In South Central Africa: being an account of ... a stay of six years ..., London, 1912, p. 144 .

35. Annual report of the Duggan-Cronin Gallery, 1983-4, p. 11.

36. The Standard and Mail, 14.10.1873.

37. The Standard and Mail, 14.10.1873.

38. G. Fritsch, unpublished translation of Drei Jahre in Süd Afrika, Breslau, 1868, NLSA: MSB 633, 4(7). Modern spellings are used for the names in brackets.

39. L. Decle, Three years in savage Africa, London, 1900, pp. 25-6.

40. F.H. Melland and E.H. Cholmeley, Through the heart of Africa: being an account of a journey ... from Northern Rhodesia ... to Egypt ... , London, 1912, pp. 229-30.

41. H.A. Bryden, Gun and camera in southern Africa, London, 1893, p. 360.

42. (ed.), Picturing us: African American identity in photography, New York, 1994, p. 17.

43. A. Walton, 'Diaspora blues', Times Literary Supplement, 26.5.2000, p. 29.

44. P. Archer-Straw, Photos and phantasms: Harry Johnston's photographs of the Caribbean, London, 1998, p. 10.

45. H. Tsinhnahjinnie, 'When is a photograph worth a thousand words?', in J. Alison (ed.), Native nations: journeys in American photography, London, 1998, p. 42.

There is a direct correlation between understanding a photographic image and the information that is associated with it: the identity of the photographer, the title, when and where it was taken, etc. In these captions, wherever possible, the identity of the photographer has been listed, and occasionally attributions are suggested for works by unidentified photographers that can be stylistically connected to other 'signed' images.

Because the approach of this book is art historical rather than anthropological, the name of the photographer is listed before the title, which is the converse of the practice in books such as Edwards's Anthropology and photography (1992). Where biographical information about the photographer is known, this is included. If such information is on record, a date and place can usually be deduced. For future reference, there is an alphabetical list of photographers at the back of the book. The original title is recorded in quotation marks, otherwise a descriptive working title is offered. This title may identify the sitter or sitters, which is usually an indication that the image was taken in the service of ethnography, because in most instances the sitters are anonymous.

Any original inscriptions are noted, even though some of the terms they contain are today considered objectionable. Their omission, however, would eliminate an insight into the contemporary relationship between photographer and sitter and audience. The term 'Kaffir' or 'Kafir' is recorded in the captions even though its usage is now offensive. In nineteenth-century Cape colonial and missionary parlance, the term referred specifically to Xhosa-speaking people living on the eastern frontier, many of whom initially regarded it as a neutral English term which they used themselves. The Fingoes (Mfengu), who were among the earliest Christian converts, were sometimes specified separately. The Basuto, Zulu, Swazi and other northern peoples were generally referred to by their official 'tribal' designations. These subtle distinctions were not observed by the general population, and Boers and European immigrants used the term 'Kaffer/Kaffir' indiscriminately and later derogatorily.

All the numbered images are reproduced the exact size of the originals in our collection, unless otherwise stated, and no images have been cropped except for the enlarged details that feature in the introductory pages of the book.

The following technical terms are used in the captions: 'imprinted' indicates that an inscription appears on the negative and thus forms an integral part of the printed image; 'inscribed' refers to handwriting on a print or its mount; 'printed' signifies pre-printed text on the front or back of the mounting card; and 'stamped' describes information that has been applied by hand to the print or mount using either a rubber stamp (or similar device), or a 'blind stamp' for embossing the photographer's details.

The captions include the following abbreviations:

BSAC: British South Africa Company
DSAB: Dictionary of South African Biography
INIL: Index to Illustrations (at the Cape Town division of the National Library of South Africa)
LMS: London Missionary Society
NLSA: National Library of South Africa
QBSAL: Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library
SOAS: School of Oriental and African Studies.