Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa 9781478004585

Citation preview

Unfixed

PHOTOGRAPHY AND DECOLONIAL IMAGINATION IN WEST AFRICA

Jennifer Bajorek

Duke University Press ​Durham and London ​2020

© 2020 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­ic­ a on acid-­free paper ∞ Designed by Drew Sisk Typeset in Portrait, Folio, and Univers by Westchester Publishing Ser­vices Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bajorek, Jennifer, author. Title: Unfixed : photography and decolonial imagination in   West Africa / Jennifer Bajorek. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2020. | Includes   bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2019016282 (print) lccn 2019980319 (ebook) isbn 9781478003663 (hardcover) isbn 9781478003922 (paperback) isbn 9781478004585 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Photography—Political aspects—Africa,   French-speaking West—History—20th century. |   Photography—Social aspects—Africa,   French-speaking West—History—20th century. Classification: lcc tr119.f83 b356 2020 (print) |   lcc tr119.f83 (ebook) | ddc 770.0966/0917541—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016282 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980319 Cover art: ID-card photograph of an unidentified woman. Photograph: Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou. Porto-Novo, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Léonce Agbodjélou. Frontispiece: Portrait, woman in hitchhiker pose. Photograph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-Novo, Benin, ca. 1962. Modern print made by Léonce Agbodjélou with the photographer’s permission. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa. duke university press gratefully acknowledges the support of hampshire college and the creative capital/ WARHOL FOUNDATION arts writers grant program. publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of CAA.

 

218-81856_ch00_6P.indd 4

11/27/19 3:32 PM

CONTENTS

list of illustrations ​vii a note on geography, spelling, and language ​xiii preface ​ xvii acknowl­edgments ​xix introduction  At Least Two Histories of Liberation ​1 PART I

What Makes a Popu­lar Photography?  33 1 Ça bousculait! (It Was Happening!) ​41 2 Wild Circulation: Photography as Urban Media ​83 3 Decolonizing Print Culture: The Example of Bingo ​117 PART II

Republic of Images  155 4 Africanizing Po­liti­cal Photography ​163 5 The Pleasures of State-­Sponsored Photography ​203 6 African ­Futures, Lost and Found ​240 notes  ​265 bibliography ​ 307 index 319

This page intentionally left blank

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece Portrait, ­woman in hitchhiker pose, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, ca. 1962 ​ii Intro.1

Portrait of Khady Ndoye, printed on the diagonal, by unknown photographer, Dakar, Senegal, late 1950s ​2

Intro.2

Digitized contact prints from the studio of Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, late 1960s, early 1970s ​3

Intro.3

Double portrait, men in matching white suits and sunglasses, by Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s ​4

Intro.4

Advertisement for the Berthiot Bloc Métal camera, Bingo no. 10 (November  1953) ​7

Intro.5

Press pass of photographer Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin ​8

Intro.6

Double portrait of two ­women in lace, by unknown photographer, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, late 1920s/early 1930s  10

Intro.7

Portrait of a ­woman posed with an Easter basket, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s ​13

Intro.8–13

Stills from a video shot at the home of Mouhamadou (Doudou) Diop in Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 2007 ​14

Intro.14

Group portrait of the Porto-­Novo photog­raphers’ ­union, by Studio Well Come, Pascal A. Nouhoheflin, Ouando, Benin, early 1970s ​15

Intro.15

Fragment of a portrait of Aïssatou Ly and other ­family members, by unknown photographer, Dakar, Senegal, 1959 ​16

Intro.16

Advertisement for Cinéa-­Photo, a photo supply store in Dakar, in Bingo no. 84 (January 1960) ​17

Intro.17

Double portrait of ­women in matching outfits, by Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s ​23

Intro.18

Portrait of Oumou Khady Guèye, by unknown photographer, Dakar, Senegal, early 1930s ​24

viii

Intro.19

Portrait of a man before a wax-­print textile backdrop, by Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s ​30

Intro.20

Caroline Diop at a microphone, by unknown photographer, Dakar, Senegal, 1960s ​31

1.1

Portrait of a Senegalese soldier, by Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1961  32

1.2

Self-­portrait by Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1959 ​35

1.3

Page from the sample ­album of the photographer Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, late 1960s/early 1970s ​37

1.4

Double portrait of girls with a telephone, by Mama Casset, Dakar, Senegal, 1950s ​42

1.5

Portrait of a ­woman wearing “libidor” and butterfly hair ornaments, by Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s ​46

1.6

Portrait of a ­woman reclining on linoleum, by Julien Lopez, Saint-­ Louis, Senegal, 1970s ​47

1.7

Portrait of Tola Wade, by Émile Sursock, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1950s ​ 49

1.8

Portrait of a smiling ­woman, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s ​52

1.9

Portrait of a ­woman in front of a cinder-­block wall, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s ​53

1.10

Portrait of four schoolgirls in matching dresses, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s ​55

1.11

Group portrait of the Porto-­Novo photog­raphers’ ­union, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1962 ​56

1.12

Portrait of a young ­woman in the style sometimes called an angled bust portrait, from the sample ­album of Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s ​58

1.13

Portrait of a young ­woman shot on the reverse diagonal ­angle, from the sample ­album of Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s ​59

1.14

Angled bust portrait of a young man in a coat and tie, from the sample ­album of Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s ​60

1.15

Portrait of Aïssatou Ly with a friend and her paternal ­uncle, by unknown photographer, Pikine, Dakar, 1969 ​67

1.16

A portrait session in pro­gress, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s ​69

1.17

Self-­portrait by Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, late 1960s/early 1970s ​73

Illustrations

1.18

Four unidentified press photog­raphers, by unknown photographer, Dakar, Senegal, late 1960s/early 1970s ​81

2.1

Composite photo­graph incorporating an image of the Pont Faidherbe, by Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1965–1970 ​85

2.2

Page from the sample ­album of Doudou Diop, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, ca. 1965–1970 ​85

2.3

Soldiers standing at attention in a public plaza in Saint-­Louis, by unknown photographer, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, ca. 1960s ​88

2.4

The photographer Doudou Diop and an unidentified friend, by unknown photographer, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1960s ​89

2.5

Bocar Ly and ­uncles, by Photographe Sy, Studio Le Mali, Dakar, Senegal, late 1950s ​92

2.6

Portrait of four young ­women in front of a backdrop made of Muslim prayer mats, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, late 1950s ​93

2.7

Portrait of a ­woman squatting in a full skirt, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1950s ​95

2.8

“La Page de Bingo,” Bingo no. 6 (July 1953) ​97

2.9

Portrait of a ­woman with skirt displayed, by Doudou Diop, Saint-­ Louis, Senegal, late 1970s/early 1980s ​100

2.10

Portrait of a ­woman with a projector lamp and costumes, by Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, late 1950s/early 1960s ​104

2.11

Portrait of a ­woman posed with a telephone prop, by Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s ​105

2.12

Portrait of Khady Faye Ndoye with two radios, by unknown photo­g­ rapher, Dakar, Senegal, 1960s ​109

2.13

Double portrait of vaudoun priestesses with bells, by Benoît Adjovi, Benin, 1960s ​111

2.14

Portrait of four vaudoun initiates, by Benoît Adjovi, Benin, 1960s ​112

2.15

Double portrait of elders, by Benoît Adjovi, Benin, late 1960s or early 1970s ​113

3.1

Cover of Bingo no. 14 (March 1954), featuring a portrait of Mrs. Safiatou Camara of Conakry by Radio-­Photo T. Chanine, Conakry ​119

3.2

Cover of Bingo no. 20 (September 1954), featuring a portrait of Miss ­Grand Dakar 1954 by Studio-­Hollywood, Dakar, 1954 ​121

3.3

Cover of Bingo no. 11 (December 1953), featuring a portrait of Mrs. Fatou N’Doye of Rufisque by Olympia Photo Yitka Kilian, Senegal ​127

Illustrations

ix

x

3.4

An advertisement for Agfa cameras and films, Bingo no. 97 (February  1961) ​129

3.5

An advertisement for a photography studio in Dakar’s Medina neighborhood, Bingo no. 1 (February 1953) ​133

3.6

An advertisement for the studio of Mama Casset, Bingo no. 1 (February 1953) ​133

3.7

“La Page de Bingo,” Bingo no. 7 (August 1953) ​137

3.8

“La Page de Bingo,” Bingo no. 9 (October 1953) ​137

3.9

Agfa Click advertisement, Bingo no. 112 (May 1962) ​144

3.10

“Le Club Bingo,” Bingo no. 182 (March 1968) ​146

3.11

Cover of Bingo no. 52 (May 1957), featuring the Senegalese cinemato­g­ rapher and film director Robert Caristan ​148

3.12

Cover of Bingo no. 197 (June 1969), featuring a photo­graph of Malcolm X ​148

3.13

Photo essay printed alongside a Kodak advertisement, Bingo no. 112 (May  1962) ​150

3.14

Kodak Brownie advertisement, Bingo no. 10 (November 1953) ​151

3.15

“Quel est cet homme d’état africain?” (Can you name this African head of state?), Bingo no. 97 (February 1961) ​152

3.16

Snapshot of a young ­woman in her bedroom in Dakar, by unknown photographer, Dakar, Senegal, 1970s ​154

4.1

Léopold Sédar Senghor and entourage walking in the street, by unknown photographer, Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal, ca. 1963–1966 ​157

4.2

Léopold Sédar Senghor and entourage walking in the street, by unknown photographer, Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal, ca. 1963–1966 ​157

4.3

Léopold Sédar Senghor and an unidentified man at a microphone, by unknown photographer, Senegal, mid-1960s ​163

4.4

Caroline Diop, speaking in front of a crowd, by unknown photo­g­ rapher, Senegal, 1960s ​164

4.5

President Hubert Maga (Republic of Dahomey) making the inaugural call on the first Cotonou-­Paris telephone line, by unknown photo­g­ rapher, Cotonou, Benin, November 9, 1961 ​169

4.6

A suitcase filled with photo­graphs chronicling Ibrahima Faye’s po­liti­cal ­career, by Leslie Rabine, Dakar, Senegal, 2008 ​176

4.7

Léopold Sédar Senghor and entourage walking in the street, by unknown photographer, Senegal, mid-1960s ​178

Illustrations

4.8

Jacques Bugnicourt and an unidentified ­woman at a rally for the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (ups), by unknown photographer, Senegal, ca. 1973–1975 ​179

4.9

Jean Collin and Ibrahima Faye in conversation at a po­liti­cal meeting, by unknown photographer, near Mbour, Senegal, ca. 1962 ​180

4.10

An unidentified man at a microphone addressing a regional council, by unknown photographer, Senegal, late 1960s ​181

4.11

Dignitaries seated on a platform during a state visit by Mobutu, by unknown photographer, Senegal, ca. 1960s ​184

4.12

Modibo Keïta and Léopold Sédar Senghor riding in a motorcade, by unknown photographer, near Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966 ​186

4.13

Abdou Diouf and entourage, by Oumar Ly, Podor, Senegal, 1974 ​188

4.14

Portrait, said to be of Soukeyna Konaré, by unknown photographer, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1920s–1930s ​189

4.15

Visitors at an exhibition of historical photo­graphs at the crds, by Julien Lopez, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, early 1970s ​195

4.16

Portrait of Ibrahima Faye at home, by unknown photographer, Dakar, early 1970s ​199

4.17

Stamp on the verso of a photo­graph associating it with the office of the president in Senegal ​200

4.18

Stamp on the verso of a photo­graph associating it with the state information ser­vice in Senegal ​201

5.1

id-­card photo­graph of an unidentified ­woman, by Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s ​203

5.2

id-­card photo­graph of an unidentified ­woman appearing to be a clergywoman, by Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s ​205

5.3 Double id-­card photo­graph of unidentified sitters, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s or 1970s ​209 5.4 ­Triple portrait of unidentified sitters, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, 1960s or 1970s ​210 5.5

Portrait of a ­woman wearing atcho oké, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, 1970s ​217

5.6

Portrait of an unidentified w ­ oman, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s ​218

5.7

Contact prints from the studio of Benoît Adjovi, Benin, early 1970s ​220

5.8

A hand-­colorized vintage print, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s or 1970s ​222

Illustrations

xi

5.9

Double portrait, lit with projector lamps, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, late 1970s or early 1980s  223

5.10

Group portrait, lit with projector lamps, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, 1970s  224

5.11

Portrait of an unidentified w ­ oman, by Édouard Mèhomè, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s ​227

5.12

Civil identity card or passport of Oumarou, a trader from Kano residing in Dahomey, 1923 ​228

5.13 Criminological id photo­graph in the arrest rec­ords of the colonial security ser­vice in Porto-­Novo, 1934 ​231

xii

5.14

Avis d’évasion, or wanted notice, for a man who escaped from forced ­labor in Porto-­Novo in 1933 ​234

5.15

Commemorative portrait produced on the basis of an id-­card photo­ graph using montage and rephotography techniques, by Benoît Adjovi, Porto-­Novo, Benin, late 1960s or early 1970s ​237

6.1

Female troops, possibly Algerian, marching in connection with the strug­gle for liberation in Western Sahara, by unknown photographer ​ 240

6.2

Modibo Keïta in white suit, leaning out of a railroad car, by Lefèvre, near Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966 ​244

6.3

Modibo Keïta in boubou, walking along railroad tracks on a state visit, by Lefèvre, near Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966 ​246

6.4

Senegalese citizens gather to celebrate a state visit by Modibo Keïta, by unknown photographer, Senegal, ca. 1966 ​249

6.5

Modibo Keïta and Léopold Sédar Senghor crossing the tracks of the Dakar-­Niger railway, by Lefèvre, near Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966 ​250

6.6

Military exercises related to the strug­gle for liberation of Western Sahara, by unknown photographer, in or near Western Sahara, ca. 1975–1976 ​254

6.7

Damaged tanks photographed as evidence of armed conflict, by unknown photographer, in or near Western Sahara, ca. 1975–1976 ​255

6.8

Unidentified foreign dignitaries from Upper Volta (present-­day Burkina Faso) visiting the Republic of Benin, by unknown photographer, in or near Cotonou, 1970s ​258

6.9

Stamp on the verso of a po­liti­cal photo­graph associating it with the government of la Région du Fleuve in Senegal ​263

6.10

Work ­table during interviews in the courtyard of Benoît Adjovi’s home in Cotonou, Benin ​264

Illustrations

I write “west Africa” deliberately without a capital “W” in order to refer to places and ­people in the westernmost and, in the case of my research, largely coastal part of the continent south of the Sahara. In so d ­ oing, my intention is to mark a distinction between this region and the French colonial administrative entity, l’Afrique Occidentale Française, or the aof, a federation of eight French-­controlled territories, including Senegal and Benin (then Dahomey), that existed from 1895 to 1960. When referring explic­itly to the colonial administrative entity (which is sometimes translated into En­glish as “French West Africa”) or to its territories as a group during the colonial period, I use the term “the aof” (or, occasionally, in the post-­independence period, “ex-­aof,” when referring specifically to the afterlife of the colonial administrative entity). In all other cases, I use “west Africa.” Why Senegal and Benin?

Senegal and Benin are geo­graph­i­cally as well as culturally distinct. The two countries do not share any major language or ethnic groups. In the colonial period, their capital cities and largest urban centers, Saint-­Louis and Porto-­ Novo, respectively, w ­ ere effectively the northernmost and southernmost outposts of the French colonial territories of the aof. Their con­temporary capitals, Dakar and Cotonou (technically, Porto-­Novo is Benin’s capital, but Cotonou is the de facto seat of government), are two thousand miles apart. My research has focused on photog­raphers and collections in t­ hese two countries for reasons that w ­ ere, at first, largely connected with my contact networks. I started my research in Senegal, where I had been introduced by friends to

A NOTE ON GEOGRAPHY, SPELLING, AND LANGUAGE

“West” versus “west”

impor­tant ­photography collections and contacts. While in Senegal, I was told by a museum director in Saint-­Louis (Fatima Fall, director of the Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal) that I should go to Benin, where she introduced me to still further collections and contacts. In the course of my research, I learned that t­ here are deeper links between ­these countries as privileged sites for research on photography. Evidence suggests that both countries saw early and intensive photographic activity, and Jean-­Bernard Ouédraogo notes that, during the colonial period, civil servants from Senegal and ­Dahomey ­were responsible for bringing photography to other parts of the aof, and that photography was introduced in Upper Volta (present-­day Burkina Faso) by Senegalese and Dahomean functionaries.1 Other f­actors mark both Senegal and Benin as privileged sites for con­temporary research, and I underscore ­these at relevant junctures in the book. French and African Spellings

I use French rather than En­glish orthography for a handful of proper names: for example, “French Soudan” (present-­day Mali) and the names of po­liti­cal parties (“Bloc Démocratique Sénégalais”). I have done so in order to preserve ­these names in a form that is consistent with the existing scholarship in both French and En­glish and more likely to be recognizable to my Francophone African interlocutors. In Benin, it is not uncommon for individuals with Yor­ uba names to write them using Yoruba (rather than French) orthography, and when someone told me that an individual or a branch of a ­family preferred a Yoruba spelling, I have used it. Note that t­ here is often variation within a single branch of a ­family in the spelling of a photographer’s surname (for example, Kassé rather than Casset). When I came across such variations, I preserved them and made them explicit for the reader. Language

All of the interviews I did in west Africa that I cite or reference in this book ­were conducted in French, as I unfortunately do not speak any African languages. However, the reader should keep in mind that urban west Africa is a radically polyglot space, where almost any conversation, if it goes on long enough, is destined to take place in multiple languages. During interviews, which ­were semi­structured yet often took place u ­ nder highly unpredictable conditions, it was not uncommon for ­people other than my intended “interviewee” to be pre­sent, or to come and go over the course of the interview, participating spontaneously or by invitation and interjecting their views in our conversations. This multiplicity of competing voices and views was not

xiv

Note on Geography, Spelling

infrequently expressed in one or more African languages (in Senegal, usually Wolof or Pulaar; in Benin, usually Gun or Fon), or in a hybrid of French and one of ­these other languages, before being translated for my benefit. Note also that in both Senegal and Benin many older ­people, particularly ­women, understand French but cannot speak it. In my conversation with Ndèye Teinde Dieng in Saint-­Louis, for example, I spoke French and she spoke Wolof, with her son translating the latter into French for me.

Note on Geography, Spelling

xv

This page intentionally left blank

PREFACE

The seed of this book was planted in 1999, when I saw some portraits by the photographer Seydou Keïta in an art gallery in Paris. I was struck both by the images and by the discourse that surrounded them. One critic had ventured, of Keïta’s photo­graphs, which w ­ ere taken in Bamako (formerly the capital of French Soudan and t­ oday the capital of Mali) in the 1940s and 1950s, that ­these ­were repre­sen­ta­tions of ­people who wanted to be f­ ree or who ­were “on the way to being ­free.”1 What did it mean, I wondered, to look like you ­were ­free, or wanted to be, in a photo­graph? What is the relationship between freedom and photography? Is ­there only one relationship between them? If it mattered, as Keïta’s interpreters clearly thought it mattered, that ­these photo­graphs of freedom ­were connected in some way with the end of colonialism and the coming of African liberation, would not ­these questions have to be qualified or reframed? Another two years passed before I finished and filed my doctoral dissertation, which I was writing at the time (on another topic, in a field only obliquely related to photography). Five years ­after that, I landed my first tenure-­track job, or the equivalent in the United Kingdom, and it became pos­si­ble for me to embark on substantive new research. In the meantime, this t­ hing called “African photography” had exploded, a new field had been in­ven­ted, and the research landscape was changing at a rapid clip—­just how rapid I could not ­really grasp u ­ ntil I landed in Dakar, for the first time, in December 2007. Over the next de­cade, this landscape would continue to change, but for me t­ hese questions about photography and freedom, and, in what I was pretty sure had to be a dif­fer­ent register, about photography and decolonization, remained the same.

This page intentionally left blank

ACKNOWL­EDGMENTS

For granting me permission to reproduce their photo­graphs or for facilitating access to photography collections in west Africa, I owe special thanks to Ismaïla Camara, Ndèye Teinde Dieng, Guibril André Diop, Okwui Enwezor, Fatima Fall, Karim Abdou Fall, Gnilane Ly Faye, Ibrahima Faye, Marius Gouané, Koyo Kouoh, Julien Lopez, Aïssatou Ly, Aliou Ly, Bocar Ly, Oumar Ly, Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Tim Mangin, Khady Faye Ndoye, Abdourahmane Niang, Abdou Khadre Sarr, Bouna Medoune Seye, and El Hadj Adama Sylla in Senegal or with regard to Senegalese collections; to Benoît Adjovi, Léonce Agbodjélou, Jérome Chazody, Zinsou Félix DeMesse, Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Colette Gounou, Alphonse Labitan, Sonia Mahamé, Mathias Massodé, Baudelaire Mèhomè, Ézéchiel Mèhomè, Ida Mèhomey, Angelo Micheli, Franck Ogou, Alphonse Olibé, and Siaka Lawani in Benin; and to Michel de Breteuil in France. I am equally grateful to Hélène Neveu Kringelbach, Ibrahima Thiam, Baba Diop, and Younus Seye for sharing vital historical information and helping to identify individuals in several images; to Djibril Sy and Giulia Paoletti for their reproductions of photo­graphs from the collection of Doudou Diop; to Léonce Agbodjélou for the prints he made for me from the negative archives of Cosme Dossa; and to Leslie Rabine for her reproductions of photo­graphs from the Faye-­Ly ­family collection. Fatima Fall, Erin Haney, Franck Ogou, and Leslie Rabine w ­ ere wise teachers and unflagging traveling companions from an early date. They taught me not only how to think with west African archives but also how to agitate in them, and I could never have written this book without them. For much-­needed friendship during my first trip to Senegal in 2007, heartfelt thanks go to Sophie Coly and Abdou Mbodj. To ­those we lost along the way—­Alioune Bâ, Cosme Dossa, Okwui Enwezor, Ibrahima Faye, Henrike Grohs, Oumar Ly, Abdou

Mbodj, Khady Faye Ndoye, Bouna Medoune Seye, and Bisi Silva—­I am sorry that you did not live to see this book come to fruition, but I feel very lucky that your voices ­will always resonate through its pages. Over the many years that it took to write this book, I had the good fortune of crossing paths with African studies scholars or Africanists working in an array of disciplines all over the world. To a fault, they gave generously of their time and w ­ ere paragons of collegiality. In Berkeley, conversations with Rozy Fredericks, Donald Moore, Toby Warner, and Michael Watts helped to shape this proj­ect while it was in its infancy, and I am deeply grateful to them. Toby Warner deserves a special shout-­out for suggesting that I look at Bingo. ­Others who engaged with this proj­ect, shared their own research, or challenged me in vital ways over the longer durée ­were Liam Buckley, Julie Crooks, Elizabeth Harney, Salah Hassan, Patricia Hayes, Patricia Hickling, Everlyn Nicodemus, Érika Nimis, Marian Nur Goni, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Elvira Dyangani Osé, John Peffer, and Andrea Stultiens, and I cannot thank them enough. In London, where I was living when I carried out the bulk of my research in west Africa, I was lucky enough to stumble into a community of scholars and friends who ­were working on African questions, or on photography, and who brought me into formative conversations or created meaningful opportunities for me to pre­sent from my research at early stages: Annie Coombes, Elizabeth Edwards, Johnny Golding, Ros Gray, Christopher Morton, Darren Newbury, John Parker, Christopher Pinney, Polly Savage, AbdouMaliq Simone, Lynn Turner, Richard Vokes, Elizabeth Williams, and David Zeitlyn. I am particularly grateful to John Parker for inviting me to pre­ sent from this research for the very first time, in the African History Seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in January 2008. Back in the United States, a period of protracted institutional nomadism was made bearable by many wonderful colleagues and hosts. At Cornell, I owe thanks to Salah Hassan and Jolene Rickard, and to Tim Murray for hosting me in the Society for the Humanities; at Rutgers, I owe thanks to Ousseina Alidou, Sarah Brett-­Smith, Carolyn Brown, and Barbara Cooper, and to Meredith McGill for hosting me in the Center for Cultural Analy­sis; at New York University, I am indebted to Shelley Rice and Deborah Willis for giving me an opportunity to teach from this and other African material to undergraduates in the Department of Photography and Imaging, and for their intellectual and moral support. In New York, I am grateful to the community at the Brooklyn Writers Space, for the mojo, and to Eduardo Cadava, Jennifer Deger, Mamadou Diouf, Sean Jacobs, Tom Keenan, Brian Larkin, Kyoo Lee, Jacques Lezra, Gilles Peress, and Brendan Wattenberg for meaningful invitations or conversations

xx

Acknowl­e dgments

along the way. In Johannesburg, Leora Farber, Pamila Gupta, Terry Kurgan, Bronwyn Law-­Viljoen, and Juan Orrantia issued invitations or initiated conversations that brought me, and this research, into one of the most dynamic centers of con­temporary knowledge production in Africa, and that helped to shape the larger par­ameters of this book. My deepest thanks go to Ken Wissoker at Duke University Press for his early faith in this book and to Elizabeth Ault for her brilliant and seemingly effortless shepherding of this often unruly proj­ect through ­every phase. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for Duke, for their incisive and thoughtful comments, which helped to improve the book im­mensely. A year of precious writing time was very generously supported by a Creative Capital/Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, in 2013–2014. Additional funding for costs associated with the licensing and reproduction of the illustrations was provided by the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, by Hampshire College, and by the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of caa, and I gratefully acknowledge their support. Thanks to Mia Karnofsky and Lukas Vrbka, my research assistants at Hampshire, for their meticulous work on the bibliography, image permissions, and other practical tasks connected with the preparation of the manuscript. Fi­nally, I wish to express an inexpressible debt of gratitude to my partner, Stuart Naifeh, and to our d ­ aughter, Lily, for letting me go where and when I needed to, and who, without ever suggesting I was lost, have so often shown me the way.

Acknowl­e dgments

xxi

This page intentionally left blank

This book tells a history that has, in a sense, already been written—in photo­ graphs. With and through the images reproduced in its pages, drawn largely from the collections of west African photog­raphers or from other midcentury archives and collections in four cities in west Africa—­Dakar, Saint-­Louis, Porto-­Novo, and Cotonou—it explores the story of a dynamic period in the history of Francophone west Africa, extending roughly from the end of the Second World War to the first de­cade or so ­after in­de­pen­dence from French colonial rule: 1960 for the bulk of l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof). This moment coincided with the strug­gle for in­de­pen­dence and decolonization not only in Senegal and Benin (formerly Dahomey), the two countries on which my research has focused, but in all of France’s ex-­colonial territories. Key social and po­liti­cal institutions ­were in the midst of radical change. Some of ­these ­were so-­called Western institutions, the Africanization of which played an impor­tant (if sometimes still controversial) role in anticolonial strug­gles. This period was characterized by widening po­ liti­cal participation of Africans in electoral and parliamentary politics, the rise of new nationalisms, and a proliferation of new, distinctly African po­liti­cal parties. T ­ hese same years ­were witness to the expansion of a power­ful urban ­labor movement, in which Africans articulated demands for equality with Eu­ ro­pe­ans vis-­à-­vis wages and working conditions, the culmination of de­cades of formidable ­labor organ­izing. They w ­ ere also marked by burgeoning west African awareness of, and participation in, global liberation movements. We can argue over w ­ hether ­these movements w ­ ere successful on the terms that they set for themselves. Yet they remain a crucial legacy of anticolonial strug­gle, and they prompted ­people in west Africa to join forces with ­people in other parts of the world as they i­magined and fought for alternatives to colonial

INTRODUCTION

At Least Two Histories of Liberation

INTRO.1 ​Portrait of Khady

Ndoye, printed on the diagonal. Photo­grapher unknown. Dakar, Senegal, late 1950s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

forms of social and po­liti­cal organ­ization, free-­market capitalism, and emergent Cold War polarities. This moment coincided with the rapid development of photography in west Africa and in the rest of the world. The practice of studio portraiture, once the exclusive province of elites, was expanding in cities like Dakar, then the capital of the aof, just as it was expanding in New Delhi, Jakarta, Beirut, Buenos Aires, and Los Angeles. Already by the late 1940s, the possibility of sitting, and paying, for a photographic portrait had come within reach of an increasing number of ­people living in cities across the aof, and, by the mid1950s, the democ­ratization of photography in urban west Africa was assured.

2

Introduction

INTRO.2 ​Digitized contact prints from the studio of Benoît Adjovi. Two of the

photo­graphs (top right and top left) feature the same telephone prop. Cotonou, Benin, late 1960s/early 1970s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

INTRO.3 ​Double portrait,

men in matching white suits and sunglasses. This photo­graph belongs to a larger class of “twin” image, common in West Africa, in which twin relationships, ­whether biological or spiritual, are evoked. Photo­graph: Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

4

The first half of this book chronicles this moment and the larger pro­cesses of photography’s democ­ratization. It pre­sents the evidence that I, and o­ thers, have amassed to support claims about the medium’s popularity in Francophone west Africa in this period. The first three chapters explore the conditions and consequences of this popularity, primarily (although not exclusively) in the form of studio portraiture. In the second half of the book, I shift the frame to what I call “po­liti­cal photography.” This is the name that was given by photog­raphers and ­others I interviewed in west Africa to a certain class of documentary images, flexibly defined yet symbolically potent, which it had become pos­si­ble for them to envision, and to take, on the eve of in­de­pen­dence

Introduction

for the first time. Throughout the book, I argue that ­people living in urban west Africa used photography, w ­ hether in the guise of portraiture or of po­liti­ cal images or still other genres, both to document a time of radical social and po­liti­cal change and to effect ­these changes. Each chapter puts photo­graphs from west African archives and collections associated with the in­de­pen­dence generation into dialogue with stories shared, and knowledge produced, in interviews that I did with west African photog­raphers, their descendants, and other collectors and keepers of photo­ graphs in order to illustrate the multitude of ways that urban west Africans ­were using expanded access to the medium in this moment. I argue and try to show that photog­raphers, their subjects, and their publics used photography to express new experiences, to reshape public and po­liti­cal discourse, and to facilitate new conversations, relays, and exchanges—­with ­people living right next door to them and all over the world—­both on the eve of in­de­pen­dence and in the post-­independence years. Without a doubt, cultural ­factors played a significant role in the democ­ ratization of photography in Francophone west Africa in the ­middle de­cades of the twentieth c­ entury. The medium had become associated, at this moment, with radios, telephones (figure Intro.2, top left and top right), and James Brown; motorcycles, moviegoing, and mini­skirts; romantic love, state formation, and long-­distance travel—­hence the many studio portraits featuring cars and scooters, backdrops depicting jet planes, and the ubiquitous hitchhiker pose. Economic and technological f­actors ­were clearly also impor­tant and ­were among the topics that, I found, photog­raphers ­were most ­eager to discuss. Between the 1930s and 1950s, cameras had become less expensive, lighter weight, and more portable, making them more affordable and easier to distribute in Africa. In the interwar period and even more so a­ fter the Second World War, a small but increasingly vis­i­ble class of urban west Africans was being actively ­imagined as consumers, by themselves and by Eu­ro­pean and American manufacturers, who in the waning years of the colonial proj­ect ­were experimenting with marketing their products directly in Africa. Credit became more widely available, and photog­raphers living in both Senegal and Benin found it pos­si­ble to purchase the latest cameras on credit from the old Bordeaux-­based trading ­houses, such as, in Saint-­Louis, Maurel et Prom. This is where Oumar Ly, a photographer from Podor, a city in the north of Senegal, whom I interviewed in Dakar in 2008, told me that he bought his first Rolleiflex on credit in the late 1960s. The twin lens reflex camera, manufactured in Germany, was beloved by photog­raphers in Dakar, Saint-­Louis, Cotonou, and Porto-­Novo—as it was by photog­raphers all over the world—­

Introduction

5

for its ultra-­durable construction, ultra-­reliable optics, and a generous sweet spot in its depth of field. Still other photog­raphers took advantage of the fact that it was becoming easier to order cameras by air freight, from Paris or (better) from Casablanca, where the French camera manufacturer Pontiac relocated all of its factories in 1951 (figure Intro.4). Zinsou Cosme Dossa, a photographer I interviewed over several years in Porto-­Novo, Benin, starting in 2009, told me that he de­cided to try his hand at photography when, in 1950, he saw an advertisement for a camera in a French mail-­order cata­logue. The growing importance of air freight and mail-­order commerce, w ­ hether fulfilled from Paris or cities elsewhere in Africa, should not be underestimated for photog­raphers of the in­de­pen­dence generation, some of whom, with the advent of color, sent their films abroad for pro­cessing by mail.1 Despite the con­spic­u­ous rise of consumerization and commercial networks linking Africans as consumers to the metropole in the 1950s, however, it is impor­tant to underscore that Dossa was not the intended recipient of the cata­logue. Rather, he found it lying in a Porto-­Novo street, where, on a whim, he picked it up. In the years since our last interview in January 2013 (Dossa passed away in August of that year), I have often wondered how t­ hings might have gone had he not picked the cata­logue up. By 1957, he had established a highly successful studio practice in Porto-­Novo. Soon thereafter, he was hired as the first official photographer of the colonial administration of the territory of Dahomey. At that moment, when he was hired by the administration, Dossa became, as far as we know given the current research, the first African photographer in any aof territory to have been credentialed by the French to work as an official territorial photographer (figure Intro.5).2 ­After in­de­pen­dence, he went on to become the official photographer of Hubert Maga, the first president of the newly in­de­pen­dent Republic of Dahomey, thereby becoming the “first photo­g­ rapher” of the new postcolonial state.3 The stories of photog­raphers, like Ly in Senegal and Dossa in Benin, who seized on t­ hese and other opportunities, already limn another history of liberation, and the photo­graphs that they took reveal themselves to be much more than ­simple documents, associated only retrospectively with historical events. ­These images, when read against the backdrop of stories told by and about the photog­raphers who took them, the clients who commissioned them, and the ­people who circulated, looked at, and engaged with them, suggest a more active and creative role played by photography in the realization of t­ hese events. In turning our attention to this other history, this book sets out to show, not simply that photography had an influence on social and po­liti­cal life in Francophone west Africa in this period (like all media in the hands of Africans,

6

Introduction

INTRO.4 ​Advertisement

for the Berthiot Bloc Métal camera that ran in 1953 in Bingo, an illustrated magazine targeting a Francophone African readership. Pontiac, the French lens manufacturer (referenced at the bottom right), moved all of its production to Casablanca in 1951. Below the camera advertisement ran an advertisement for Minaret brand pencils, also made in Morocco. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Natio­ nale de France.

INTRO.5 ​Press pass of photographer Zinsou Cosme

Dossa, credentialing him as an official photo­g­ rapher of the territory of Dahomey. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

it clearly did), but that it enabled photog­raphers, their subjects, and their publics to respond to the social and po­liti­cal changes that they ­were experiencing in novel ways. Ultimately, I argue that urban west Africans’ embrace of photography was a key ­factor in expanding the existing spaces of po­liti­cal imagination, and I set out to show that, in the ­middle de­cades of the twentieth ­century, west Africans took full advantage of this expanded imaginative field. They used photography to open new routes and relays of communication; they creatively exploited its infinite capacities for recirculation and resignification; and they used its remarkable plasticity, lack of fixity, and aesthetic and referential open-­endedness to reimagine, and remake, their world. From Early Days to Kodak Swag

The early history of photography in Africa has been treated elsewhere and ­will not be the subject of this book, yet it should be stressed for ­those who may not be familiar with this history that photography’s “arrival” in Africa was in no way belated. The first daguerreotypes made on the African continent ­were made in Alexandria in November 1839, by the French Romantic painter Horace Vernet and his nephew Frédéric Goupil-­Fesquet, during their famous voyage en Orient.4 The Frenchmen arrived in Egypt scarcely two months a­ fter Arago’s announcement of Daguerre’s invention in Paris. On the second day of Vernet’s and Goupil-­Fesquet’s visit, the Ottoman Khedive Mehmet of Alexandria borrowed the Frenchmen’s daguerreotype machine and made his own daguerreotypes. This episode is cited frequently in the historical lit­er­a­ture, and scholars have interpreted the Khedive’s use of the Frenchmen’s daguerreotype machine in vari­ous ways, including as the first appropriation of a camera from a Eu­ro­pean by a person living in Africa.5 ­Whether or not we accept this interpretation—­ the Khedive was, by almost any definition, not African (his presence in Alexandria was connected with an imperial proj­ect with which the French ­were entering into competition)—­this episode places the first story that we have about photography in Africa u ­ nder the star of an irrepressible desire for self-­imaging and underscores, si­mul­ta­neously, the essential appropriability of the photographic apparatus. The episode thus stands as a corrective to the now firmly entrenched and often erroneous assumption that photography in Africa was always an instrument of colonial vio­lence, and that the history of photography on the African continent is therefore the history of a monolithic colonial gaze.6 Erin Haney reports that the first daguerreotypes made by an African-­born photographer of which we have a rec­ord ­were made in 1840 by an Afro-­Dutch merchant in Gold Coast (present-­day Ghana).7 The first commercial portraits

Introduction

9

(also daguerreotypes) to have been produced in Africa ­were also produced in Gold Coast, at Elmina, in 1841, as Haney has also shown.8 ­These dates are significant, for they testify to the existence of local markets for portraiture in cities in coastal west Africa, where local photog­raphers engaged in commercial practice serving local clients and patrons from the medium’s early days.9 Without delay, Africans incorporated photography into existing image-­making practices and social and religious rituals, transforming them aesthetically—­and in other ways. My own research is concerned principally with photography’s incorporation into the sphere of po­liti­cal imagination in the ­middle of the twentieth ­century, on the premise that this, too, is a critical part of the medium’s “local” histories. ­These histories, I argue, offer us broader insights into dimensions of photographic and decolonial imagination that have often been overlooked or occluded by dominant histories of the medium, which have been framed, almost invariably ­until recently, from a Euro-­American vantage point. By the time that Pontiac moved its factories to Morocco, in 1951, the consumer market for film, lenses, enlargers, papers, developers, and other photographic supplies was rapidly expanding in French colonial territories in Africa. Attesting to the success in this period of consumer marketing targeting ­Africans, all of the photog­raphers in Senegal and Benin whom I interviewed or whose families I interviewed for this book exhibited staunch brand loyalty and a keen awareness of the minutiae of par­tic­u­lar product lines. In 2007, in a conversation that I had with Guibril André Diop, the son of Saint-­Louis photographer Mouhamadou (Doudou) Diop, I learned that France Photo, his ­father’s supplier in Neuilly-­sur-­Seine (a suburb of Paris), specialized in Kodak films and papers.10 André proudly described his f­ ather to me as “le numéro un de Kodak” (Kodak’s number one customer) in the region. The ­family has the invoices, order forms, and customs declarations to prove it, and, in the living room of their Saint-­Louis home, Diop’s ­family still displays a shiny pagivolt, a kind of revolving electric picture frame. The frame, André explained, was given to his ­father by France Photo in recognition of his loyalty to Kodak. Never mind that it ceased to work many years ago. The frame is a testament to his f­ ather’s strong ties to his metropolitan supplier, and the crowning glory of Kodak swag.11 In not one but two interviews that I did—­one in Senegal, the other nearly two thousand miles away in Benin—­photog­raphers or their descendants described to me in detail the impact of the 1964 merger of Agfa ag (then owned by Bayer) with Gevaert on the availability of west Africans’ favorite films and papers. Despite Diop’s much-­vaunted loyalty to Kodak, his son André was quick to spell out the impact of this merger on the availability of par­tic­u­lar

Introduction

INTRO.6 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​

Double portrait of two ­women in lace. Photographer unknown. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, late 1920s/early 1930s. Vintage print on postcard stock. Courtesy of the CRDS, Saint-­Louis, Senegal.

11

INTRO.7 (NEXT PAGE) ​Portrait

of a ­woman posed with an Easter basket. Photo­ graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s. Modern print made by Léonce Agbodjélou with the pho­ tographer’s permission. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

12

Agfa papers in Saint-­Louis. In addition to the pagivolt, the Diop f­amily also looks ­after an immaculately preserved Agfa clock. In 2009, when I interviewed Dossa in Porto-­Novo for the first time, our conversations unfolded beneath the benevolent stare of the same Agfa clock. It was mounted above the photographer’s desk, ­stopped at exactly 7:30.12 Despite all this branded merchandise and all t­ hese Agfa clocks, it is critical to note that, at the moment when photog­raphers working in commercial studios in urban west Africa w ­ ere developing loyalty to Eu­ro­pean and American brands and product lines, cameras and photographic supplies continued to travel between African capitals via African trade routes—as they had been traveling since the nineteenth ­century.13 More than once while in Benin I heard stories about cameras that had come into local photog­raphers’ hands precisely not from France, but via overland routes from Ghana or Nigeria. Somewhat surprisingly, even in Dakar (where one feels much farther away from Ghana than in Porto-­Novo or Cotonou), I found that cameras ­were just as likely to have come from Ghana. Even t­ oday, Ghana remains strongly associated with technical and aesthetic innovation and, specifically, with local camera production in west Africa.14 The Burkinabé scholar Jean-­Bernard Ouédraogo describes the crucial role played, in photography’s early days in the region, by photog­raphers from what is t­ oday Ghana, who plied their trade along ancient migratory routes, passing from cities in Ghana through Bobo-­Dioulasso, in present-­day Burkina Faso, to cities in Mali and beyond.15 Siaka Lawani, a Cotonou-­based photographer who began working professionally (­doing both studio work and reportage) in the 1960s, and with whom I spoke in Cotonou in 2009, corroborated the significance of the Ghanaian influence, when he told me that, in t­ hose days, “every­thing came from Ghana”: the best and the latest cameras, the best and the latest enlargers, the best and the latest ideas. Ouédraogo’s and Lawani’s observations highlight the ongoing importance of overland, African trade routes that linked photog­raphers and studios in dif­ fer­ent west African cities through regional and cross-­regional networks. As such, they pre­sent us with a denser and more palimpsestic image of photography’s late colonial and early postcolonial histories in the region, and they provide us with a critical counterweight to accounts privileging ­either metropolitan trade routes or colonial vio­lence.16 To be sure, for many African photog­raphers and for their clients in Senegal or Benin, the act of taking or commissioning a portrait in a photography studio could be a way of staking a claim to forms of belonging and affiliation that passed through Paris—or, for that ­matter, through Casablanca, Cape Town, or Chicago. Yet ­these routes through the metropole, and, increasingly, along pan-­African, transcolonial,

Introduction

INTRO.8 TO INTRO.13 ​ Stills from a video that I shot with my cell phone at the home of the photographer Mouhama­ dou (Doudou) Diop in Saint-­Louis, Senegal, in 2007. The photographer’s wife and son still look ­after an immaculately preserved Agfa clock, which they brought out of storage to show me.

14

and diasporic cir­cuits, ­were invariably superimposed over other cir­cuits, where they crisscrossed precolonial African trade routes and became embedded in distinctly African commercial relationships. In many instances, this tangled tracery of cir­cuits was only magnified by the coming of in­de­pen­dence, as photography, along with other media technologies, gave rise to new forms of belonging and affiliation that w ­ ere themselves reconfiguring existing media networks. Perhaps ironically, then, at the very moment that Eu­ro­pean businessmen and corporations ­were stepping up their efforts to market cameras and photographic supplies to west Africans, and striving to reinvent colonial territories as consumer markets, ­these same pro­cesses ­were contributing to the acceleration of decolonization by multiplying west Africans’ opportunities for connection within and beyond colonial structures of identification and infrastructures of communication. My arguments proceed through formal analy­sis of images informed both by prior historical studies of photography in Africa and by con­temporary theories of photography. But by far the most significant research that went into this book was field research carried out in the form of interviews, between 2007 and 2014, in Saint-­Louis and Dakar in Senegal and in Porto-­Novo and Cotonou in Benin. ­These included interviews with photog­raphers of the in­ de­pen­dence generation or with their descendants, and with other members of the in­de­pen­dence generation who collected and commissioned photo­graphs, sometimes from ­these same photog­raphers. They also included conversations

Introduction

INTRO.14 ​Group portrait of the Porto-­Novo photog­raphers’ ­union. Zinsou Cosme

Dossa (right) told me that the ­union had a group portrait taken ­every year. Photo­ graph: Studio Well Come, Pascal A. Nouhoheflin, Ouando, Benin, early 1970s. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

INTRO.15 ​Fragment of a

portrait of Aïssatou Ly (right) holding her son, Abdoulaye, along with other ­family members. The vis­i­ble deterioration is typical of prints from this era in the region. Photographer unknown. Dakar, Senegal, 1959. Courtesy of Aïssatou Ly. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

INTRO.16 (NEXT PAGE) ​

Advertisement for Cinéa-­Photo, a photo supply store in Dakar, that ran in Bingo no. 84 (January 1960). The ad underscores the suitabil­ ity of Mimosa photo pa­ pers and Perutz films to humid climates. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

16

with a younger generation of artists, photog­raphers, and cultural heritage professionals, who are, ­today, the custodians of significant photography archives and collections all over west Africa. Methodologically, my research has been informed by approaches drawn from art history, anthropology, po­liti­cal philosophy, postcolonial studies, and African studies; true to my training in comparative lit­er­a­ture, I also cite, and put par­tic­u­lar photo­graphs into conversation with, texts of postcolonial lit­er­a­ture and film. In insisting on this interdisciplinarity, the point is not simply to highlight the limitations of a given discipline, nor is it simply to call attention to the Eurocentrism of con­temporary theories of photography—­a Eurocentrism so

Introduction

rampant as to be both incontestable and in constant need of contesting. Nor is it even simply to call attention to the colonial origins of academic disciplines, which continue to limit the knowledge we produce. It is, rather, to call attention to a need for redrawing the par­ameters of an entire theoretical field. I believe that this need is urgent, and that we have a unique opportunity to redraw ­these par­ameters when we start from African examples. I address more explic­itly the many challenges involved in integrating multiple methods and disciplinary approaches in my research in two short methodological reflections, placed at the ends of chapters 1 and 4. ­These sections thematize key issues in con­temporary research on mid-­twentieth-­century photography in west Africa, while also fleshing out the specific conditions ­under which I researched and wrote this book—as someone who was new both to the region and to several of the above-­named disciplines and at a moment when the very bound­aries of “the field” ­were, quite literally, up for grabs, as curators and collectors from Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca ­were arriving in the region in increasing numbers and as museums and galleries all over the world w ­ ere basically launching a second “scramble for Africa” with regard to their photography collections. The influence exerted, in par­tic­u­lar, by collectors and by the art market on my object of study ensured that this object could not always be clearly delineated, and that methodological and geopo­liti­cal questions often became entangled. Readers less interested in methodological questions or in the powers exerted by the market should be able to skip t­ hese sections without losing the plot, and they ­will, in any case, have a chance to return to ­these questions in abridged form in the closing pages of this book. West African Avant-­Gardes?

Theories of photography centered on its Eu­ro­pean and North American histories have long sought to explain the singularity of the photographic image in connection with the prob­lem of repre­sen­ta­tion. From the moment of the medium’s inception in the ­middle of the nineteenth ­century, ­there emerged, in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, an abiding concern with photography as a technology for the repre­sen­ta­tion of three-­dimensional space in two dimensions. The camera was uniquely suited, or so at least it seemed, to burgeoning cultural preoccupations with ideas about ­human pro­gress and a concern with scientific rationality. It was prized for its supposed capacity, not simply to represent, but to perfect repre­sen­ta­tion. Hence the ties that bind photography—in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca—to ideas about technical or mechanical reproducibility, realism, and metrical precision and the more general fixation, in theories of photography, on “fixing” an image of the world.

18

Introduction

Following the Euro-­American obsession with the camera as a machine for the perfection of two-­dimensional repre­sen­ta­tion, Euro-­American scholarship has tended to conceive of photography as a rationalization of vision by technological means. In the sphere of art, this tendency was consistent, in the nineteenth ­century, with ideologies of the aesthetic that evolved as part of the institutionalization of painting in the Eu­ro­pean Acad­emy.17 In philosophy and po­liti­cal economy, it mirrored ideologies of Enlightenment humanism and therefore, ultimately, of industrial capitalism, privileging notions of mechanical or technological production, reproduction, and innovation linked to ideas of ­human pro­gress—­the same ideologies undergirding, few ­will deny, all of post-­Enlightenment thought.18 To be sure, t­here have always been exceptions to ­these technophilic and normative frameworks that have resulted in renegade histories of the medium. Movements as divergent as pictorialism and constructivism used anti-­Enlightenment strategies to reclaim the camera for their own ends, as have histories of the medium valorizing amateur, vernacular, and snapshot photography. But ­these movements have been and remain outliers, in that they have failed to shake the stranglehold of repre­ sen­ta­tional paradigms and Enlightenment preoccupations with technological evolution on con­temporary theories of the medium. Even for avant-­garde Eu­ ro­pean thinkers of the 1920s, for whom the (twinned) rise of fascism and of capitalism encouraged a more radical break with existing paradigms, the idea that photography was or should be on the side of pro­gress was a through-­line of writings that ­were, in other re­spects, remarkably heterodox.19 Conceptions of photography based on ideas about repre­sen­ta­tion, mechanical reproduction, and ­human or technological pro­gress can seem particularly aberrant when applied to west Africa, where Enlightenment ideologies played a nefarious role in Eu­ro­pean colonial proj­ects—­and where, prior to photography, creative and artistic practices ­were largely unconcerned with figurative repre­ sen­ta­tion or even with the production of two-­dimensional likenesses. Scholars working in both art history and anthropology have observed that ­there is no history of easel painting predating the introduction of photography in the region; still ­others have argued that ­there is no prephotographic history of portraiture in any medium in west Africa, with the portrait defined, at least provisionally (and, some have pointed out, problematically), as the likeness of an individual—­rather than, say, an abstract repre­sen­ta­tion or the depiction of a deity.20 In a parallel move, scholars have noted that in some African languages t­here is no word for “photo­graph” that is not also the word for “picture,” and that, in some regions of the continent, including t­ hose where photography is omnipresent, a single word is used, without distinction, to

Introduction

19

refer to photo­graphs and to other two-­dimensional repre­sen­ta­tions.21 Such observations illustrate the profound limitations of conceptions of photography that see it as descending, chronologically or teleologically, from other technologies of two-dimensional image-­making or of repre­sen­ta­tion, conceptions that are si­mul­ta­neously Eurocentric and incapable of accounting for much broader histories of the medium.

Not surprisingly, given the limitations of ­these frameworks, the earliest wave of scholarly research on photography in west Africa kept a tight focus on specifically local uses of the medium, attending, for example, to photography’s influence on aesthetic, material, and experiential dimensions of social and cultural practices that predate the camera’s invention. A particularly rich subset of this early work examined photography’s impact on religious and spiritual life, in both indigenous religion and Islam. Allen and Polly Roberts, to name only two of the most luminous examples, have produced a compelling and wide-­ranging body of research on the power­ ful synergies that w ­ ere forged between photography and Mouridism in Senegal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.22 Starting in the 1990s and culminating in the watershed 2003 exhibition A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts in Urban Senegal, the Robertses developed an evocative series of arguments about the resignification of photo­graphs in Sufi devotional practice in Senegal’s dynamic (and increasingly diasporic) Mouride communities.23 Par­tic­u­lar images researched by the Robertses include a well-­known and, in Senegal, ubiquitous “trophy” photo­graph of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a celebrated Sufi saint and figure of anticolonial re­sis­tance, which was taken by the French colonial administration while Bamba was u ­ nder quasi-­permanent ­house arrest. Other images include a colonial picture postcard that was originally produced for a Western audience yet reworked, for nearly a ­century, by Mourides living both in Senegal and in the diaspora, into a devotional object incorporating an optical technology known as the lenticular (or “winkie”) and using techniques that, t­ oday, we would call photo manipulation.24 Among the many impor­tant contributions made by the Robertses’ research has been its forceful demonstration of the impact of acts of photographic resignification on religious and spiritual life in west Africa. Interestingly, the par­tic­u­lar images they selected to illustrate this resignification (trophy photo­graphs and colonial picture postcards) often functioned as instruments of colonial vio­lence in the contexts of their production. Yet, ­today, ­these images circulate in local and global contexts

20

Introduction

in which they have, at least in part thanks to their resignification, l­ittle or no association with colonialism. Other early scholarship on photography in west Africa plumbed the medium’s local histories by tracing its influence, beyond par­tic­u­lar images, on the aesthetic qualities of par­tic­u­lar ritual objects and, in some cases, on the technical pro­cesses by which they are made. Emblematic of this approach is Rowland Abiodun’s stunning research on ako funeral effigies in Owo (a Yoruba-­ dominant region in southwest Nigeria), which, he argues, borrow poses from nineteenth-­century photographic portraiture—­and not, as had been assumed, the other way around.25 Abiodun’s work on ako funeral effigies and, more specifically, their relationship to photography gives us new insights into the importance of photographic portraiture in Yoruba cultures. Beyond the specific insights that it gives us in the Yoruba context, however, Abiodun’s work on ako is of value to scholars of photography more generally for its unworking of overly facile understandings of the relationship between “tradition” and “modernity.” In fact, in Abiodun’s work, photography itself undoes the binary of “tradition” and “modernity,” to the extent that it has been integrated into the aesthetics, rituals, and material culture of “traditional” life in Owo.26 The influence of photography on the life of ritual objects in west Africa was similarly taken up by Stephen Sprague, in his 1978 study of the role played by photography in Yoruba twin ceremonies.27 In this study, now well known due to its twenty-­first-­century republication, Sprague observes that photo­graphs are often substituted for the three-­dimensional effigies, usually wooden sculptures, of a deceased twin or twins (known in Yoruba as èrè ibeji), used in twin ceremonies. In ­these ceremonies, which are widespread in both Nigeria and Benin, the effigy—or, in some cases, the photo­graph—is a proxy for the dead twin or twins, who are expected to participate in the twin ceremonies alongside any living sibling or siblings.28 Interestingly, when photo­graphs are substituted for the wooden sculptures, they are not necessarily, as we might at first imagine, images of the deceased twin. Rather, they are photo­graphs of the living sibling, dressed and posed so as to appear, in the photo­graph, as if she ­were her (deceased) sibling(s). In some cases, the living twin is even photographed and printed in multiple exposures (double or ­triple), presented, as Sprague points out, as both herself and the other(s).29 Aesthetically speaking, the substitution of a photo­graph for a wooden effigy ­here constitutes a significant innovation, for it opens the effigy to new axes of likeness or resemblance and produces the double or twin through new forms of plastic and temporal manipulation. For theories of photography, the innovation is equally significant, for it brings the concept of the photo­graph

Introduction

21

ever closer to that of the twin—­rather than, say, to that of the image. Indeed, so foreign is an interpretation of the photo­graph as “a fixed image,” or as an imprint or trace connected with a singular presence (some ­thing “that was ­there”), to west African photographic practices and histories of photography that Angelo Micheli, who has also written extensively about twins and photographic portraiture in west Africa, proposes that we conceive of the photo­ graph not as the “material trace” of an individual or other presence, but as its “plastic counterpart.”30 ­These and other photographic theories of the twin, which emphasize the photo­graph’s plasticity over its fixity, offer us a radically dif­fer­ent point of departure for understanding the status of the photographic image, and they point us ­toward new theoretical frameworks that do not privilege two-­dimensional repre­sen­ta­tion or theories of the image per se. The artist and scholar Olu Oguibe, too, grants exceptional theoretical weight to the concept of plasticity in west Africa when he observes that the photo­graph is understood to remain “manipulable long ­after its production” in Yoruba cultures, in which photography is characterized by a radical “open-­endedness.”31 Oguibe goes on to posit this enduring manipulability and open-­endedness as core tenets of a Yoruba philosophy of photography, which he beautifully summarizes thus: “The image in the picture is not inert, only temporarily contained.”32 Jean-­François Werner advances a similar framework for articulating a philosophy of photography in Côte d’Ivoire, based on original research carried out with studio photog­raphers and on studio photography in the north of that country, a geographic and cultural area quite distant from that in the Yor­ uba examples just cited.33 Werner argues that, in Côte d’Ivoire, photo­graphs are valued not for their supposed fixity or perfection of repre­sen­ta­tion, but for the unique forms of manipulability and plasticity they afford. He goes on to add that the photographic image’s plastic qualities are part of what give the medium an outsized historical and po­liti­cal significance in Côte d’Ivoire: “The central function assigned to photography in the making of new collective and individual identities stems from [its] remarkable plasticity.”34 ­These and other arguments emphasizing the centrality of plasticity to photography in west Africa run directly ­counter to conceptions of photography that elevate fixity, permanence, and capture over transformation, revision, and flux, and that find their apotheosis in positivist interpretations of the photographic index.35 More recent scholarship on the history of photography in west Africa has continued to valorize this plasticity and openness to change. Over the last de­ cade and a half, an impressive body of new research has made even more explicit connections between this radical open-­endedness of the photographic image and other pro­cesses of social and po­liti­cal change. This research has empha-

22

Introduction

sized the transformations facilitated by photography in the sphere of fashion, concepts of beauty, gender identity, racial identity, and marriage customs; in entrepreneurship and associated commercial structures; and in new forms, and spaces, of collective belonging and affiliation. In addition to scholars such as Mamadou Diouf (Senegal), Tanya Elder (Mali), Liam Buckley (The Gambia), Erin Haney (Ghana), Érika Nimis (Yoruba contexts and multiple contexts in Francophone west Africa), Jean-­Bernard Ouédraogo (Burkina Faso), and Leslie Rabine (Senegal), whom I cite at greater length in ­later chapters, this expansion of the field has been carried out in published research, curatorial practice, and archival proj­ects by Heike Behrend (­Kenya), Julie Crooks

Introduction

INTRO.17 ​Double portrait

of ­women in matching outfits. This photo­graph can be considered part of a larger class of “twin” image, common in west Africa, in which twin relationships, ­whether biological or spiritual, are evoked. Photo­graph: Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

23

INTRO.18 ​Oumou Khady

Guèye. The portrait has been reproduced through serial rephotography (producing a new print by rephoto­graphing a print, rather than striking a new print from a negative). Photogra­pher unknown. Dakar, Senegal, early 1930s (first print); 1958 (print that was digitally rephotographed in 2007). Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

(Sierra Leone and diasporic contexts), Marian Nur Goni (Somalia, Djibouti, and diasporic contexts), Pamila Gupta (Zanzibar), Patricia Hayes (Namibia and South Africa), Patricia Hickling (Senegal), Candace Keller (Mali), George Mahashe (South Africa), Prita Meier (Zanzibar and the larger Swahili Coast), Renée Mussai (Ghana), Hudita Mustapha (Senegal), Franck Ogou (Benin), Giulia Paoletti (Senegal), John Peffer (South Africa), Kerstin Pinther (Ghana and the Maghreb), Jürg Schneider and Rosario Mazuela (Cameroon), Bisi Silva (Nigeria), Andrea Stultiens (Uganda), Richard Vokes (Uganda), and Tobias

24

Introduction

Wendl (Ghana). Collectively, this research has taught us vital new lessons—­ about photography’s power to transform existing social and cultural practices and experiences and its power to create new ones—­many of which remain to be taken up by dominant histories of photography. No account of the “state of the field” would be complete without acknowledging the many artists and prac­ti­tion­ers who, over the past two de­cades, have used historical and archival photo­graphs from myriad cities and countries in Africa in their work. T ­ hese include Sammy Baloji (Demo­cratic Republic of Congo), Maryam Jafri (multiple archives in Africa, read comparatively with ­those from Asia and elsewhere in the “Global” South), George Mahashe (South Africa), Santu Mofokeng (South Africa), Zineb Sedira (Algeria), Andrea Stultiens (Uganda), Ibrahima Thiam (Senegal), and Fatimah Tuggar (Northern Nigeria and the diaspora). T ­ hese and other artists are mobilizing historical and archival photo­graphs from African collections in order to pose questions about photographic temporalities, postcolonial historiography, and decolonial knowledge production. Although I do not cite them as regularly as I might, I have both learned from and drawn inspiration from t­ hese artists’ work, and readers interested in con­temporary art ­will have no difficulty tracing the influence on this book of this still-­unfolding dialogue. Photography and Decolonial Imagination

Twenty-­first-­century theoretical writing on photography has been marked by renewed interest in photography’s po­liti­cal significance and arguments for what is t­ oday sometimes called its po­liti­cal ontology. This is not to say that prominent twentieth-­century thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Allan Sekula, and Susan Sontag, w ­ ere not already excavating alternative po­liti­cal ontologies for the medium, if not in so many words. In the case of Benjamin and Sekula, an attempt to move theoretical reflection on photography beyond bourgeois and normative paradigms took the form of an explic­itly Marxist and materialist reflection on the medium, which emphasized its role in extending the phantasms of commodity fetishism and promoting bourgeois consciousness.36 Arguably, t­hese Marxist and materialist approaches to photography have been less Eurocentric than some, to the extent that their analy­sis targets capitalism as a global system.37 Yet t­ hese approaches have offered ­little traction in west African contexts, in which both industrial production and bourgeois consciousness have been analyzed, to this day, largely as epiphenomena of colonialism, with scant consideration given to local conditions and constructions of cap­i­tal­ist modernity. Such an approach to industrialization and related technological developments in colonial Africa is both historically and

Introduction

25

theoretically inadequate, for it runs the risk of reasserting the most simplistic version of de­pen­dency theory and of keeping us trapped in center-and-periphery models. In this book, I repeatedly pose questions about the implication of industrialization, commodity production, and bourgeois and proletarian class positions in the democ­ratization of photography in the (former) aof while si­mul­ta­neously placing this democ­ratization against the backdrop of decolonization and liberation movements, which w ­ ere motivated by collectivist and anticapitalist desires. I have rarely found satisfying answers to ­these questions, yet it felt impor­tant to at least speculate about the relationships between capitalism, late coloniality, and photography on the continent, on the premise that a more nuanced interpretation of ­these relationships must inflect, and be inflected by, ­future research. In Sontag’s case, the critique of liberal and normative histories of photo­g­ raphy was oriented by certain moral and ethical dilemmas that she perceived to be inherent in the medium, which she understood, it can now seem presciently, to have produced a seismic shift in the global image ecol­ogy.38 Interestingly, many of the questions that Sontag raised about t­ hese moral and ethical dimensions of photography in the 1970s have, ­today, been reinvigorated in new theoretical work unfolding u ­ nder the sign of the affective turn.39 Recent theories of affect have reframed the moral, ethical, and ethico-­political questions first posed by Sontag about photography—­questions, for example, about the power of a given photographic image or images to harm or to heal—­ precisely by challenging paradigms predicated on moral judgments or on discursive rights claims and by advancing, in their place, theories emphasizing the embodied nature of image perception. Somewhat perplexingly, however, ­these new affect theories appear to have overlooked the vast lit­er­a­ture on the embodied, sensory, and aesthetic dimensions of image perception that emerged from an impor­tant wave of anthropological research on photography starting in the late 1990s. Elizabeth Edwards and Christopher Pinney, to name two of the most influential scholars associated with this anthropological turn, unleashed a veritable methodological revolution in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and museum studies when they began to zero in, precisely, on the sensory and embodied dimensions of photographic experience. Both Edwards and Pinney, working in diverse colonial and postcolonial cultural and geographic contexts (not surprisingly, most of them outside Eu­rope), teach us to theorize the effects of photo­graphs as they unfurl, not in some kind of abstract situation of looking (or touching, or feeling), but in the moment that specific photo­graphs are interpolated by specific actors, situated in specific cultures, as physical or

26

Introduction

material objects.40 Hence the particularly close attention paid by anthropologists to dimensions of photographic experience that extend beyond the sphere of the visual, and their attribution of complex forms of agency to photo­graphs, henceforth reconceptualized not only as objects but as agents with “social lives” of their own. Another, equally vital contribution of ­these anthropological and museum studies approaches has been their trenchant critique of ocularcentrism and of the unabashed Eurocentrism of the “five sense” model, a critique that has resounded, methodologically, as a clarion call to attend, often (although not exclusively) through ethnographic methods, to both oral and aural or sonic dimensions of photographic interpretation and, by extension, to the medium’s articulation with multiple and overlapping modes of memory.41 Scholars writing, more recently, about photography in Black studies contexts have also turned their attention to dimensions of the photographic image that exceed the sphere of the visual, generating exceedingly rich theorizations of memory, with Tina Campt’s eloquent writing about the “haptic image” and related aural and sonic dimensions of the photographic image being a particularly instructive example.42 Without hewing to anthropological paradigms, and without wanting in any way to disregard the specificity of the multiple and distinctive diasporic contexts in which Campt and other Black studies scholars are working, my own research has been inspired by t­ hese and other approaches that have both renewed and deepened our understanding of the materiality and agency of photo­graphs, with all of the consequences that this entails. Some have recently found a third way between Marxist theories of photography and ­those grounded in affective or anthropological paradigms in the work of Ariella Azoulay, who posits for photography a single po­liti­cal ontology, oriented by what she calls photography’s “civil contract” or “civil imagination.”43 I, too, am deeply indebted to Azoulay’s work, which has done more than almost anyone ­else’s to further our con­temporary understanding of photography as a radical deterritorialization of the spaces in which rights claims and other, less explic­itly (or differently) discursive bids for recognition can take place.44 And yet, despite my own deep investments in photographic forces and experiences of deterritorialization, I have not found Azoulay’s theories of the “civil contract” or of civil imagination to be helpful in the interpretation of my material. For one ­thing, the idea that ­there could be “a” po­liti­cal ontology of photography risks narrowing our understanding of photographic deterritorialization to one derived from par­tic­u­lar geographic and geocultural histories and frames (in Azoulay’s case, Israel/Palestine). No less importantly, and related to questions of territoriality and deterritorialization, Azoulay’s concept of the “civil contract” rehabilitates a concept of citizenship that is irrevocably

Introduction

27

mired in Eu­ro­pean and colonial po­liti­cal histories, as scholars of photography working in non-­European and postcolonial contexts, most notably Patricia Hayes and Thy Phu, have recently pointed out.45 Still o­ thers, working in Francophone African contexts, have shown that the very concept of civility has been inextricably bound up with colonial, neo­co­lo­nial, and neo-­imperial ideologies in the region, and that it has been particularly closely bound up with the West’s “civilizing”—or, more recently, “humanitarian”—­mission in Africa, ensuring that its con­temporary redeployment in this context remains deeply problematic.46 This is not to say that the concept of citizenship has no place in the forms of po­liti­cal imagination that I explore in this book. P ­ eople living in west Africa actively participated in the 1789 revolution in France, and west Africans had a voice in articulating Republican concepts and ideals of citizenship from a vantage point on the continent at l­ ater moments. The city of Saint-­Louis submitted its own cahier de doléances to the meeting of the Estates General at Versailles in 1789.47 Beyond the cahier (whose signatories w ­ ere mostly white Frenchmen, although some are thought to have been mixed-­race members of the city’s large and po­liti­cally power­ful métisse community), Senegal has a long history of participation in institutions of Republican citizenship that ­were claimed by, and codified for, a small but po­liti­cally significant subset of Africans, precisely in the context of the French colonial proj­ect, which ­these same institutions and concepts w ­ ere ultimately used to contest.48 In light of this history, and this African heritage of French Republicanism that is, still t­ oday, all too often repressed, we must acknowledge that the concept of citizenship that was si­mul­ ta­neously claimed and in­ven­ted by the 1789 Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen owes a debt not just to colonial but to African history.49 It also owes a debt, specifically, to creolized (in the rich sense) identities that ­were forged in Africa. T ­ hese fuller histories of colonial and imperial citizenship and their Africanization prior to and in the moment of postcolonial liberation—­a pro­ cess that took place, I argue, with and through photography—­are central to part II of this book. In bringing this discussion of citizenship to a close, I should note that the ties that bind citizenship to the strug­gle for liberation and therefore to the post­ colonial state in the photographic rec­ord of this period of west African history are remarkably elastic and cannot be dismissed as a symptom of “methodological nationalism” (in postcolonial studies, nationalism viewed purely as a means to an end in the context of anticolonial strug­gle). On the contrary, the concept of citizenship was actively reclaimed, reworked, and re­imagined by anticolonial actors in west Africa, and, in the de­cade immediately preceding in­de­pen­dence,

28

Introduction

this concept became increasingly tied to a projection of the postcolonial state without which liberation had become unthinkable—­a phenomenon that I explore more fully in chapter 5, through an examination of post-­independence practices of id-­card photography.50 The affinities between photography and the state form an intricate skein that was woven by African photog­ raphers, their subjects, and their publics through images and practices that include, but also ultimately exceed, the category of state-­sponsored id-­card photography. ­These questions, images, and practices, I contend, merit closer inspection and more nuanced interpretation than they can be given within the framework of Azoulay’s and other con­temporary theories of visual citizenship, which risk rendering ­these questions invisible, given ­these theories’ overdetermination by Western histories of the state form and their tendency to posit the state in opposition to forms of po­liti­cal imagination associated with popu­lar liberation.51

I use the term “po­liti­cal imagination,” in the sense that I understand it to be used by po­liti­cal phi­los­o­pher Partha Chatterjee, to refer to spaces of po­liti­cal action, relation, and participation that cannot be adequately defined e­ ither by forms of po­liti­cal organ­ization associated with the modern nation-­state or by the institutions of modern cap­i­tal­ist democracy.52 The sphere denoted by the term “po­liti­cal imagination” cannot, by definition, be localized in space or time. Rather, this sphere is, as Chatterjee himself stresses, spatially and temporally discontinuous, and it is produced through acts of imagination and experiences of po­liti­cal belonging “that give on to larger than face-­to-­face solidarities.”53 No less importantly, ­these solidarities depend on the making and positing of ideas, and images, of po­liti­cal community that may not (yet) be realized, aligning them with temporal experiences of prolepsis and with the “to-­come” of messianic time. This book explores photo­graphs from mid-­ twentieth-­century archives in west Africa, not simply as historical documents, but as engines for the production of this time. As such, it asks about both ­actual and potential, past and ­future, contributions to decolonial po­liti­cal imagination of the photo­graphs it discusses. As many readers ­will recognize, I borrow the word “decolonial” from ­Walter Mignolo, who borrowed it from Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, who coined it in an essay on “the coloniality of power.” This genealogy is impor­tant, for the word “coloniality” (in Spanish, colonialidad) is patterned morphologically on the word “modernity” (modernidad)—of which, Mignolo maintains, it

Introduction

29

INTRO.19 ​Portrait of a man

before a wax-­print textile backdrop. This par­tic­u­lar textile is a variation on a well-­known pattern found across west Africa that is sometimes called “Deep Wells,” or, alternatively, “Rec­ords” or “Gramophone.” Photo­graph: Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

30

is “the invisible and constitutive side.”54 Decolonial thought is thus, according to its theoretical and conceptual elaboration, a critique of con­temporary modes not just of knowledge or of knowing but of knowledge production, insofar as they have been determined by colonial histories of power. My citation of Mignolo’s terminology is, among other ­things, an acknowl­edgment of his fundamental claim: that ­these histories have not only produced our pre­sent but radically constrain it, and that they ­will continue to do so ­until new methods and protocols of knowledge production can be devised. T ­ hose working in Latin American historical and intellectual traditions, or on decolonial aesthetics in a spirit that hews, perhaps, more closely to the letter of Mignolo’s texts, ­will find my use of the term unsatisfying to the extent that it performs a

Introduction

relatively weak “delinking” from modernity. Photography and its surrounding discourses are indeed difficult to delink from modernity. And yet, as I have already begun to sketch in this introduction, with reference to Abiodun’s scholarship on ako (in which photography breaks down the distinction between tradition and modernity), or to the approaches of anthropologists and Black studies scholars who have invited us to rethink photography’s agency in spheres extending beyond the visual, such delinking is not impossible. And in a sense this is the ultimate horizon of this book: to imagine or envision, through photography, the end of colonial modernity. For, as we w ­ ill see, the photo­graphs and photographic practices that ­were used by African photog­ raphers, their subjects, and their publics to remake colonial histories and legacies gave rise not simply to an African “image” of colonial modernity, but to a distinctly African vision of what had already begun to succeed that modernity. My intention, in placing photography and ­these photo­graphs ­under the aegis of decolonial imagination, is in a sense to try to “re-­see” that vision, which far exceeds anything that could ever be made vis­i­ble, let alone fixed, in a single photo­graph.

Introduction

INTRO.20 ​Caroline Diop at

a microphone. Diop was active in Senegalese politics starting in 1945, and in 1963 she became the first ­woman elected to the Senegalese parliament. Photogra­ pher unknown. Dakar, Senegal, 1960s. Collec­ tion of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

31

Ma première surprise a été de voir les lampes électriques: à Dakar, pas à Paris. (The first surprise was when I saw electric lights: in Dakar, not Paris.) —­léopold sédar senghor (quoted in njami, c’était senghor)

1.1 (PAGE 32) ​Portrait of

a Senegalese soldier, hand-­colorized by vaccinostyl. Pigment was applied to the surface of the print using a repurposed vaccina­ tion stylus. Photo­graph: Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1961. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Giulia Paoletti. 1.2 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Self-­

portrait of the photog­ rapher, printed on Agfa Portriga-­Rapid paper. Photo­graph: Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1959. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy.

36

Even without the stamp on the verso, it would be easy to date this photo­ graph (figure 1.2). The sitter’s eyeglass frames, the style of his shirt collar, the width of the stripes on his shirt, the cut—­all help us to place it in the right de­cade. Even if t­ hese and other details connected with the sitter’s appearance did not give the date away, the photo­ graph’s format and information gleaned from the print would be enough to limit the date range to the postwar period. Narrowing this range still further, when we do look at the verso, we see that the photo­graph was printed on Agfa Portriga-­Rapid paper. Agfa’s Portriga line of papers was developed in the interwar period and made available to Eu­ro­pean and North American consumers in 1936.1 Routine delays in the distribution of European-­manufactured goods in colonial territories in Africa, however, meant that one would have been unlikely to find the paper in t­ hose territories ­until at least a de­cade ­later. The Second World War led to a near-­total interruption of exports from Eu­rope to Africa, which only compounded existing delays, as did the protracted nature of postwar economic recovery.2 Taken together, ­these ­factors conspired to ensure that the paper would not have been widely available in l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof) ­until the mid-1950s, when this photo­graph was taken in Saint-­Louis. Agfa developed the Portriga line in response to growing demand for warmer-­toned papers, expressly suited to photographic portraiture, the market for which was then rapidly expanding all over the world.3 So happy w ­ ere photog­raphers (and, it seems, their clients) with the result that the Portriga line—­and Portriga-­Rapid in par­tic­u­lar, cherished for the fabled warmth of its chlorobromide tones—­achieved a cult status that was truly global.4 In Saint-­Louis, in 2007, I learned from the son of the photographer who took this photo­graph,

part i introduction

Mouhamadou (Doudou) Diop, that Portriga-­Rapid was his ­father’s favorite paper. On the one hand, Diop’s love of this paper is incontestable evidence of African photog­raphers’ active participation in global markets at a critical moment in the evolution of photographic portraiture. At the same time, the photo­graphs that resulted from this participation—­like this one, a self-­portrait of the photographer—­manifest subtle lines of divergence that distinguish photography’s local histories in west Africa from its Eu­ro­pean and North American histories. ­These images reveal that the medium gave rise, locally, to distinctive chronologies, aspirations, and innovations, and they suggest that west African photog­raphers and their clients likely had their own reasons for loving a given paper, brand, camera, technique, or even pose. This book explores the relationship of photography and of par­tic­u­lar photo­graphs—­and, by extension, of the photog­raphers who took them, the subjects who are vis­i­ble in them, and the publics who engaged with them— to po­liti­cal imagination in urban west Africa in the m ­ iddle of the twentieth ­century. Part I (chapters 1–3) looks specifically at the moment of the medium’s democ­ratization, as it moved beyond wealthy elites in coastal west African cities to reach a much broader cross-­section of urban populations.5 As my own

part i introduction

1.3 ​Page from the

sample ­album of the photographer Doudou Diop, showing several portraits printed on the diagonal. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, late 1960s/early 1970s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Photo­graph of ­album: Djibril Sy.

37

and ­others’ research illustrates, this pro­cess took place at dif­fer­ent rhythms in dif­fer­ent territories, cities, even neighborhoods. Part I does not, therefore, attempt to pre­sent a strictly chronological or causal account of this democ­ratization. Rather, it examines the catalysts and conditions that made photographic portraiture, and photography more generally, a truly popu­lar cultural phenomenon in urban west Africa in this period. Chapter 1 looks at photography’s democ­ratization through the lens of Diop’s studio, which opened in Sor, a neighborhood of Saint-­Louis, in the mid1950s. Sor is sometimes referred to by Saint-­Louisians, in French, as a quar­tier populaire, or working-­class neighborhood. The moniker (the translation is less than perfect) distinguishes it from other Saint-­Louis neighborhoods and particularly from ­those located on the island at the city’s center, where already in the nineteenth ­century rich traditions of photographic portraiture had been established to serve a local clientele, consisting of an elite urban class. The chapter is or­ga­nized around an exploration of the day-­to-­day rhythms of Diop’s studio, and, in it, I address such questions as pricing, numbers of prints, studio hours, and darkroom schedules. I also raise questions about distribution networks for photographic films, papers, cameras, and other equipment. By focusing on details of a par­tic­u­lar studio’s commercial operations, I do not wish to suggest that photography’s popularity in Sor at the time that Diop was working can be attributed exclusively to its commercial success, or to the marketing efforts of metropolitan actors. Rather, I want to suggest that a deeper understanding of the commercial dimensions of local studios is critical to our understanding of the emergence of west African studio cultures as mass or popu­lar cultures in the ­middle of the twentieth ­century, with all of the aesthetic and psycho-­social complexity that this popularity entails. Chapter 2 considers photography as a form of urban media, and it positions studio photography and photog­raphers against the backdrop of larger media and communications networks, at a moment when ­these networks ­were undergoing rapid transformation in urban west Africa, as they ­were in cities all over the world. The materials in this chapter demonstrate that social and po­liti­cal changes taking place in French colonial territories a­ fter the Second World War expanded photog­raphers’ and their clients’ access, and desire for access, to ­these networks. In this chapter, I also venture preliminary hypotheses about the essential informality and intermediality of photography, which I argue have ­shaped its west African histories in significant ways. Vitally, the photo­graphs that I discuss in this chapter are drawn from the archives of studio photog­raphers in all four cities where I did research: Saint-­Louis, Dakar, Porto-­Novo, and Cotonou. This comparative analy­sis illuminates photo­g­

38

part i introduction

raphy’s embeddedness in larger media and communications networks. It also sharpens our insights into the new conversations, relays, and exchanges that the medium elicited or facilitated between ­people living in dif­fer­ent, and sometimes quite distant, parts of west Africa. Chapter 3 takes up a single case study, that of the illustrated magazine Bingo, which was published starting in 1953 out of editorial offices in Dakar, and which targeted a Francophone pan-­aof readership. For the first several years of its publication, the magazine was illustrated largely by photo­graphs that had been sent in for publication by its readers. T ­ hese images, together with the captions and editorial commentaries that accompanied them, and in dialogue with the photo­graphs that ran alongside the news and feature stories that ­were also published in the magazine, give us a nuanced sense of how ­people in Francophone west Africa w ­ ere interpreting and using their own, and other ­people’s, photo­graphs in this moment. The mere fact of Bingo’s existence as an illustrated magazine published for a pan-­aof readership is already ample proof of photography’s popularity in this period and, in this sense, merely confirms my thesis in part I. At the same time, Bingo requires us to refine this thesis, insofar as it shows us that photo­graphs ­were moving through ever wider cir­cuits of circulation and onto an increasingly public and po­liti­cal stage—­one on which Bingo’s readers ­were ­eager to see themselves depicted, and did.

part i introduction

39

This page intentionally left blank

1956, l’heure de la descente (quitting time), 18:00 (6 p.m.), rue de la Jaille. In the neighborhood of Saint-­ Louis known as Sor, Doudou Diop, an accountant in the French army and a well-­known studio photographer, returned from the army base where he worked to his home ­every eve­ning and prepared to open his studio. The hour marked the end of the workday for ­those who work for wages at fixed hours. In the sandy street outside Diop’s ­house (the photographer ­later moved with his ­family to another part of Sor), one is, ­today, still keenly aware of the sense of movement and sonorous exchange of greetings as p ­ eople pass by. It is easy to imagine the scene in an ­earlier era, as friends, neighbors, and clients gathered outside the photo­g­ rapher’s studio. Some would have been t­ here to have their pictures taken; still ­others would have come to pick up the portraits that they had taken a day or two before, or to accompany a friend. In Saint-­Louis as in other large cities in l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof), les salariés (­those earning cash wages) ­were frequently employed in jobs in the colonial administration and related colonial institutions, like the photographer himself. Such employment conferred status; it connoted a high level of education and therefore of literacy in French; and it facilitated access to cash.1 Diop is deceased, but in 2007 I was fortunate enough to visit his ­family’s Saint-­Louis home, where I looked at the remains of his studio archives and conducted a series of interviews with his son, Guibril André Diop. Diop’s negatives are long gone: some have been destroyed, ­others taken to Eu­rope by curators and collectors. Few prints remain in the h ­ ouse, and the majority of ­those that remain are ­either ­family photo­graphs or ­those found in the photo­g­ rapher’s sample a­ lbum. On the second and third days of my visit, I rephotographed a se­lection of prints from this a­ lbum. André lives in Dakar, but he had

CHAPTER 1

Ça bousculait! (It Was Happening!)

driven to Saint-­Louis a few days before our meeting in order to celebrate the Tabaski holiday with his extended f­ amily.2 He is a sculptor who has garnered significant international recognition and is a vis­i­ble presence on the Dakar art scene. In Dakar, André has a studio of his own, in the historic arts complex known as the Village des Arts. Doudou Diop was born in 1920; his wife, Ndèye Teinde Dieng, in 1930; André (named for his ­father’s ­father), in 1953. André does not know the exact date on which his f­ather opened his studio, but he does know that his f­ ather was, at the time that he was born, already a skilled photo­g­­rapher—because it was his ­father who took his baby pictures. My contact with the Diop ­family was brokered by Bouna Medoune Seye, a Senegalese photographer, artist, and filmmaker who, in 2007, was living in Paris but happened to be in Dakar at the same time that I was that year. (Bouna passed away, as I was finishing this manuscript, in December 2017.) Bouna had known Diop well during his lifetime. In addition, Bouna had acted as a de facto custodian of Senegalese photography history: brokering connections between local photog­raphers and collections and French curators and collectors; organ­izing an impor­tant photography festival (le Mois de la Photo de Dakar [Dakar Photo­g­­ raphy Month], which preceded the Rencontres de Bamako, the well-­known African photography biennial, by several years); and managing the archives of several Saint-­Louis-­based photog­raphers. ­Because it had been arranged by Bouna, my meeting with André quickly moved from circumspect to warm, and already by the after­noon of the first day we ­were laughing freely as we looked at and talked about photo­graphs together. Our conversations ­were punctuated by periodic visits from André’s ­mother and the photographer’s wife, Ndèye Teinde Dieng. At first a ­silent presence who sat in an armchair and listened as we spoke, she herself did not venture to speak ­until what I had thought would be the final after­noon of my visit. When she did speak, it was with a revelation that surprised every­one that day, and that caused me to rethink my itinerary.3 His eyes filled with boyish glee, André described the scene in the street outside his ­father’s studio. He told me that his ­father opened his studio at 6 p.m. and that the crowd would begin to form shortly thereafter.4 From the age of five or six, his job had been to hand out numbers to the clients waiting in the line that formed on the busiest days. André is a grown man now, twenty years my se­nior, tall, grizzled, and soft-­spoken. But, as he animatedly described this scene, it was easy to picture him as a boy, swelling with pride and the sense of responsibility as he worked his way down the line: “Toute la ville est venue” (Every­one was ­there), he said to me, and “Ça bousculait!” (It was bustling!). French curator Frédérique Chapuis, who interviewed the elder Diop during his lifetime, relates a similar story about the crowd of clients waiting in the

Ça bousculait!

1.4 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Double

portrait of girls with a telephone. Photo­graph: Mama Casset. Dakar, Senegal, 1950s. Courtesy of the CRDS, Saint-­Louis, Senegal.

43

street outside his studio. She reports that, by 7 p.m., t­ here could be up to fifty clients waiting in line.5

The image of the crowd has become, t­ oday, a commonplace in the critical and curatorial lit­er­a­ture on studio photography in west Africa. Seydou Keïta, the now world-­famous studio photographer from Bamako, is rumored to have had more than 30,000 negatives in his archives when he was “discovered” in the early 1990s by the French photographer Françoise Huguier. Curator André Magnin, the other French national who helped to make a global succès fou of Keïta’s images as they began circulating through museums and art galleries all over the world, estimated that Keïta had between 30,000 and 70,000 negatives in his archives in Bamako before he (Magnin) began exporting them to France.6 In the 1950s, at the peak of Keïta’s studio c­ areer, the population of Bamako (at the time that Keïta was working, the capital of French Soudan) was 100,000.7 Could one photographer ­really have photographed 30 ­percent to 70 ­percent of the city’s population? Even if we allow for clients who made repeat visits (of which t­ here ­were many, judging from the portraits by Keïta that have been published in the exhibition cata­logues), the figures are staggering and evidence of photography’s popularity in Bamako in this period. Also impor­tant in Keïta’s case was the influx of nonresident clients, who had their portraits taken as they passed through town on the Dakar-­Niger railway.8 Keïta once told Magnin in an interview, “­There was always a crowd around my studio, and I was working all the time. All the elite in Bamako came to be photographed by me: government workers, shop ­owners, politicians. Every­one passed through my studio at one time or another. Some days, especially Saturdays, ­there ­were hundreds of p ­ eople.”9 Keïta’s description of this scene reveals a central tension that arises between claims made for the crowd and ­those made for the elite status of a given studio’s clientele. This tension is almost certainly a reflection of the rapid urbanization that was taking place, in the late colonial period, in the aof and in Bamako in par­tic­u­lar, where urbanization was linked to the accelerated development of colonial infrastructure and the swelling ranks of associated administrative personnel.10 It may also be a reflection of increases in physical mobility (consider, again, railway traffic) and in social mobility, exemplified in the new, distinctly urban identities that ­were being expressed in photographic portraiture. Malick Sidibé, another photographer who worked in Bamako starting at a date slightly ­later than Keïta, said to Simon Njami in a 2001 interview, “Studios

44

chaPter one

had plenty of work and t­ here ­were always customers. B ­ ecause they often came ­after work, the studios remained open u ­ ntil late into the night, and I employed a boy to make a note of the o­ rders.”11 Sidibé’s account confirms, like Keïta’s (and like André Diop’s account of his ­father’s Saint-­Louis studio), a marked expansion in the market for portraiture in urban west Africa at this moment. It also brings to light a small but significant difference between the day-­to-­ day rhythms of Keïta’s and Diop’s studios: Diop opened his studio at the end of the workday, whereas Keïta operated his studio full-­time.12 Diop’s hours of operation ­were shorter, and his studio business was concentrated in the space of ­limited eve­ning and weekend hours. And yet, as Sidibé underscores, most clients came ­after work. This detail suggests that the bulk of any studio’s business was likely to have been confined to eve­nings and weekends, and it points, yet again, to the social class of ­these photog­raphers’ clients: salariés affiliated with the colonial administration (­those who had a “workday” mea­ sured by clock time). It also gives us a hint as to the mood of t­ hose who flocked to Diop’s studio in the eve­ning hours. ­After work, they ­were likely to feel sociable and relaxed. Vital to add, in the six years between 1954 and 1960, Sor’s population grew by more than 50 ­percent.13 This ­factor is indispensable in setting the scene, and this growth would have amplified the sense of sociability. Early Luminaries

It is instructive to place what we know about Diop’s studio in Sor against the backdrop of Saint-­Louis’s ­earlier photography history, which dates to the ­middle of the nineteenth ­century, when the practice of portraiture first took root among the city’s island elites.14 The first commercial studio of which we have a rec­ord in Senegal was opened in Saint-­Louis, in 1860, by a black photographer who was neither local nor African-­born. This was the studio of the African American daguerreotypist Augustus Washington, who emigrated from Hartford, Connecticut, to Monrovia, Liberia, with the financial support of the Connecticut Colonization Society in 1853.15 The son of a freed slave and born in Trenton, New Jersey, Washington was an undergraduate at Dartmouth when he began making daguerreotypes in commercial practice in Hartford.16 A ­ fter arriving in Africa, he was active in itinerant practice in cities up and down the western coast. Rec­ords indicate that he operated commercial studios in Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Senegal as well as Liberia. A number of daguerreotypes survive from Washington’s Hartford and Monrovia years, but no daguerreotypes from his Saint-­Louis years have been found.17 Érika Nimis has observed that t­here ­were close historical connections between the development of commercial photography and the migration of freed slaves on both sides of the Atlantic. She notes, in her indispensable history of

Ça bousculait!

45

Yoruba photog­raphers in west Africa, that, in the nineteenth ­century, a disproportionate number of photog­raphers working in itinerant practice across the region ­were ­either freed slaves or the descendants of freed slaves. This can be explained, she suggests, in part by the exceptional social status of formerly enslaved p ­ eople and the unpre­ce­dented forms of physical and social mobility that accompanied their geographic and cultural displacement.18 Nimis cites, in this re­spect, the influence of the British Royal Navy’s blockade of the Gulf of Guinea on the composition of coastal west African populations ­after the end of the ­legal slave trade in the nineteenth ­century. During the blockade, the British routinely seized ships carry­ing illegal ­human “cargo,” and between roughly 1808 and 1870 they “liberated” tens of thousands of formerly enslaved p ­ eople in west African port cities that w ­ ere often very distant from ­those from which they had set out. To call ­these formerly enslaved ­people “­free” is misleading, in more ways than one. Many w ­ ere held prisoner in camps for extended periods against their ­will. O ­ thers ­were sold into indentured servitude or forced to work as apprentices to Eu­ro­pe­ans. And yet ­these ­people (sometimes called “recaptive Africans” by the British) shared a common experience of displacement, and they played a monumental role in the constitution of new urban cultures and communities in west Africa. Arriving in cities like Monrovia and Freetown, ­these

Ça bousculait!

1.5 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Portrait

of a ­woman wearing “libidor” (gold coins likely descended from the “louis d’or”) and butterfly hair ornaments, shot on the reverse diagonal ­angle (with the sitter’s back and the nape of her neck vis­i­ble). Photo­g­raph: Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy. 1.6 ​Portrait of a ­woman

reclining on linoleum. Photo­graph: Julien Lopez. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s. Courtesy of Julien Lopez. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

47

­ eople found themselves in ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous urban p settlements that w ­ ere defined as much by African displacement as they w ­ ere by Eu­ro­pean settlement, and where they lived and worked alongside f­ ree black Americans, like Washington, and they ­were integrated into existing urban populations in unpre­ce­dented numbers. Although Nimis’s research concentrates, specifically, on Yoruba photog­raphers working in west Africa, her work establishes impor­tant connections between the commercial development of photography and successive waves of migration and displacement on both sides of the Atlantic and, as such, her work provides an impor­tant context for locating Washington’s practice in the wider Atlantic world.19 It is no accident that t­ hese intensely urban and cosmopolitan coastal west African settlements gave rise to the first generation of local, African-­born photog­raphers.20 As Julie Crooks eloquently argues in her research on photography in Freetown, coastal west African cities ­were heterotopias in the strict (Foucauldian) sense, intimately connected to the world economic system but ­under unpre­ce­dented conditions and through unique protocols.21 Adding nuance to our appreciation of this uniqueness, Erin Haney notes that, in many cities in coastal west Africa, photography was not generally associated by local prac­ti­tion­ers or their clients with ­either Eu­rope or Eu­ro­pe­ans.22 Many of t­ hese same conditions w ­ ere pre­sent in Saint-­Louis, whose history parallels that of cities like Freetown, Cape Coast, and Monrovia in key re­spects. Saint-­Louis was not in the zone directly affected by the British blockade to the south, but its citizens had long had special juridical and po­liti­cal standing as inhabitants of one of the original quatre communes of Senegal, and, in the nineteenth c­ entury, the city came to be dominated by a large and radically heterogeneous métisse (or Creole) community. To be sure, the experiences of the formerly enslaved ­people who w ­ ere released in cities like Monrovia and Freetown and t­ hose of the originaires living in the quatre communes of Senegal were distinct, yet all of ­these cities w ­ ere privileged sites of intensive urbanization and creolization, which ­shaped coastal west Africa throughout its modern history and which made the region fertile ground for the commercial practice of photography. ­Little is known about the period between Washington’s 1860 stint in studio practice in Saint-­Louis and the first de­cades of the twentieth ­century, when the first permanent studios emerged. Nimis, Crooks, Haney, Jürg Schneider, and Vera Viditz-­Ward have all established, in pathbreaking original research, that by the last two de­cades of the nineteenth c­ entury African-­born photo­­graphers ­were working in in­de­pen­dent practice in cities up and down the continent’s Atlantic coast.23 Yet all of the photog­raphers whose images have been identified or whose c­ areers have been documented appear to have

48

chaPter one

1.7 ​Portrait of Tola

Wade. Photo­graph: Émile Sursock. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1950s. Courtesy of Abdourahmane Niang. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

been Anglophone and (with the exception of Washington) to have set out from British-­controlled territories, and ­little is known about the activities of Senegalese photog­raphers in the final de­cades of the nineteenth c­ entury, despite vital research by Philippe David and Patricia Hickling on French photog­ raphers in Senegal in this period.24 Chapuis notes that, in 1908, French photographer Étienne Lagrange trained an African assistant in his Saint-­Louis studio.25 This is the first documented reference we have to an African-­born photographer working in Saint-­Louis. His name remains unknown.

Ça bousculait!

49

The first Senegalese-­born photographer to have made his mark in Saint-­ Louis in the early de­cades of the twentieth ­century is Meïssa Gaye (b. 1892, d. 1993).26 Gaye’s legacy is unrivaled in Senegal, although, t­ oday, his photo­graphs are difficult to find.27 The celebrated Senegalese writer Aminata Sow Fall reminisces about the experience of having her portrait taken by Gaye when she was a ­little girl in Saint-­Louis, in a lyrical essay titled “Vague Memory of a Confiscated Photo.”28 In one of the rare pieces of scholarship ever to have been published on Gaye, Chapuis notes that he had established a part-­time practice as a portraitist in Saint-­Louis by 1912 or 1913.29 He subsequently moved to Conakry and, in 1923, to Dakar, and we know that he worked at least part time in studio practice in both cities. In 1929, Gaye moved to Kaolack, where, again, he worked in commercial studio practice, before returning to his native Saint-­ Louis to open a studio on a quasi-­permanent basis in the 1950s.30 Significantly, Chapuis cites five cities in which Gaye is known to have practiced photography professionally: Conakry, Dakar, Kaolack, Saint-­Louis, and Ziguinchor.31 It is notable that this list encompasses many of the aof’s most significant port cities, a fact that can be explained by Gaye’s formal employment in the French customs ser­vice. In addition to the advantages conferred by other positions in the colonial administration (social mobility, access to cash), his day job as an employee of the customs ser­vice afforded him exceptional physical mobility, access to transportation networks, and opportunities for travel.32 Photog­raphers of the in­de­pen­dence generation, too, often spoke to me explic­itly of the importance of physical mobility, transportation networks, and freedom of movement to their practice. Rather than mobility between dif­fer­ ent cities within a single territory or country, however, this ­later generation spoke more often of their freedom of movement within a given city. They drew explicit connections between freedom of movement and more abstract ideals of freedom, including t­hose associated with the coming of in­de­pen­dence, a theme to which I ­will return.

The last ­great names in living memory in Senegal include Émile Sursock, a Saint-­Louis-­based photographer reported to be of Lebanese heritage (figure 1.7); Caristan, a photographer of Antillean heritage (sometimes identified as Guianese) who operated a well-­known Saint-­Louis studio (starting, roughly, around 1945); and Mama Casset (b. 1908, d. 1992) (figure 1.4).33 A Saint-­Louis native, Casset apprenticed with French photographer Oscar Lataque starting in 1920 before

50

chaPter one

g­ oing on to open his own studio, African-­Photo, in Dakar’s Medina neighborhood. Opening their studios slightly l­ater ­were Mix Guèye (b. 1906, d. 1994), who apprenticed with Tennequin (Ave­nue Roume, Dakar), and Salla Casset (b. 1910, d. 1974), Mama’s younger b­ rother, whose Dakar studio was called Sénégal-­ Photo. The younger Casset was among the first Senegalese photog­raphers to embrace the new practices and genres of “official” and “po­liti­cal” photography, and he is best remembered, ­today, for his photo­graphs documenting the new Senegalese po­liti­cal class.34 Among Doudou Diop’s direct competitors in Saint-­Louis was Doro Sy, who also ran a studio in Sor in roughly the same period.35 Elsewhere in Saint-­Louis, Julien Lopez, a Senegalese photographer of Cape Verdean heritage, opened his studio, Photo Artista, in the early 1960s (figure 1.6). Lopez is still living, although he is said to have destroyed a significant part of his own studio archives by throwing his negatives into the Senegal River ­after the transition to color left him feeling demoralized in the 1980s.36 Numbers of Prints, Darkroom Schedules, and the Interval

Another pos­si­ble indicator of photography’s popularity is the number of prints that photog­raphers delivered to their clients ­after a given portrait session. In interviews in both Senegal and Benin, I found that photog­raphers and their families w ­ ere quick to volunteer the numbers of prints that ­were delivered to clients and corresponding prices. This concern with number reflects the development of the technology in the postwar period, which led to a proliferation of hand-­ held cameras that produced images in smaller formats and which expanded access to darkroom equipment. Both f­ actors encouraged the practice of making multiple prints and contributed to lower printing costs. The concern with number also reflects the explosion of id-­card photography that took place in the immediate post-­independence period, which created a nearly limitless market and became a critical source of revenue for local studio photog­raphers.37 The standard number of prints that photog­raphers and their families quoted to me ranged, with very few exceptions, from two to four. André Diop told me that his ­father charged 50 francs cfa (Communauté financière africaine) for one portrait, with the client receiving two 13 × 18 cm prints (roughly 5 × 7 inches) for that price.38 In 2009, when I interviewed Cosme Dossa in Porto-­Novo, he told me that he made four prints per client, at “postcard” dimensions, for which he charged 350 francs, with this higher price potentially reflecting the old cfa franc, prior to the 1960 redenomination.39 Dossa became the first official photographer of the colonial territory of Dahomey in 1957, just a few years ­after he had opened his studio, and the years of his professional practice corresponded almost exactly

Ça bousculait!

51

1.8 (PAGE 52) ​Portrait of a

smiling ­woman. Photo­ graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s. Modern print made by Léonce Agbodjélou with the pho­ tographer’s permission. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa. 1.9 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Portrait

of a ­woman in front of a cinder-­block wall. The sitter’s pose approxi­ mates what is sometimes called the “traditional” west African pose, with the sitter’s torso square to the camera and her fin­gers clearly displayed. Photo­graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, 1960s. Modern print made by Léonce Agbodjélou with the photographer’s per­ mission. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

54

to Diop’s (for examples of Dossa’s studio work, see figures 1.8, 1.9, and 1.10). In the published interview with Magnin, Keïta says that he always made a “minimum of three” prints.40 In 2011, I met and interviewed Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè, two sons of the Beninese photographer Édouard Mèhomè, who opened his Porto-­Novo studio around the same time as Dossa, or just slightly l­ater. Baudelaire is, ­today, also a professional photographer, operating out of one of two studio locations that had been used by his f­ ather.41 In 2011, Baudelaire and Ézéchiel told me that their ­father always made six prints, thus earning him the affectionate nickname “Six-­copies.”42 The number is a reflection of Mèhomè’s involvement in id-­card work, and six, his sons explained, was two more than the prevailing standard of four copies made for a client commissioning an id-­card photo­ graph at the time. Jean-­François Werner notes that the Ivoirian photographer Cornélius Yao Augustt Azaglo also made four prints for clients commissioning an id-­card photo­graph.43 As ­will already be clear, prices and numbers of prints ­were only partially standardized and could vary between dif­fer­ent cities in the (ex-)aof and, within a single city, between neighborhoods. Many f­actors contributed to ­these variations, including client demand, darkroom access, darkroom skills, and the availability of photographic supplies—­particularly photographic papers. It is also impor­tant to note the occasion marked by a given photo­graph, for this occasion often dictated the number of ­people who might want a copy of the photo­graph. Also critical was ­labor time, which could be ­limited, as we have seen, by a photographer’s other professional commitments. In Diop’s case, his studio hours w ­ ere ­limited by his accounting job; in Dossa’s case, by his work as a government photographer. Beyond studio hours, ­labor time also entailed darkroom work, and most photog­raphers began the work of developing their films and printing immediately ­after closing their studios. If they ­were making contact prints, darkroom work usually took place on the premises; if they w ­ ere using an enlarger, it could involve a trip to the darkroom of another photographer across town (this other photographer would also take a cut of the price). Keïta told Magnin that, at busy times, he stayed up printing in Mountaga Dembélé’s darkroom ­until dawn.44 Long hours spent printing were a touchstone of my conversations with photog­raphers, and photog­raphers or their families often reported that printing ran late into the night. In Saint-­Louis as in many other cities in the region, custom dictated that the client pay for the prints on the day of the portrait session, returning to claim them a day or two l­ater. This rhythm calls attention to an obvious but easily overlooked fact: that a client commissioning a portrait always paid at

chaPter one

least two visits to the studio. The interval that separated ­these visits has occasionally been explored by scholars and other cultural commentators, and it has sometimes allowed latent social and cultural as well as technical dimensions of the portrait session to become vis­i­ble. This interval is famously exploited by Ousmane Sembène in his 1968 film, Mandabi (The money order), based on his 1965 novel of the same name, in which a key plot sequence is or­ga­nized by the protagonist Dieng’s attempt to obtain an id-­card photo­graph for the first time. The sequence opens with a comic (and, for scholars of photography, riveting) scene in which Dieng is seen wandering down Ave­nue Blaise Diagne in Dakar, which is packed with shop-­front photography studios.45 Dieng looks haplessly at the sample boards displayed outside their doors as he tries to s­ ettle on a photographer, before fi­nally being taken in hand by a photographer’s assistant who steers him unceremoniously into his master’s studio. T ­ here, Dieng is asked w ­ hether or not it is for an id-­card photo­graph (identité) and has his picture taken. Tantalizingly for us, the photographer in the film, Ambrose, is played by a famous Senegalese photographer whom I mentioned ­earlier, Salla

Ça bousculait!

1.10 ​Portrait of four

schoolgirls in match­ ing dresses. Photo­ graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s. Modern print made by Léonce Agbodjélou with the pho­ tographer’s permission. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

55

1.11 ​Group portrait

of the Porto-­Novo photog­raphers’ ­union. Clockwise from center: Joseph Moïse Agbo­ djélou, Jean Dotonou, Édouard Mèhomè, Joseph Avognon, Zinsou Cosme Dossa. Photo­ graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1962. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

56

Casset.46 ­After the appropriate interval, Dieng returns to the studio to claim his photo­graph, only to face unexpected obstacles. Several further scenes are or­ga­nized by Dieng’s attempt to claim his id-­card photo­graph, to no avail, and it soon becomes clear that his antagonists have enlisted the photographer and his assistant in their nefarious plot. ­These scenes, however ­else we may choose to interpret them, suggest that, in the 1960s, a visit to a photographer’s studio to commission an id-­card photo­graph would have been a familiar ritual for Senegalese viewers—­one that could have comic as well as, perhaps, more sinister overtones. The fact that, in this popu­lar movie, a visit to commission an id-­card photo­graph merited a cameo appearance by a real-­life studio photographer only adds to the impression that photography and photog­raphers ­were deeply woven into the warp and weft of everyday life, and it confirms that at least some photog­raphers attained celebrity status. Researchers who have addressed this interval have tended to focus on the inverse situation, in which a client failed to return and therefore abandoned his or her photo­graph at the studio (rather than the photo­graph’s being withheld by the photographer from the client). Some scholars speculate that at

chaPter one

least some of t­ hese orphaned photo­graphs ­were the offspring of illicit love affairs: portraits of lovers that ­were never claimed ­because the affair had already ended, or ­because the ­couple was afraid to return.47 In another unexpected yet likely common scenario, Liam Buckley notes that, in The Gambia, many of the photo­graphs displayed in photog­raphers’ studios are actually portraits of debtors.48 ­These are the clients who, w ­ hether exceptionally or ­because it was not always the custom, did not pay in full up front, and who could not claim their portraits due to insufficient funds. Werner confirms the existence of this same class of unclaimed image in Côte d’Ivoire, where he observed, during his research, that the prints adorning the walls of photog­raphers’ studios ­were often ­those of debtors.49 To this already evocative scene, Werner adds this detail: “In Senegal, photog­raphers hang the portraits of clients who owe them money upside-­down as a form of public humiliation.”50 This act of displaying debtors’ portraits upside-­down in an act of public shaming is a power­ful illustration of studios’ function as public spaces, or, in the words of Thomas Mießgang, as meeting places of “public and private spheres,” in which photo­graphs entered into extended chains of economic transactions and broader social and cultural rituals.51 In fact, Buckley observes, in his doctoral research on studio photography in The Gambia, that, according to the photog­raphers he interviewed, between 20 ­percent and 30 ­percent of photo­ graphs w ­ ere never picked up.52 This number is surprisingly high, and it suggests that t­ hese unclaimed images, what­ever the reason they ­were left ­behind, may account for a disproportionate number of the vintage prints that have moved into Western collections, the bulk of which have been sold to collectors by photog­ raphers and their families rather than by clients. What Is in an ­Angle?

In looking through Diop’s sample a­ lbum in Saint-­Louis, I noticed that in many of his portraits the subject is shot, posed, or printed along a pronounced diagonal ­angle. Thanks to this a­ ngle, the sitter appears to be tilted to her right and often to “lean in” to the lens, with her torso turned ­toward the camera at a slight ­angle in an illusionistic second plane (see figures 1.2, 1.3, 1.12, 1.13, and 1.14). This ­angle first came to the attention of Western critics and curators through exhibitions of Keïta’s photo­graphs in the 1990s, and, in more than one published interview, Keïta actually claims to have in­ven­ted this ­angle.53 For Senegalese interlocutors, however, I discovered that the pronounced diagonal ­angle was closely identified with Senegalese studios, and, indeed, variations on this ­angle can be found in the archives of many Senegalese photog­raphers. Beyond Diop’s studio, this ­angle is frequently seen in portraits by Doro Sy, his neighbor in Sor, and in portraits by Mama Casset in Dakar.54 (See also figure Intro.1, taken

Ça bousculait!

57

in Dakar by an unknown photographer.) Despite Keïta’s claim to have in­ven­ ted this a­ ngle, its prevalence in portraits from Senegalese studios taken in the same period, or in an even e­ arlier period, suggests that it very likely traveled from Senegal to Bamako, and not the other way around. Casset, for example, entered professional practice a de­cade before Keïta, beginning his apprenticeship in 1920 and in­de­pen­dent practice in 1925.55 Pascal Martin Saint Leon and Jean Loup Pivin note that both Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta ­were familiar with Casset’s work.56 And, in the last interview that he did before his death, with Lydie Diakhaté, Keïta mentions Casset by name.57 All of this suggests that he may have been influenced by the Senegalese photographer. A variation on this ­angle can also be found in portraits by Diop and Casset. In this variation, the sitter is turned ever so slightly away from the camera, her torso still on the diagonal, such that her upper back, the nape of her neck, her shoulder, and details of her hairstyle are exposed (figures 1.5 and 1.13). 1.12 (PAGE 58) ​Portrait of

Critics and curators who have written about the pronounced diagonal ­angle in Keïta have interpreted this ­angle as an expression of agency. More specifically, they have seen in this a­ ngle evidence of a newfound African assertiveness, which they have sought to link to the larger social and po­liti­cal strug­gles that ­were taking place in French colonial territories at this time. Okwui Enwezor, Lauri Firstenberg, and Candace Keller, for example, have all claimed to see in Keïta’s photo­graphs a sense of dynamism, movement, and self-­awareness that bears explicit witness (in Firstenberg’s words) to a “transfiguration of the African self from object to subject.”58 Firstenberg goes on to argue that Keïta’s portraits “animate both stage and sitter, reconfiguring the gaze as a medium of agency,” such that we recognize “a look of re­sis­tance in the gaze of the African.”59 Keller maintains that the diagonal a­ ngle conveys “the emotive quality of strength and in­de­pen­dence.”60 In a parallel vein, Enwezor styles Keïta’s photo­graphs “a visual archive” of “re­sis­tance and transformation.”61 Although he does not speak explic­itly of this a­ ngle, Enwezor argues that the colonial subject ceases to be vis­i­ble in Keïta’s photo­graphs: “To look at Keïta’s portraits of the urban inhabitants of Bamako is to witness the near disappearance of colonial subjectivity.”62 When ­these and other con­temporary interpreters have turned their attention to studio photography dating from the post-­independence period, this romantic vision of a resistant photographic subject gives way to a kind of ludic cele­bration of postmodernity. This approach valorizes the “subaltern

Ça bousculait!

a young ­woman in the style sometimes called an angled bust portrait (shot and/or printed on the diagonal). From the sample ­album of Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy. 1.13 (PAGE 59) ​Portrait of

a young ­woman shot on the reverse diagonal ­angle (with the sitter’s back and the nape of her neck vis­i­ble). From the sample ­album of Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1970s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy. 1.14 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Angled

bust portrait of a young man in a coat and tie. From the sample ­album of Doudou Diop. Saint-­ Louis, Senegal, 1970s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy.

61

backdrop” and an emergent “surfacism,” which, it is argued, is distinct from a preoccupation with fixing the subject in a system of Cartesian coordinates, considered to be a hallmark of colonial-­era photography. Christopher Pinney, for example, in his introduction to an early and highly influential volume of scholarship on non-­European histories of photography, argues for the existence of a “vernacular modernism” that eschews “colonial strategies of depth and indexicality.”63 This approach was even more effectively pop­u­lar­ized by Arjun Appadurai in his essay, “The Colonial Backdrop,” in which he describes the postcolonial subject’s photographic “re­sis­tance” to “the realist pretensions of photography.”64 Enwezor has made similar claims for the transformation of the photographic medium, in con­temporary photography from Africa, into an instrument for the description of “passionate bodies,” or bodies “without limits, that are not circumscribed.”65 I have written elsewhere about the conceptual limitations of approaches positing an aesthetics of re­sis­tance or of liberation that can be seen in a photo­ graph and, specifically, of approaches celebrating the ­free play of supposedly postcolonial photographic signifiers, thought to “resist” the look and feel of colonial-­era photography.66 Such approaches often lead to distortions in historical periodization. (­Were all colonial-­era photo­graphs characterized by attempts to “fix” the colonial subject in a Cartesian grid of power relations? Are all postcolonial photo­graphs attempts to “­free” that subject?) Such approaches tend furthermore to disregard the nuances of specific practices of image-­ making and specific histories of circulation, leading to simplistic conceptual binaries (domination versus subordination, oppression versus re­sis­tance, subjection versus agency). Fi­nally, such approaches have construed the supposed fixity of the photographic image as a po­liti­cal ruse—­rather than, say, as a cultural preoccupation or as one aesthetic effect, among o­ thers, of photographic technologies—­thus offering us ­little traction on the significance of par­tic­u­lar images. For ­these and other reasons, approaches positing an aesthetics of re­ sis­tance end by downplaying the extraordinary aesthetic and referential open-­ endedness of e­ very photo­graph and by flattening the richness and complexity of west African histories of photography. It is helpful to recall, ­here, the critiques to which scholars working in an array of disciplines and in diverse geographic and cultural contexts have subjected this type of binary thinking. Scholars such as Karin Barber, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Simon Gikandi, and Stephanie Newell, working in colonial contexts in Africa and in postcolonial contexts globally, have emphasized the ways in which (to quote Newell) ­people living u ­ nder colonial conditions “participated in the production of their own conflicted identities through the

62

chaPter one

s­ imultaneous endorsement and critical reformulation of colonial modernity.”67 Collectively, ­these thinkers suggest, agency and autonomy did not always manifest in the name of “re­sis­tance” and could be just as forcefully expressed in moments and contexts in which colonized ­people became “active agents in the making and remaking of their colonial worlds.”68 Rather than reproducing interpretive lenses that see only vio­lence in colonial-­era photo­graphs, and that see all postcolonial photo­graphs as a reply to this vio­lence, ­these scholars give us a more nuanced view of strategies for responding to colonialism and imperialism as epistemological proj­ects, and they help us to sketch wider possibilities for, and experiences of, photographic agency.

Approaching the question, as it ­were, from an opposite ­angle, historian Mamadou Diouf has suggested that the so-­called pronounced diagonal a­ ngle may be traced to the influence of portraits of movie stars associated with well-­known Pa­ri­sian studios, such as Harcourt.69 Affirming, at least implicitly, this interpretation, Diakhaté opens her interview with Keïta by drawing an explicit analogy with Harcourt.70 Lending credence to this theory of Harcourt’s influence is the fact that cinema more generally appears to have exerted an outsized influence on west African studio portraiture in this period. Other scholars have traced the influence of par­tic­u­lar movies on par­tic­u­lar photo­graphs, and t­ here is abundant evidence that portraits of movie stars, together with film stills and other publicity images, circulated widely in the region. Youssouf Tata Cissé, who compiled the captions to Keïta’s photo­graphs that have been published in exhibition cata­logues, describes several of his sitters as striking poses in imitation of the B-­movie characters played by movie star Eddie Constantine, including, most notably, secret agent Lemmy Caution.71 In a recent exhibition cata­logue of work by Oumar Ly, we see a film still hanging on the wall of his studio in Podor, Senegal. The image appears to be from a film shot in North Africa or in the ­Middle East, underscoring the importance of cinematic influences from beyond Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca.72 We know that movie news and star gossip ­were circulating in cities in the aof from at least the 1930s.73 On the verso of photo­graphs from ­family collections in Dakar, one finds the stamps of studios bearing the names Studio Photo Star and Studio Hollywood, both at addresses in Dakar’s Medina. In Porto-­Novo, Édouard Mèhomè called his studio Studio Photo Vedette, or “Movie Star Photo Studio.” Not surprisingly, given Diouf ’s and Diakhaté’s references to Harcourt, portraits from that well-­ known Pa­ri­sian studio seem to have had a par­tic­u­lar cachet in the aof, and,

Ça bousculait!

63

in 1953, two Harcourt portraits ­were published in consecutive issues of the illustrated magazine Bingo: one of Ousmane Socé Diop, the celebrated Senegalese novelist (then the magazine’s editor), the other of Lamine Guèye, the celebrated Senegalese politician (and, at the time, mayor of Dakar). Neither portrait features the ­angle in question, yet their publication establishes beyond the shadow of a doubt that photo­graphs by Harcourt w ­ ere circulating in the aof in this period, and that at least some local audiences would have been familiar with them.74 The imitation of cultural forms and practices associated with colonization may be both a sign of cultural ambivalence toward and a creative response to colonization.75 To read, as Diouf suggests we may read, the pronounced diagonal ­angle that we see in portraits taken in west African studios as an imitation of, or as influenced by, portraits that w ­ ere taken in Pa­ri­sian studios is not to deny that this ­angle might have been an expression of agency. On the contrary, such influence is a potent reminder that modernity is predicated on what Appadurai calls everyday acts of “self-­imagining.” 76 Following the logic of Appadurai’s own arguments, this type of influence cannot be reduced to some unthinking compulsion to imitate and rather signals the inherently contradictory dimensions of modernity, and ­these images are evidence that west African photog­raphers, together with their subjects and their publics, enlisted photography in making and remaking, through ­these acts of imagination, both colonial and postcolonial worlds. André told me that the poses assumed by the subjects in his f­ ather’s portraits ­were usually chosen by the photographer, almost never by the subject. This detail suggests that the pronounced diagonal a­ ngle may have originated, during the portrait session, with the sitter’s pose, but that it was just as likely to have been introduced by Diop, and, as some images strongly suggest, a­ fter the portrait had already been taken, during printing (figures 1.2 and 1.12).77 In this case, the a­ ngle would have been introduced into the image without the sitter’s participation or even knowledge, complicating received notions of photographic agency still further and reminding us of a wider world of negotiations between the subject and the photographer. ­Whether introduced in negotiation with the sitter or without his knowledge, t­ hese ­angles likely also reflect increased opportunities for darkroom experimentation by African photog­raphers. Historically, it is impor­tant to underscore that, in the years immediately preceding and following the Second World War, most African photog­raphers working in studio practice in the aof ­were making contact prints without an enlarger, or they had only very ­limited access to one—­usually by renting or buying time in a darkroom belonging to a French (or, in some cases, Lebanese) photographer.

64

chaPter one

In her meticulous early research on the photography history of French Soudan, Tanya Elder notes that, “in Segou, Mopti, and Bamako before 1950, the indoor studios w ­ ere generally the property of e­ ither the French and Lebanese who could afford to have electric generators or rent space in the electrified parts of town.” 78 By the early 1950s, however, increasing numbers of local, African photog­raphers had begun to acquire enlargers. Surely it is no accident that the pronounced diagonal ­angle appears to have become popu­lar at the very moment that printing was becoming a space of greater playfulness and technical experimentation for African photog­raphers. Judging from his studio rec­ords, which contain extensive documentation of his equipment o­ rders, Diop owned more than one enlarger. As if in open acknowl­edgment of ­these nonlinear and unresolved genealogies, when I asked André about this a­ ngle and its pos­si­ble significance to his f­ ather or his clients, he said, simply, “It was the style.” Vaccinostyl(e)

Other photo­graphs that I saw in Diop’s sample ­album hint at the aesthetic, and other, importance of opportunities for technical experimentation by African photog­raphers. Few photo­graphs do so more vividly than a hand-­colorized portrait of a Senegalese soldier wearing the uniform of the new Senegalese army taken in the first year of in­de­pen­dence, in 1961 (figure 1.1). André told me that his ­father had hand-­colorized this photo­graph using a technique that he called vaccinostyl. It involved placing pigment in the tip of a discarded vaccination needle or stylus and then applying the pigment by lightly scratching the surface of the print.79 André told me that his ­father sal­vaged the ­needles from the French army hospital, to which, as an army employee, he had privileged access. The vaccinostyl technique achieved a remarkably subtle tonal range that translates only partially in digital reproductions of ­these photo­graphs. ­Here, the technique was used to add the colors of the flag of the newly in­de­pen­dent Republic of Senegal—­red, yellow, and green—to the soldier’s beret, epaulets, and arm badge, suffusing them with a subtle radiance that is only just discernible in the reproduction of the image shown ­here. Smallpox and other vaccinations ­were deployed in the aof in the context of colonial public health campaigns. The instruments used to carry them out ­were, objectively, instruments of a very par­tic­u­lar kind of colonial vio­lence, and public health campaigns and their attendant epistemological and technological apparatuses played an overdetermined role in the colonial history of west Africa. In colonial vaccination campaigns, the needle and, with it, the equivocal promise of colonial modernity, breaches, ever so slightly, the colonized person’s

Ça bousculait!

65

skin. In the colorization technique devised by Diop, the needle breaches the surface of the photo­graph. I do not believe it is an accident that, in 1961, Diop used this technique to bring out the colors of the flag in the army uniform of the new, postcolonial state. The technique of colorization by vaccinostyl ­here produces a decidedly postcolonial photo­graph, for reasons connected not only with this date, but also with the fact that the vaccination needle has been used to rework colonial history—­aesthetically, on the surface of the photo­graph and, on a still deeper level, in the phenomenological and embodied relationship of the photographer to the army, of the soldier to the state, and of the new uniform to the larger proj­ect of state formation. Diop’s appropriation of the vaccination needle, along with the images it produced, escapes ready categorization by simplistic conceptual binaries. This appropriation cannot be reduced to an act of photographic “re­sis­tance,” but it can be considered an act of critical reformulation and a reimagination of colonial technologies, one that points ­toward a postcolonial and even decolonial strategy. Vaccinostyl illustrates the way in which decolonial uses of the medium and, by extension, decolonial images ­were born in close proximity to and often out of intimacy with colonial culture.80 At the same time, the photographer was almost certainly thinking, in his experiments, only about color. His desire to experiment with, and expand, his colorization techniques reworks, reimagines, and transforms colonial history and, si­mul­ta­neously, the history of photography. Economic Thresholds

1.15 (NEXT PAGE) ​Portrait of

Aïssatou Ly (left), with a friend and her paternal ­uncle, Salif Ly. Photog­ rapher unknown. Pikine, Dakar, 1969. Courtesy of Aïssatou Ly. Reproduc­ tion: Leslie Rabine.

66

In 2007, on my last day in Saint-­Louis, I asked André Diop, again, about the price of a photo­graph. ­Were his ­father’s photo­graphs ­really so affordable for such a large number of p ­ eople? I had been debating prices and questions of affordability with friends in Dakar just the week before. When I told my new friends in Dakar that I was ­going to Saint-­Louis to look at “old photo­graphs,” they could not conceal their disdain for the wealthy Saint-­Louisians who, in their view, had been ­little more than flunkies of the colonial administration. In one particularly memorable conversation, my friend Abdou said: “Ce n’était pas à la portée de tous” (Not every­one could afford it). Abdou was adamant in his belief that, in the 1950s and 1960s, very few ­people in Senegal could afford to have a portrait taken in a photography studio. As he intoned the ­simple phrase over and over, “Ce n’était pas à la portée de tous,” it sounded increasingly ­bitter, and I changed the subject. Many months ­later, as I looked back at my interview notes, I saw that André had used exactly this same phrase, no less emphatically, to make the

chaPter one

opposite claim in Saint-­Louis. When I asked him ­whether or not a portrait taken by his ­father was ­really so affordable for so many ­people, André said, “C’était à la portée des gens” (­People could afford it).81 The tension between Abdou’s and André’s accounts no doubt registers deeper tensions between urban and rural populations (Abdou’s parents had originally come from a rural area north of the Senegal River), as well as broader theoretical tensions structuring ideas and definitions of affordability, participation in institutions connected with colonial administration (and therefore, often, in wage ­labor), and social class. ­These open onto other, still larger questions—­about value, about the extent of west Africans’ participation in the formal franc economy, and about the circulation of photo­graphs as commodities, all of which are inextricable from claims about photography’s popularity in this period. I had been waiting to ask about the economic threshold of studio patronage for a long time. Years before I had ever traveled to west Africa, I had been mystified by the prices cited in the Keïta lit­er­a­ture, as I sat poring over the exhibition cata­logues in a university library in California. In the early years (he began practicing professionally in the late 1930s), Keïta is said to have charged 25 francs for a 6 × 9 cm print, 100 francs for a 9 × 12 cm print, and 150 francs for 13 × 18 cm. In the 1950s, prices ­were much higher: 300 francs for a photo­graph taken in natu­ral light, 400 francs for a photo­graph taken using electric lights (clients w ­ ere expected to offset the cost of the electricity).82 At first glance, Keïta’s prices seem to have been significantly higher than Diop’s, although, again, it is likely that the 1960 redenomination of the franc accounts for at least some of t­ hese discrepancies, and in interviews it was often very difficult to tell ­whether old or new franc prices ­were being quoted. (To this day, I suspect that both old and new franc prices ­were quoted, inconsistently and anachronistically, in interviews.) Dossa, the photographer from Porto-­Novo whom I mentioned e­ arlier, told me that he charged 350 francs for a portrait, providing four prints to the client for that price. Dossa also told me that he offered special discounts (tarifs promotionnels) to drum up business when ­things ­were slow, suggesting that prices could also vary according to fluctuations in demand, ­whether seasonal or in response to competition.83 It is furthermore difficult to draw conclusions about the value of a photo­ graph on the basis of franc prices alone, and meaningful comparisons between the franc prices cited by photog­raphers working in dif­fer­ent cities and territories are elusive. Historical price and wage index information that has been published for the aof affords only the roughest comparisons between prices in dif­fer­ent territories in the late colonial period, and only the vaguest comparisons are pos­si­ble between the price of a photo­graph (which, as far as I know,

68

chaPter one

1.16 ​A portrait session

in pro­gress, most likely in the courtyard of the client’s home. Photo­ graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s. Modern print made by Léonce Agbodjélou with the pho­ tographer’s permission. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

does not figure in official administrative rec­ords) and other consumer goods.84 A more sustained inquiry into questions of both price and value would, at a minimum, require access to more meaningful data, beyond those compiled by colonial administrators. Such an inquiry would also have to grapple with the much messier theoretical question of ­whether a photo­graph’s value can even be expressed in monetary terms. Such questions have always been central to the history of photography, but the question ­here becomes, how best to frame them in the late colonial context in west Africa?85

Scholarship on the democ­ratization of photography in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca has often linked the development of the medium to the rise of industrial capital. Perhaps best exemplified by the theoretical writings of Walter Benjamin and, ­later (and given a somewhat dif­fer­ent emphasis), Allan Sekula and John Tagg, a central strand of the dominant Euro-­American theories of photography has focused on the medium’s disarticulation of precapitalist experiences of community, collective memory, and historical consciousness (Benjamin); its facilitation of experiences of bourgeois individualization; and its intensification of pro­cesses of commodification through the promotion of princi­ples of substitutability and exchangeability between persons (Sekula,

Ça bousculait!

69

Tagg).86 In urban west Africa, by contrast, the evidence strongly suggests that pro­cesses of industrialization and commodification, so vital to photography’s Eu­ro­pean and North American histories, ­were less directly implicated in the democ­ratization of the medium. Given the specific ways they ­were implicated, we must rethink ­these terms. On the question of class in par­tic­u­lar, it is illuminating to return to the status of Sor. As I mentioned ­earlier in this chapter, Sor is often called a quar­tier populaire, ­today as in the period that Diop’s studio was in operation (roughly 1957 to the late 1980s). I have translated this as a “working-­class” neighborhood, yet it is in many re­spects inaccurate to call this or any other Saint-­Louis neighborhood “working class.” Even if, in the 1950s, when Diop first opened his studio in Sor, his clientele comprised in large part salariés, they would statistically have represented less than 10 ­percent of the city’s population, and, what­ever their number, they would not have fit comfortably into familiar (Western) definitions of e­ ither a bourgeois or a working-­class subject. The city was never ­really an industrial center, with the acceleration and intensification of industrial production and attendant pro­cesses of proletarianization that industrialization entails. It was, rather, a commercial center, and as with most coastal west African cities, wealth accumulation in Sor was, for the first two centuries of its existence, derived from long-­distance trade in raw materials and in ­human ­labor power, in the form of enslaved Africans trafficked by Eu­ro­pe­ans to the New World. T ­ here is a consensus among historians that the transatlantic slave trade had an enduring impact even on much l­ater economic realities in west Africa, even if t­ here is ­little consensus as to how this impact can be mea­sured.87 We do know that Saint-­Louis’s economic and po­liti­cal fortunes changed radically, like ­those of other coastal cities, as a result of the abolition of the ­legal slave trade in the ­middle of the nineteenth ­century.88 ­After abolition, Eu­ro­pe­ans in west Africa devoted renewed energy to the trade in gum arabic and to agricultural exports. Dakar was closer than Saint-­Louis to agricultural regions, and it was better suited to the construction of a modern, deep­water port. The transition of Senegal’s (and, in the late colonial period, the aof’s) largest commercial center, and the eventual transfer of the colonial capital from Saint-­Louis to Dakar, was, with the construction of Dakar’s port, a fait accompli. If Saint-­Louis was the capital of a pre-­industrial colonial territory, in other words, Dakar was the capital of a rapidly industrializing one (or so, for a few short de­cades, the French hoped). As it ceded commercial power to other port cities, Saint-­Louis became home to an expansive colonial bureaucracy (and, it is in­ter­est­ing to note, given Diop’s colorized photo­graph of the

70

chaPter one

Senegalese army soldier, to the largest concentration of French military forces in the aof).89 At the same time, even in large cities such as Saint-­Louis and Dakar, ­those earning cash wages would have participated in the formal franc economy, in the 1950s, in a l­ imited way.90 Even t­ oday, many west Africans participate in a ­limited way in the formal economy, a potent reminder that both industrialization and urbanization have their own distinctive histories in the region and cannot be grasped within Euro-­American frameworks or explained by diffusionist models.91 Fi­nally, questions of price and value open onto much larger questions about photog­raphers’ economic status, as well as their clients’: questions about access to cash, about the consumerization of cameras and photographic supplies, and about the articulation of west African markets with metropolitan distribution networks. ­These distribution networks become increasingly in­ ter­est­ing—if also, in many re­spects, increasingly baffling—to consider in the final de­cades of the official colonial period, at a moment when Eu­ro­pean and American manufacturers and suppliers of cameras, films, and papers w ­ ere seeking to develop consumer markets in Africa. ­These distribution networks ­were not just grafted or superimposed, as I suggested in the introduction, onto much older networks that followed African trade routes (inland rather than coastal); they w ­ ere never actually realized in the way that Eu­ro­pean and American manufacturers and suppliers had envisioned them. Nor w ­ ere they ever actually realized in the way that African photog­raphers and consumers had hoped. The uneven development of t­ hese networks is yet another reminder that we must proceed with caution when attempting to assess the impact of consumerization, of capitalism, and of metropolitan actors more generally on the democ­ratization of the medium in west Africa.

In the end, André seemed less concerned with the social or economic status of his ­father’s clients, or even with the number of ­people who passed through his ­father’s studio, than with the mood that prevailed. This came through in the phrases that he used to describe the scene in the street outside his ­father’s studio: phrases like “Toute la ville est venue,” which means, literally, “Every­one was ­there,” and which also conveys the sense of an intensely social scene, a see-­and-­be-­seen type of experience. A similar sense came through in André’s description of the scene as “bustling”: “Ça bousculait!” This phrase conveys the density of the crowd—­the idea that it was ­really packed—­but in a broader sense it conveys the idea that the scene around the studio was “happening.”

Ça bousculait!

71

Any adequate translation of the phrase, or indeed of the scene, would have to convey dimensions of a local photographic experience that connected Saint-­ Louisians to other ­people in the city and in the neighborhood. At the center of this scene, the portait session was also “happening,” an event that was exciting both to witness and to be a part of, and that opened onto wider channels of experience. Methodological Reflection: Where Is Photography’s Field?

1.17 (NEXT PAGE) ​Self-­

portrait of the photogra­ pher. Photo­graph: Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, late 1960s/early 1970s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduc­ tion: Djibril Sy.

72

One after­noon during my 2007 visit to the Diop ­family home, I stood chatting with André in the courtyard, where I was taking a break from rephotographing his f­ ather’s prints, when Ndèye Teinde Dieng, the photographer’s w ­ idow, approached me and made an unexpected revelation: she told me that she had done much of the printing in her husband’s studio.92 Over a few short minutes that changed every­thing, she described the work that she had done, in Wolof, with her son acting as translator. (Like many ­women of her generation, she understands French but cannot speak it.) Ndèye Teinde Dieng told me that her husband had taught her to print ­because he had to get up early in the morning to go to his accounting job. A ­ fter he closed his studio for the day, Diop would develop his films before handing the printing over to her, and she stayed up printing while he slept. In other words, it dawned on me as she spoke, t­ hese ­were not r­ eally, or not only, her husband’s prints that I was rephotographing. They ­were also hers. Ndèye Teinde Dieng was clearly enamored of darkroom work, and her love of printing came through as she talked to me about the dif­fer­ent papers she had used. Her hands nimbly conveyed the tactile nuances of each paper’s texture and finish with an almost voluptuous plea­sure. Some had been matte, some glossy. It was as if she w ­ ere feeling, as she described to me the experience of their texture and finish, each paper. She explained to me the importance of using dif­fer­ent temperatures for the vari­ous baths. When she picked up a print from the stack that I had been rephotographing to illustrate, rubbing its matte surface, it was if she ­were remembering the experience of making it. Like Keïta describing his work to Magnin in Bamako, Ndèye Teinde Dieng emphasized the large number of clients that passed through her husband’s studio, and she grinned as she described the number of prints she had to make some nights. ­There ­were so many that she had to be creative in finding new places to hang them, in e­ very nook and cranny of the room. As she narrated, laughing, the experience of being overwhelmed by prints, she mimed the motion of hanging them up to dry on the clothesline ­behind us, where the ­family’s laundry had been hung.

chaPter one

Ndèye Teinde Dieng’s revelation was surprising not only to me but also to ­others who ­were pre­sent that day. It also called into question the core methodological predicates of my own and ­others’ research. Whom had I chosen to interview and why? Was it more impor­tant to focus on the photo­graphs that it felt I was, in one sense, always chasing, or to seek out, instead, ­these stories? ­These two objectives—­seeking out images and seeking out stories—­ are not, in princi­ple, mutually exclusive, yet I discovered in the course of my research that, practically speaking, they often w ­ ere. For structural reasons connected with the state of the archive and the state of “the field,” as well as for reasons connected with the timing of my research, studio photog­raphers’ archives had, by the time I arrived in Saint-­Louis in 2007, already been picked over by the curators and collectors who brought west African studio portraiture to the attention of an international public in the late 1990s, almost always by exporting vintage prints and negatives to cities and countries in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca. For this and other reasons contributing to archival loss in the region, the photo­graphs are increasingly rarely to be found in the places where the stories still are. At the same time, in the absence of ­these photo­graphs, the stories are increasingly difficult to elicit. Add to which, the in­de­pen­dence generation is leaving us at an alarming rate. As p ­ eople die and as photo­graphs continue to leave the continent (often as a direct result of a photographer’s passing) for collections in other parts of the world, the race to “capture” both images and stories can seem increasingly urgent—­and not only for the foreign researcher, whose position nonetheless becomes ethically and po­liti­cally trickier as the distance between t­ hose who have the photo­graphs and t­ hose who have knowledge about them widens. Friends and colleagues with whom I discussed Ndèye Teinde Dieng’s revelation in Senegal, both during that trip and l­ ater on, ­were unan­i­mous in their view that it would have been exceptional for a w ­ oman of her generation to work so extensively in the darkroom. The view that her knowledge was exceptional was expounded, on the day itself, by my driver, who had overheard us talking from a corner of the courtyard where he was napping in the shade. ­Later that same eve­ning, as we made the trek out to the dorms at l’Université Gaston Berger where I was staying, my driver could not refrain from rehashing the episode and voicing his astonishment. He told me that he had never before heard a Senegalese ­woman of her generation talk “like that [comme ça].” What did he mean, “like that”? A w ­ oman, he said, who had that kind of technical knowledge. Not by a long shot a feminist (we ­were forever feuding, in ways that I had not anticipated, as we clashed over his enforcement of local gender norms), my driver could not conceal his admiration for her. He told me

74

chaPter one

that his own m ­ other and Ndèye Teinde Dieng (then seventy-­seven years old) ­were exactly the same age. In Dakar the previous week, my driver had almost refused to deliver me to an interview ­because it was taking place in a bar—­the very interview, with Bouna Medoune Seye, that had led to my visit to Saint-­ Louis to interview Diop’s f­ amily. ­Things had ended on a sour note, although I got the interview in the end. Rather than quelling the frustration that still lingered (it was clear, on both sides) from this particularly bad recent feud, my driver’s grudging admission of re­spect for a ­woman made me all the more keenly aware of the obstacles that certain gender norms—­enforced usually by my driver but now, I had to admit, by myself—­had posed to my research thus far. When he dropped me off at the dorms, I felt, more than ever, frustrated by his attempts to control my movements, and by my own blindness. In a conversation we had in 2008, Fatima Fall, director of the Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal, a vibrant regional museum, library, and archive in Saint-­Louis that ­houses an impor­tant photography collection, told me that she had never met or heard of a ­woman of this generation who had been so deeply involved in studio practice on the technical side.93 Still, Fatima, like other interlocutors in Senegal, made it clear that Ndèye Teinde Dieng’s involvement in printing in the darkroom, although exceptional, was not implausible. ­Women in Senegal, particularly in Wolof contexts, often hold prominent economic roles, and they can be highly vis­i­ble in public life.94 Like ­women in many parts of west Africa, they are extremely active in (and even dominate certain sectors of ) commercial life, affording them opportunities to amass wealth and property over which they often have a g­ reat deal of personal control and affording them greater in­de­pen­dence than w ­ omen living in many other parts of the world. My conversation with Fatima, the museum director, ended on an awkward note when she asked me ­whether I had recorded my conversation with André’s ­mother or perhaps shot it on video, thus documenting it in a form that would be accessible to local p ­ eople. I did shoot some video on my cell phone (the first phone with a “built-in” camera that I had owned), but it is too low-­res to use. The feelings of frustration, even shame, sparked by my failure to prepare adequately for fieldwork w ­ ere driven home in another conversation that I had with André in Dakar some time l­ ater. He told me that, although he had known that his ­mother had sometimes “helped” his ­father in the studio, he had no idea that she even knew how to print u ­ ntil the day that she told me this in the courtyard. Ndèye Teinde Dieng’s revelation was made spontaneously, not in the context of a formal interview—in that sense, it was poorly timed. (I could not have anticipated that she would share this information, so how could I

Ça bousculait!

75

have been prepared?) On the other hand, when I first made plans to visit Diop’s ­house, I had not even thought to ask ­whether the photographer’s wife was still living. Even a­ fter I had met her, it did not occur to me to interview her, and I focused my energies on her son. In another sense, however, the timing of her revelation was perfect, for it led me to question many of the decisions that I had made, and it became a catalyst of ­future research.

My memories of ­those first interviews that I did in Saint-­Louis, in 2007 (the first that I ever did for this book), are memories mainly of frustration and self-­ doubt. Fatima was the first but not the last person to ask me ­whether I had shot any video of my conversation with Ndèye Teinde Dieng. The still camera I had brought along was also woefully inadequate, although this came as less of a surprise. In London just a few weeks before, I chanced to meet Christopher Pinney, the well-­known scholar of photography in India. Pinney had urged me to spare no expense on my equipment and to bring the best camera that I could afford. I promptly disregarded his excellent advice—in large part ­because, as a ­woman traveling alone, I was afraid of bringing expensive equipment to a country where I had never been before. I worried that traveling with an expensive camera would increase my chance of being targeted for unwanted attention of vari­ous kinds. Making every­thing worse, it seemed that I was always hungry, and, by the time I arrived in Saint-­Louis, I had basically been living on Nescafé and baguette for days. In Dakar the previous week, I had begun skipping meals to avoid eating with (being lectured by) my driver. In Saint-­Louis, the strenuous work of rephotographing prints seemed always to get underway just as the midday meal was being served. So I skipped lunch and that day, too, found myself both faint with hunger and buzzed on caffeine as I teetered in high heels, in the late after­noon, in the sandy courtyard. Heels, I had been told by a friend and experienced scholar of photography in west Africa, as I was packing for Senegal, ­were a “culturally appropriate” way to look dressed up with a minimum of effort. She emphasized that I would have to dress up if I wanted to be taken seriously in local professional contexts. This, too, turned out to be excellent advice—­except that I had never worn high heels before. As I wrestled, precariously, with sun, sand, and tripod, attempting to rephotograph prints in the courtyard, I felt feminized in all the worst ways, by my hunger, my footwear, and the constant bullying of my driver—­also culturally appropriate but much less novel.

76

chaPter one

As I look back on them now, ­those long after­noon rephotography sessions ­ ere filled with frustration, but also with won­der, and I now see that they w taught me to value the uncertainty and unpredictability that are constitutive ­factors of all “fieldwork.” This uncertainty and unpredictability, and our responses to them, are, I now understand more clearly, more than any artificial distance or construction of place, essential ele­ments of “the field.” Simplistic as it may seem, this view is consistent with t­ hose of anthropologists who have theorized the possibilities and limits of ethnographic fieldwork. Johannes Fabian, a founding f­ ather of anthropological auto-­critique, points out the ethnographer’s habitual failure to recognize the “contemporaneity” of the ethnographic relation, which, by definition, extends to both parties.95 And yet, in attempting to grapple with this contemporaneity, it seems worth asking, beyond questions about the possibilities, and limits, of feminist solidarities articulated from wildly dif­fer­ent vantage points, as well as questions about my own gendered feelings of inadequacy, ­whether photography is itself more generative of certain types of uncertainty than other objects. ­Doesn’t ­every photo­ graph invite new, and shared, reflections on contemporaneity? I am thinking, to be sure, of what is often called, t­ oday, the “social life” of photo­graphs and also of the profound reliance of all photographic interpretation on social relations (­whether in “real” time or some other kind of time). ­These and other unresolved methodological questions about the nature and status of ethnographic research on photography might also be put into dialogue with Carol Magee’s and Joanna Grabski’s cogent reflections on the interview as a tool for research, specifically, on African art. In t­ hese reflections, Magee and Grabski eloquently foreground the “temporal fluidity between past and pre­sent” afforded by the interview as a form. They furthermore emphasize, in their interrogation of the interview as a tool for art research, that conversations unfold in a triangulated relation with the art object, and the demand, produced through this triangulation, that both parties account, in their conversation, for multiple and overlapping sites and contexts of that object’s (ongoing) production and interpretation.96 Not unrelated to this observation about triangulation, it is basically impossible to get access to other p ­ eople’s photo­graphs without entering into an infinite web of complex social transactions in which the researcher and the “respondent” talk, and indeed never stop talking, in a dynamic relation with the photo­graph. Yet ­every photo­graph is itself, in the moment of interpretation, liable to catch all t­ hose who look at it in another such relation, which is not to say that we are symmetrically caught.

Ça bousculait!

77

More concretely, when it comes to the unpredictability of real-­time social relations—as well as dumb luck—­I think of my meeting with Bouna, without which I never would have been introduced to the Diops. The meeting had gotten off to a rocky start, yet in the end t­ hings went remarkably well. What would have happened if I had not been fighting with my driver and had actually arrived on time? If my friend and de facto fixer Lamine had not joined us? A hip-­hop band man­ag­er, concert promoter, and general man about town, Lamine had enough street cred for both of us. Yet I had come by his phone number quite by chance a few days before my flight, when it was given to me by another American scholar whom I had met, totally fortuitously, at a public lecture. Bouna’s phone number had likewise been shared with me through a series of chance encounters, given to me by a Dakar-­based curator whose email had been shared with me by a San Francisco–­based curator, to whom I had been introduced by another scholar, again totally fortuitously, while standing outside another public lecture.97 This was hardly the only count on which I was lucky. My meeting with Bouna took place in Dakar in the short span that fell, that year, between Tabaski and Christmas, and I met André Diop for the first time a few days ­later. This timing proved to be critical, although I had not understood this at the time. Tabaski is the most impor­tant religious holiday in Senegal. P ­ eople travel long distances to be with their extended families. Sheep are slaughtered. Guests are invited into the home. The holiday mood worked very much in my f­ avor during that visit, for it gave me an unpre­ce­dented level of access to large ­family gatherings, in which cameras and photo­graphs often featured centrally. It also made me feel personally vulnerable, and therefore all the more keenly aware of my own “social position” as a researcher. For, as it happened, my meeting with Bouna took place on Christmas Eve, which my partner and child ­were celebrating without me back home. I had not even realized what day it was ­until I walked through the door of the bar called r&b, where I was meeting Bouna. As I walked through the door, t­ hese two letters, “r&b,” brought visions of Americana dancing into my brain, and I began to feel homesick. The only prob­lem was that I could not remember which home, exactly, I was sick for. Just a few months ­earlier, I had moved with my ­family from California to London for a new job. On Christmas Day, when I fi­nally got through to my ­daughter, then five years old, on the phone, I tried to picture her standing in front of our Christmas tree, but faltered when I could not remember what our London ­house looked like. I noticed that her accent was changing, just before we said goodbye.

78

chaPter one

A week or so ­later, I fired my driver. Before my next trip, I bought a much better camera and learned how to use it. I have since learned to walk in high heels. I have never again traveled for research without a video camera. This is not to say that I have gained any more control of t­ hese unpredictable social relations, in real time or other­wise, but I have become much more attuned to the need for compromise, and opportunities for collaboration, that this unpredictability pre­sents. I have also come to understand that my own vulnerability—­ whether stemming from unpreparedness, gendered forms of insecurity, or still other ­factors—­has exposed me to forms of compromise and collaboration to which I had previously been blind, and it has made me more liable to enter into certain kinds of conversations, all of which has been indispensable to my research.

It was immediately clear that the revelation made to me by Diop’s wife in Saint-­ Louis that day would have methodological implications. But what would they be? Photo­graphs by Diop have appeared in international exhibitions and been published in books and cata­logues. Ndèye Teinde Dieng likely printed some of ­these photo­graphs, but she has never been named or credited in ­these proj­ects. At a minimum, I knew that I would have to name her in this book. On another level, her revelation highlights the im­mense gaps in knowledge that persist. Many of ­these gaps are, ­today, only being aggravated by the surge of interest, globally, in studio portraiture from west Africa. As vintage prints and negatives are sold overseas, they move farther away from the individuals whose stories illuminate their histories. The flow of photo­graphs out of west African collections onto the art market, even as it has opened the world’s eyes to a more vivid image of African modernity, has often had the effect of reducing our opportunities to translate ­these stories and to capture or produce certain kinds of knowledge. ­These questions are methodological, but they are also entangled with more explic­itly ethical and po­liti­cal questions about the neo­co­lo­nial nature of the art market and about the relationship to that market of our own research. More than once it has been suggested, in the q&a sessions ­after formal pre­sen­ta­tions of my research, that the exporting of prints and negatives from African to Eu­ro­pean and North American collections poses no methodological prob­lems, given the technological reproducibility and essential appropriability of photo­graphs. The images themselves are, without a doubt, infinitely appropriable, but the histories

Ça bousculait!

79

they bear are not. (And since when has the appropriability of a ­thing ever excused its appropriation?) A few years ago, I ran into Mamadou Diouf, the Senegalese historian, at an event on Senegalese photography that was being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Photo­graphs from Senegalese collections have recently flowed into the Met’s collections, reminding us that New York, too, is part of “the field.”) When I mentioned to Diouf that I had met a ­woman of the in­de­pen­dence generation who had done extensive darkroom work in Saint-­ Louis, he seemed less surprised than some ­others I had told. The public conversation on the stage that eve­ning had already turned to questions connected with the state of the research, but it was not ­until the formal q&a had ended that I approached Diouf to discuss Ndèye Teinde Dieng and her revelation. Another member of the audience joined our conversation and asked why, if ­women had had technical knowledge of photography, they had not run their own studios. Diouf responded by saying that, in Wolof contexts, it would have been acceptable for a ­woman to be involved in a business venture, and even to develop highly specialized technical knowledge, but that it would not have been acceptable for her to represent this type of business publicly or to interact directly with clients. Diouf ’s perspective on this behind-­the-­scenes nature of ­women’s involvement in studio practice underscored a further question that had both­ered me for years. Why did Ndèye Teinde Dieng choose to share this information with me that day, when she had apparently not ever shared it with any other researcher? (At least a half dozen researchers or curators had passed through Diop’s home before me.) In another recent conversation, my friend and colleague Leslie Rabine, who has done research on photography in Senegal since the 1980s, ventured her own hypothesis about this timing: that Ndèye Teinde Dieng felt inclined to disclose her darkroom experience to me b­ ecause she saw me as another ­woman with technical knowledge of photography. The ­hazards of feminist solidarities articulated from the vantage point of white, college-­ educated w ­ omen in the “intellectual North” are, ­today, well known by all. But it has long struck me as significant that Ndèye Teinde Dieng chose to speak to me about her knowledge of printmaking only ­after she had listened to me speaking to her son for several days, and only ­after she had watched me rephotographing prints for several hours, some of which she herself had made. Both Diouf ’s and Leslie’s observations about Wolof gender norms illuminate one further aspect of this revelation’s timing. Diouf had intimated that, at the time that she would likely have begun working, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, it would not have been appropriate for Ndèye Teinde Dieng to speak

80

chaPter one

publicly about her involvement in the darkroom, out of re­spect for her husband. Surely she would have continued to observe this silence several de­cades ­later, when other researchers and curators had visited Diop’s ­house before me and interviewed the photographer. That is to say, it seems unlikely that Ndèye Teinde Dieng would have spoken about the extent of her involvement in printing in front of her husband, and unlikely that, when other researchers visited during his lifetime, she would have spoken to them at all. In this re­ spect, her decision to reveal what she did to me could have had less to do with her (or my own) capitulation to Senegalese, or American, gender norms than with the out-­of-­joint rhythms of my visit: I showed up at the ­house only ­after the photographer was deceased, and most of the photo­graphs already gone. More research remains to be done on the involvement of w ­ omen in studio photography in west Africa. The scholar and curator Renée Mussai has done extensive original research with a female photographer who worked in Ghana, in the years roughly between 1940 and 1960, and the publication of her research is eagerly awaited.98 Laurian Bowles recently published her research on Felicia Abban, a female photographer who operated a studio, Mrs. Felicia Abban’s Day and Night Quality Art Studio, in Jamestown, Accra, starting in 1953.99 In 1974, Amina, the ­women’s magazine that was the counterpart of the illustrated magazine Bingo (which I discuss at length in chapter 3), ran an

1.18 ​Four unidentified

press photog­raphers. Photographer unknown. Dakar, Senegal, late 1960s/early 1970s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

Ça bousculait!

81

extended feature on two female photog­raphers in Togo, Mme Agbokou and Mlle N’Kegbe (no first names are given).100 I myself have seen a single photo­ graph in a Senegalese collection, from the late 1960s or early 1970s, in which a ­woman appears in a group portrait of four photog­raphers (figure 1.18). I have not been able to identify this ­woman, although I recently stumbled across a reference in an unpublished master’s thesis to the first female photojournalist in Senegal, Awa Tounkara, who started working for Le Soleil in 1972.101 Judging from her appearance, the w ­ oman (possibly Tounkara) who stands with her camera in this photo­graph would have been just slightly younger than Ndèye Teinde Dieng.

82

chaPter one

The preceding chapter focused on a privileged scene of photographic production: the studio. In this chapter, I turn my attention to the expanding scenes and cir­ cuits of photographic circulation, which passed through, but could not be confined to, the studio. ­These become vis­i­ble in the symbolic significance of a par­tic­u­lar bridge, recurrent in photo­graphs that I saw in Doudou Diop’s sample ­album in Saint-­Louis; in the regional and seasonal migrations of dif­fer­ent types of l­abor (tailors and sailors) and their impact on photography and photog­raphers; in the marriages that took place “à photo” (by photo) between west African ­women living at home and west African men serving in the French military in other colonial territories; in the expression of ­women’s po­liti­cal activism in fashion—­and, therefore, in photography. T ­ hese materials and the questions they raise give us deeper insights into photography’s connections to, and interactions with, larger systems of urban media. The par­tic­u­lar images that I discuss have been drawn from the studio archives and sample a­ lbums of both Beninese and Senegalese photog­raphers; personal and ­family collections in Saint-­Louis, Dakar, Porto-­Novo, and Cotonou; and, briefly, Bingo, the illustrated magazine to which I devote closer attention in chapter 3. ­These photo­graphs, together with the stories that bind them to other images, other media, other forms of technical knowledge, and other scenes of production, illuminate both the expansion and acceleration of photographic circulation and the increasing density of the connections that facilitated the movement of photo­graphs within and between dif­fer­ent (sometimes, quite distant) places. This reflection on photography as media gives us a glimpse, si­mul­ ta­neously, of alternative paradigms for framing the evolution of photographic

CHAPTER 2

Wild Circulation Photography as Urban Media

technologies beyond that of the rise of industrial capital, so central to photography’s Euro-­American histories. Such reflection urges us to attend, for example, to informal and intermedial dimensions of photography, arising from artisanal rather than industrial spheres, while at the same time illuminating the deep embeddedness of cir­cuits and networks of photographic circulation in urban space. Ultimately, I argue that photography became a significant force in shaping new forms of regional, transcontinental, and transcolonial affiliation, belonging, and identity in west Africa in the m ­ iddle de­cades of the twentieth ­century, precisely to the extent that it was connected to t­ hese larger media systems and moving through t­ hese broader cir­cuits and networks.1 From Saint-­Louis, with Love

2.1 (NEXT PAGE) ​Composite

photo­graph incorporat­ ing an image of the Pont Faidherbe. Photo­ graph: Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1965–1970. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy. 2.2 (NEXT PAGE BOTTOM) ​Page

from the sample ­album of Doudou Diop, featuring, again, an image of the Pont Faidherbe (bottom left). Portraits ­were often printed on postcard stock bearing sentimen­ tal mottoes. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, ca. 1965–1970. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy.

84

That photography was understood as a species of urban media by west Africans in the ­middle de­cades of the twentieth ­century is richly illustrated by a series of whimsical images that I saw, in 2007, in Diop’s sample a­ lbum in Saint-­ Louis. ­These are a series of composite images that combine a client’s portrait with a photo­graph of the Pont Faidherbe (figure 2.1). The iron bridge, which connects the central island of Saint-­Louis to the mainland and to Sor, was the first metal bridge ever to be constructed in Senegal. Completed in 1897, it is named for Louis Faidherbe, Senegal’s most famous colonial governor, who is remembered, t­ oday, as the “architect” of the French colonial proj­ect in Africa.2 The Pont Faidherbe was, at the time that it was built, considered to be a feat of modern engineering—so much so that its design has often been falsely attributed to Gustav Eiffel. This origin story, although apocryphal, is worth citing ­because it makes concrete the bridge’s articulation, in the popu­lar imagination, with the ideologies of pro­gress and of modernization that ­were so essential to colonial modernity. Despite the Pont Faidherbe’s genesis in a colonial infrastructure proj­ ect, local historians have tended to emphasize its significance as a marker of a distinctively Saint-­Louisian identity. Abdoul Hadir Aïdara calls the bridge “l’enfant de Saint-­Louis” (the child of Saint-­Louis)—­rather than, it is implied, Paris—­and he cites its long-­standing status as a symbol of the city’s fabled claims to self-­determination and autonomy. Aïdara traces this symbolic significance of the bridge to a decision that was made during its commissioning pro­cess: of the two designs that ­were proposed by two dif­fer­ent French engineering companies, the Saint-­Louis city council is reported to have selected the design that it thought was most beautiful over the one that was considered to be technically superior.3 In so ­doing, the local council asserted its in­de­ pen­dence with regard to the colonial government, and it elevated aesthetic

chaPter two

c­ oncerns above technical ones, adhering to the ideals of elegance and beauty that have long been a part of Saint-­Louisian identity and incorporating them into city planning. The Pont Faidherbe may seem to outsiders like a quin­tes­ sen­tial colonial infrastructure proj­ect of the sort prized by Eu­ro­pe­ans and methodically documented in the colonial photographic rec­ord.4 But to Saint-­ Louisians the bridge is a symbol of their city’s cosmopolitanism, and, given the fabled decision made by the city council during its commissioning, of its in­de­ pen­dent spirit, and it is a potent reminder to us all of the city’s preoccupation with aesthetic concerns. Visually, the composite photo­graphs that I saw in Diop’s sample ­album are as complex and multilayered as the history of the bridge itself. In some of ­these photo­graphs, the portrait was superimposed directly on top of an image of the bridge (figure 2.1). In ­others, the two images w ­ ere printed in a horizontal orientation, next to one another. Some of t­ hese composite photo­graphs featuring the bridge ­were printed on ordinary photographic paper; o­ thers, on postcard stock. In the postcards, the portrait was often printed in heart-­shaped vignette (figure 2.2, bottom left). The heart shape likely indicated e­ ither friendship or a romantic connection between the sitter and the person for whom the photo­ graph was destined. It may also have indicated Saint-­Louisians’ intense affection for, and legendary pride in, their city. As Aïdara suggests in his account of the Pont Faidherbe’s commissioning, Saint-­Louisians’ sense of civic pride is fierce, and t­ here is even a set phrase, in Wolof, for the person who exhibits the ideal qualities of being an upstanding citizen of Saint-­Louis: doomu Ndar.5 Given this larger context, ­these photo­graphs may be interpreted as commemorating the city’s rebellion against metropolitan governance and, si­mul­ ta­neously, as subverting colonial photographic practices, by incorporating a photo­graph of a colonial infrastructure proj­ect into a highly personal image that is, at the same time (and as the heart shape makes explicit), a kind of love letter to Saint-­Louis. ­These composite photo­graphs featuring the Pont Faidherbe ­were arranged alongside another series of postcards in Diop’s sample ­album. ­These ­were also printed in heart-­shaped vignette, on postcard stock that was likely intended for use in cartes de voeux (greeting cards) or Valentine’s Day cards, preprinted with sentimental mottoes: “Souvenir amical” (Fondly), “Meilleurs souvenirs” (Best wishes), and “Toi et moi” (You and me) (figure 2.2). The fact that ­these images ­were printed on card stock intended to be sent through the mail highlights the fact that photography is ­here valued as a media technology, one that was being actively used to amplify and transmit an identity that

86

chaPter two

was already predicated on a local cosmopolitanism and on existing cir­cuits of transnational cultural and commercial circulation.6 All of the composite images that I saw in Diop’s sample ­album link photography, in one way or another, to other technologies of movement, transportation, or communication, suggesting that the medium was valued by Diop and his clients not simply for its power to instantiate a Saint-­Louisian identity but for its power to communicate that identity to the world.

The Pont Faidherbe was a recurrent motif not only in ­these photo­graphs that I saw in Diop’s sample ­album, but also in stories I was told about the photographer. In Dakar in 2007, Bouna Medoune Seye told me that Diop had not confined his image-­making practice to still photography, and that he also owned and was fond of shooting with a 16mm movie camera, for which he repeatedly tried to invent sync sound.7 In the context of ­these sound experiments, Bouna told me, Diop would strap his 16mm camera to his motorcycle and shoot while riding through the streets of the city, and he was especially fond, Bouna added, of shooting in this way, with his camera strapped to his motorcycle, while riding across the Pont Faidherbe. Among Diop’s other favorite 16mm subjects, I learned from the photographer’s son André, ­were the army troops that marched in review in the plaza in front of the Palais de la Gouvernance (the former colonial governor’s residence and seat of colonial government).8 The Palais is located on a central plaza, the Place Faidherbe, at the base of the bridge on the island side. Bouna’s and André’s stories about Diop’s mobile shooting adventures seamlessly knit together the photographer’s explorations of new media technologies with his navigation of the changing spatial and po­liti­cal topography of the city. They give us a vivid picture of a moment in which the city was being re­imagined and was presenting itself to the camera in new ways. As such, ­these stories about Diop’s man-­with-­a-­movie-­camera-­style adventures render the city’s geography newly and differently vis­i­ble, reminding us that, at this time, Saint-­Louis was in the midst of rapid transformation.9 The references, in t­ hese stories, to par­tic­u­lar urban landmarks and media technologies convey both this rapid transformation and the photographer’s concern to document it, with a bridge, a plaza, and a motorcycle ­here linking a symbolic site of colonial government to a growing (modern, African) suburb, access to the postal ser­ vice, and to a 16mm camera.

Wild Circulation

87

2.3 ​Soldiers standing

at attention in a public plaza in Saint-­Louis. I was told stories about how the Saint-­Louis-­ based photographer Doudou Diop liked to shoot troops marching in review in the Place Faidherbe. Photographer unknown. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, ca. 1960s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

88

Vernacular Cosmopolitanism and Media Infrastructure

Scholars working on colonial Africa have offered us rigorous and eloquent analyses of the imbrication of urban and po­liti­cal form. Frantz Fanon and Timothy Mitchell are perhaps the two most luminous examples of this phase of scholarship.10 Fanon and Mitchell, writing about colonial Algeria and Egypt, respectively, have both addressed the forms of ethnic and racialized zoning, segregation, and apartheid that ­were imposed in their capital cities through pro­cesses of colonial urban planning.11 This and other scholarship on the colonial city has laid bare the tangled logics underpinning the colonial city’s spatial organ­ization, by explicating, for example, the role played by colonial constructions of race in attempts to control ­labor, public health, and sexual reproduction—in the interest of rendering local populations productive for capital—­and by deepening our more general understanding of the intersections of urbanization and industrialization in colonial Africa. ­These now-­familiar approaches to the colonial city, however, cannot provide an exhaustive account e­ ither of local pro­cesses of urbanization or of the effects of industrial capital as they ­were experienced by ­people living in west Africa. Senegal never fit the profile of an Algeria or an Egypt—­still less Saint-­Louis, which, fortified by the French in the first half of the seventeenth

chaPter two

2.4 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​The

photographer Doudou Diop and an unidentified friend who sold photo­ graphic equipment and supplies. Photographer unknown. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1960s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy.

90

c­ entury, was established prior to the rise of industrial capital, writ large, on the factory model.12 Senegal was furthermore never r­ eally a settler colony (nor ­were any of the other territories of l’Afrique Occidentale Française [the aof]), despite the presence of a sizable, if transient, Eu­ro­pean merchant population from the seventeenth ­century forward, which was engaged in preparing the conditions of industrial (and racial) capitalism through resource extraction. Even more significantly in this instance, Saint-­Louis was famously never divided into “African” and “Eu­ro­pean” quarters.13 This historical lack of segregation is a point of pride, still t­ oday, among Saint-­Louisians, who cherish their city’s traditions of linguistic and religious pluralism, enthusiastic embrace of métissage (racial but also cultural mixing and creolization), and tolerance of cultural difference.14 Aïdara calls Saint-­Louis “un melting-­pot où s’est formée une culture métisse, en rupture avec les ordres anciens” (a melting pot in which a Creole culture was formed, in a radical break with the old social order).15 Mamadou Diouf posits a similar rupture with existing social ­orders—­both African and European—in urban Senegal. Unlike Aïdara, however, Diouf astutely avoids liberal notions of tolerance and melting-­pot pluralisms in his characterization of this rupture, positing instead the emergence of what he calls a “vernacular cosmopolitanism” in Senegal.16 The qualifier “vernacular” is crucial ­here, for Diouf argues that this cosmopolitanism allowed p ­ eople living in urban Senegal to invent and participate in experiences of colonial modernity that w ­ ere not predicated on “incorporation into Western univer17 sality.” Given its fullest contours, the concept of a vernacular cosmopolitanism has the power to elucidate aspects of colonial modernity and associated cultural, social, and po­liti­cal phenomena that cannot simply be attributed to Eu­ro­pean influence or plotted on a center-­periphery axis. T ­ hese include concepts and practices of citizenship, forms of po­liti­cal participation, and experiences of urban identity and belonging that ­were not or­ga­nized by ethnicity, race, language, or religion.18 Indeed, with regard to citizenship, it is one of the distinctive features of the history both of Saint-­Louis and of the other urban enclaves known as the quatre communes in Senegal (Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar) that they gave rise to expressions of Republican citizenship that w ­ ere coeval with, and directly implicated in, the 1789 French Revolution.19 ­These concepts and practices of citizenship, although at first l­ imited to métis or Creole subjects or by Africans who had been Christianized (and who ­were therefore literate), evolved to include Islam and to incorporate forms of literacy as well as textual practices that coexisted with orality in a religious and cultural milieu that came to be indissociable from Islam.20

chaPter two

The emergence of a vernacular cosmopolitanism in Senegal thus demands that we rethink the very premises of Euro-­American (and often Eurocentric) approaches to civility and citizenship, and the very concept of a vernacular cosmopolitanism directly challenges theories of colonial modernity that privilege settler colonial models. And, in the end, even Fanon and Mitchell conclude that, in the settler communities that w ­ ere realized or planned in Algeria and Egypt (where racialization and separation of populations by race w ­ ere supposedly the norm), attempts at segregation w ­ ere rarely successful, and they wound up producing distinctions that can only superficially be mapped onto the familiar metropolitan models. Indeed, distinctions derived from metropolitan contexts, including that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, have failed rather spectacularly to account for forms of social organ­ization and of social experience that have been impor­tant in urban Africa.21 This is particularly impor­tant to recall when, as I underscored in the last chapter, t­ hese class identities have overdetermined histories of photographic portraiture in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca and have led to the identification of portraiture, in the dominant histories, with expressions of bourgeois consciousness.22 We might also recall, ­here, Julie Crooks’s analy­sis of Freetown as a heterotopia (which I cited in chapter 1), a concept that she uses to emphasize its status as an intensely urban, polyglot, and racially disor­ga­nized space.23 Like Crooks’s deployment of the concept of heterotopia in Sierra Leone, Diouf ’s description of a vernacular cosmopolitanism in Senegal offers us a more nuanced lens through which to approach urban cultures and related phenomena in west Africa. ­These concepts are attuned to distinctly west African experiences of, and innovations in, technologies and practices that can rarely be illuminated by categories transposed uncritically from Western and Northern histories. As Diouf himself eloquently puts it, drawing a parallel conclusion, we must understand African cities as sites for “the emergence of modernities that are not, properly speaking, cap­i­tal­ist.”24

In his beautifully written and brilliantly argued book Signal and Noise, Brian Larkin theorizes the relationship of media technologies to urban space in the city of Kano, a regional capital in northern Nigeria. Larkin, too, offers us new and, I would venture, implicitly decolonial frameworks for thinking about urban media in west Africa. Larkin’s research persuasively illuminates the extent to which media technologies do not simply translate colonial ideologies,

Wild Circulation

91

2.5 ​Bocar Ly and ­uncles,

with wristwatches, briefcase, and telephone. Photo­graph: Photo­­ graphe Sy, Studio Le Mali. Dakar, Senegal, late 1950s. Courtesy of Aïs­ satou Ly. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

due to their inherently unruly nature. Media, Larkin demonstrates, are inherently appropriable, are extensively adaptable, and have their own materialities, which are expressed and experienced in dif­fer­ent ways in dif­fer­ent places. At the same time, Larkin creatively reimagines media as a form of urban infrastructure, a term that underscores their power to give rise to new social and po­liti­cal relationships by virtue of ­these dynamic and shifting materialities. The concept of infrastructure, as Larkin h ­ ere uses it, sheds light on the potential of media technologies to exceed their presumed function as “transmitters of content” and to represent “cultural ambitions, po­liti­cal machineries, [and] modes of leisure.”25 At the same time, Larkin underscores, media create

92

chaPter two

and carry with them their own distinctive “relations between technology and the body.”26 Media can be considered a form of urban infrastructure, he suggests, precisely to the extent that they constitute or create the channels that connect urban ­people and places “in wider regional, national, and transnational networks.”27 Larkin does not discuss photography per se (his focus is on radio, film, and video), yet his concept of media as infrastructure is still useful to us, insofar as it highlights the medium’s connections to ­these wider networks. They Did It “by Photo”

This focus on photography as media and, therefore, on photographic circulation calls to mind another class of photo­graph that André Diop mentioned to me as we looked at his ­father’s sample ­album. ­These ­were photo­graphs that ­were used by ­women in Saint-­Louis to “get married,” as André put it, “by photo [se marier à photo].” He told me that t­ hese ­women who got married “by photo” did so mostly to African soldiers who w ­ ere stationed on army bases in French colonial territories overseas, and that his f­ ather counted such ­women among his clients. He mentioned that they sought to marry soldiers stationed, specifically, in Indochina, where they ­were fighting (on the side of the French) in the war for in­de­pen­dence (1946–1954). The reference helps us to date this

Wild Circulation

2.6 ​Portrait of four

young ­women in front of a backdrop made of Muslim prayer mats. Many portraits from west Africa feature ele­ments of Islamic visual and ma­ terial culture, although ­these images have often been underrepresented in exhibitions and publications targeting Western audiences. The photographer referred to this image as a photo­graph of “les filles du quar­tier” (girls from the neighborhood), and noted that one of them ­later became his wife. Photo­graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, late 1950s. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

93

2.7 (NEXT PAGE) ​Portrait

of a ­woman squatting in a full skirt. I was told stories about ­women who “got married by photo” to west African soldiers stationed overseas during the Second World War and the war in Indochina. ­These photo­graphs ­were reportedly ­simple studio portraits without any distinguishing features, meaning that almost any portrait of an unmarried ­woman might have been one. Photo­graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, 1950s. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

94

practice—­which appears to have developed during the Second World War—­ and it gives us a sense of the long distances that photo­graphs taken by west African studio photog­raphers traveled. El Hadj Adama Sylla, a Senegalese museum curator, photography collector, and photographer in Saint-­Louis, also mentioned the practice of “getting married by photo” to me in a series of interviews that we did, in Saint-­Louis in 2008, and he, too, emphasized that Senegalese ­women ­were particularly keen to marry African soldiers.28 The historian Carolyn Brown describes similar marriages that took place by photo between ­women in Nigeria and Igbo soldiers who served in the British military during the Second World War.29 Despite the wealth of anecdotal evidence, I have never seen a portrait that was used to enact such a marriage—as far as I know. Based on the stories that I was told about this practice, however, it seems that almost any portrait of an unmarried ­woman dating from this period might have been one, reminding us once again of the vital role played by knowledge regarding a par­tic­u­lar photo­graph’s circulation, however elusive such knowledge might be. Two ­factors likely contributed to the advent of marriages “by photo.” The first was the extensive conscription of west African men to French military ser­vice during the First and Second World Wars.30 One effect of this conscription, which was felt particularly acutely by ­women during the Second World War, was a reduction in the number of marriageable men in the region. The historian Gregory Mann notes that, by the Fall of France in 1940, 100,000 west Africans had been mobilized to fight in the Eu­ro­pean theater and another 75,000 African soldiers w ­ ere “­either in France or on their way t­ here.”31 Corollary to this expansion of recruitment, forced and voluntary, the late colonial period saw a significant increase in the imperial diaspora of west African soldiers. According to Mann, by the end of the war in Indochina in 1954, soldiers from French colonial territories in the aof and its neighbor, l’Afrique Équatoriale Française (the aef), “composed more than 16 ­percent of the French expeditionary forces.”32 Changes to the colonial marriage code w ­ ere a second f­ actor contributing to ­these marriages, by creating financial incentives for ­women to marry soldiers. T ­ hese changes appear to have been particularly significant during the anticolonial wars of the 1950s, when an increasing number of west African troops joined the military through voluntary ser­vice (rather than through conscription), transforming both active ser­vicemen as well as veterans into a well-­remunerated, increasingly vis­i­ble, and respected professional class. West African soldiers serving in Indochina, for example, w ­ ere eligible for an array of additional benefits, including ­family allocations that constituted a generous supplement to their wages.33 Changes to the colonial marriage code

chaPter two

2.8 (NEXT PAGE)  ​“La Page

de Bingo,” consisting of readers’ photo­graphs, was a regular feature of the magazine for many years. This iteration of the page, from Bingo no. 6 (July 1953) includes a studio portrait of two Senegalese soldiers that was taken in Casablanca. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

96

­were formalized at the federal (aof) level rather than at the territorial level, which very likely explains why I was told both by André Diop and by Sylla that ­women sought to marry “African soldiers”—­rather than, say, Senegalese or Wolof ones. The term “African” is, in this context, less a racial or ethnic category than an administrative one. Changes to the colonial marriage code also had the effect of increasing w ­ omen’s autonomy, a fact that was not lost on ­either French administrators or African elders.34 ­Women took advantage of the changes in order to make matches that would benefit them personally, guaranteeing their immediate families a higher h ­ ouse­hold income and increasing their social mobility, rather than marriages that favored more “traditional” criteria (prioritizing the extended f­amily or kinship ties). In the case of mar­ omen’s social mobility w ­ ere riages that took place “à photo,” t­ hese increases in w set into motion by the physical movement of their photo­graphs. Bingo, the illustrated magazine that commenced publication out of editorial offices in Dakar in 1953, published letters from its readers, among them Senegalese soldiers stationed in French territories overseas. Many of ­these letters requested correspondence from marriageable ­women—­correspondence that should, it was explic­itly stated, be accompanied by a photo­graph—­ suggesting, yet again, the coupling of photographic circulation and social mobility. Throughout the 1950s, t­ hese requests passed uncommented as part of the more general exchange of reader-­submitted photo­graphs that was also taking place in the magazine’s pages. A related class of photo­graph consisted of illustrations to feature stories about the exploits of west African soldiers stationed in Morocco and Indochina. Bingo no. 4, published in May 1953, ran an illustrated feature on “Africans in Indochina” that included several photo­graphs of Senegalese soldiers, who ­were fighting on the “wrong” side of the anticolo­ nial conflict ­there.35 The photo­graphs illustrating ­these features resonated with a third class of photo­graph in turn: the studio portraits that west African soldiers in the imperial diaspora themselves submitted for publication in the magazine (figure 2.8). None of the photo­graphs published in Bingo depicted the vio­lence of anticolonial conflicts directly. On the contrary, the illustrated feature stories burnished what had become, in the case of Indochina, a perilously protracted conflict in the spirit of pro-­French propaganda. Yet ­these several classes of photo­graphs of, or solicited by, “Africans in Indochina” that circulated through the magazine in this period brought the complex realities of ­these wars home to west African readers. Like the photo­graphs used by ­women in Saint-­Louis to enact, across long distances, “mariages à photo,” ­these images of west African soldiers fighting in colonial wars overseas give us insights into complex po­liti­cal realities. Published at a time of growing ambivalence about

chaPter two

Eu­ro­pean colonialism, t­ hese images allowed the magazine’s west African readers to visualize their own participation in the French colonial proj­ect. They also allowed ­these same readers to visualize their own, emergent solidarities with ­people living in other French territories, including ­those fighting for in­ de­pen­dence from the colonial power. I ­will return to ­these solidarities when I focus on Bingo in chapter 3. Tinkers, Tailors: ­Toward an Expanded Intermediality

Many of the photo­graphs I have discussed and the stories about photo­graphs that I have related in this and the last chapter touch on informal dimensions of the practice of studio photography in this period: the rhythms of Diop’s workday had to be adapted to the rhythms of his day job as an accountant. Many of ­these images and stories also call our attention to the essential intermediality of photographic production, circulation, interpretation, and use: a par­tic­u­lar pose traveled, or potentially traveled, from studios in Paris to studios in Senegal by way of portraits of French movie stars, and movie posters, film stills, and ­actual movies (characters, costumes, and lighting) also exerted an influence on studio portraiture.36 Neither informality nor intermediality is unique to photography in west Africa, yet they have s­ haped its local histories in ways that the dominant paradigms can only occlude, insofar as these paradigms have tended to privilege mechanical reproducibility or theories of two-­dimensional repre­sen­ta­tion inherited from Eu­ro­pean painting. Informality is a term used in economics and po­liti­cal theory to designate spaces and modes of economic production and circulation that exist outside the state and associated regulatory bodies. Illegal commercial transactions or ­those that are quasi-­legal ­because they are not taxed, or ­because they are not reported to the authorities, are often considered informal.37 In media theory, the term is used in a way that is roughly parallel, to refer to media and modes of media production and circulation that exist outside the apparatus of state-­ sponsored media or the purview of private corporations. Informality almost always connotes escape from government regulation, yet to call something informal is, for this very reason, not necessarily to confer a marginal status upon it. This is particularly impor­tant to keep in mind in postcolonial contexts, where the informal sector often dominates or has no formal equivalent at all.38 Intermediality is a term that has been used by scholars working in cultural studies and media theory to describe relations of explicit interreferentiality between and across media. Among the most commonly cited examples are ­music that refers to lit­er­a­ture and photography that refers to painting—or, perhaps most familiar to us from the con­temporary art world,

98

chaPter two

painting that refers to photography.39 The intermedial relays and exchanges that have often linked photography and painting in Eu­rope and North Amer­ i­ca have (as I noted in the introduction) played a starring role in Western and Northern photography histories, and the supposedly essential concern of both media with two-­dimensional repre­sen­ta­tion has led to a preponderance of historical and theoretical paradigms that see photography as descended from Eu­ro­pean painting. Yet sustained consideration of both informality and intermediality in west African contexts moves us away from an overwhelming concern with two-­ dimensional images t­oward a much broader understanding of photography and its histories. Such consideration furthermore elucidates the complex relationships that inhere between photography and specific spheres of artisanal production in the region—­such as tailoring, textile production, and fashion—­ thereby giving us insights into cir­cuits and networks of circulation and exchange that have been significant to the medium’s local histories that might other­wise remain invisible. The example of tailoring is a particularly rich one h ­ ere. Research by scholars working in several dif­f er­ent parts of west Africa, including in Senegal, Mali, and Ghana, has emphasized that many photog­raphers in west Africa started out as tailors or ­were members of tailoring families. The ties that bind photography to tailoring are, this research suggests, hardly incidental, and they open onto an extended series of reciprocal relations between images and image-­ making, textiles and textile production, and fashion. The relevant research can be divided into three frameworks. The first, exemplified by Kerstin Pinther’s and Michelle Lamunière’s research, stems from the observation that, in west African socie­ties, both photog­raphers and tailors have “played the role of image-­maker.”40 As a testament to the kindred nature of their work, many clients visited the tailor and the photographer in rapid succession, commissioning a photo­graph, as Pinther puts it, “in order better to remember the way their clothes looked.”41 Hoping to maximize this type of cross-­pollination, photog­raphers and tailors often occupied adjoining shop fronts or located their businesses “­under the same roof.” The proximity of ­these technically distinct yet commercially intertwined ventures exerted an outsized influence on many a portrait session.42 Pinther notes that “on holidays when festively dressed clientele demand to be photographed, tailors sometimes earn a bit of extra money as photog­raphers.”43 (Tailoring remains a very big business in west Africa, and, in urban contexts, many ­people still have their clothes made to order by a local tailor—­accounting, perhaps, for Pinther’s use of the pre­sent tense.) Photography and tailoring w ­ ere, Pinther’s

Wild Circulation

99

2.9 ​Portrait of a ­woman

with skirt displayed. Across west Africa, the ties that bind photogra­ phy to tailoring and to fashion are very strong, and clients who picked up a new dress or outfit from the tailor often visited the photography studio immediately thereafter. Photo­ graph: Doudou Diop. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, late 1970s/early 1980s. Courtesy of Guibril André Diop. Reproduction: Djibril Sy.

100

research therefore helps us to grasp, bound together not only through their shared status as image-­makers but also through practical collaboration and complementary commercial transactions. Scholars have also examined the relationships between photography and printed textiles, and both Pinther and John Picton have emphasized the commemorative as well as more explic­itly phenomenological functions traditionally performed by both photography and printed textiles in west Africa. ­Today, wax-­printed fabrics, particularly but not exclusively t­ hose known as “commemorative textiles,” frequently work photographic portraits directly into their designs.44 Many commemorative textiles integrate portraits of a chief, queen, politician, or other prominent social or po­liti­cal leader associated with a par­tic­u­lar historical event into patterns alongside the relevant dates and symbols (a coronation, an election, e­ tc.), underscoring the importance of both photography and textiles to collective and public commemoration. Also worth noting are the commonalities between photography and many west African textiles on the level of their technical production, precisely, as media:

chaPter two

wax-­resist printing also involves a pro­cess of negative-­to-­positive image transfer (or did so prior to the digitization of the design pro­cess). A second framework is developed by Hudita Mustafa and Leslie Rabine, who have published extensively on the relationship between fashion and photography in Senegal. Both have argued for the centrality of fashion and personal adornment (jewelry and hairstyles as well as clothing) to west African socie­ties, and both have demonstrated, using fashion studies and other methodologies, how fashion enters, in Senegal—in part through photography—­into larger social and po­liti­cal currents.45 In fact, Rabine argues that fashion and photography have historically had, in west Africa, “reciprocal transformative effects,” in that t­ here is more at stake in the interaction between photography and fashion than the s­ imple fact that p ­ eople like to dress up when they have their picture taken.46 Importantly, Rabine situates ­these reciprocal relations between fashion and photography in the context of a much longer history of aesthetics and politics, which necessarily foregrounds the prominent role played by w ­ omen in public and po­liti­cal life in west Africa. In a particularly fascinating example of t­hese reciprocal relations in Senegal, this unique nexus of aesthetics and gender politics brought fashion first—­and, in its wake, photography—­squarely into the space of public po­liti­cal campaigns. A generation of local historians, writing about Saint-­Louis, has documented the existence of po­liti­cal ­unions or associations founded by w ­ omen for the express purpose of intervening in elections. Jean-­Bernard Lacroix and Saliou Mbaye, in their illuminating early study of ­women’s suffrage in Senegal, cite a 1945 exchange of letters between French colonial officials, in which it is stated that “Senegalese w ­ omen, although they do not have the right to vote, have from time immemorial [de tout temps] been interested in po­liti­cal ­matters.”47 Lacroix and Mbaye relate a story that suggests that w ­ omen’s associations ­were not shy about taking their po­liti­cal views, quite literally, into the streets: a group of ­women, it was noted by colonial authorities, intervened in the first legislative elections held in Saint-­Louis, in 1871, by marching, playing drums, and singing songs of praise for par­tic­u­lar candidates.48 They also cite the oral account of Pape Guèye Fall, a war veteran, in which he states that “Senegalese ­women have from time immemorial [de tout temps] played a large role in electoral b­ attles, and their influence frequently made itself felt in the choice of the electorate.”49 Guèye Fall adds that he remembers watching, as a child, pro­cessions of ­women in the streets of Saint-­Louis, where they verbally pressured men, on their way to the polls, to vote for their preferred candidates. As they danced and sang in the streets, w ­ omen inevitably dressed the part, and they expressed their po­liti­cal views through fashion. As the Senegalese

Wild Circulation

101

historian Fatou Niang Siga has documented in her fascinating early research, ­women in Saint-­Louis actively and openly politicized the sphere of fashion—­ for example, by devising specific hairstyles and ways of tying a head­scarf that directly signified their support for a par­tic­u­lar po­liti­cal party.50 Also in Senegal, as Rabine meticulously demonstrates, par­tic­u­lar dress styles w ­ ere sometimes named for po­liti­cal parties—­such as, for example, the dress that came to be known, around 1948, as the robe bloc.51 The wearer of the robe bloc (robbu bloc in Wolof ) signaled her allegiance to the Bloc Démocratique Sénégalais, and her decision to wear the dress in a photo­graph was a clever way of amplifying the message. Rabine’s research on the robe bloc is particularly resonant with my own claims about photography and decolonial imagination: a key source image for the dress is a photo­graph that was taken by the well-­known ethnographic photographer Gérard Duchemin, who was employed by the French colonial administration in the aof. With this striking example, we see that the ethnographic rec­ord, crafted and sponsored by the colonial authorities, could be used by a photographic subject to voice her support for a local—­black, African, and democratic—­political party. Liam Buckley offers yet a third framework for understanding the relationship between photography and fashion in west Africa when he notes that, in The Gambia, many photog­raphers’ assistants ­were professional embroiderers who also worked for tailors.52 When ­these embroiderers, who ­were highly skilled artisans, moved between photography studios and tailoring shops, they brought their tools with them, including the fine-­pointed ­needles and razors that they used to cut embroidery threads. According to Buckley, they used ­these same ­needles and razors to cut stencils in the photography studio. This framework takes us beyond a concern with tailors as image-­makers, by drawing our attention to the seasonal migrations of vari­ous craftspeople and by making vis­i­ble the impact of that migration on the ­labor pool accessed by studio photog­raphers. Other spheres of artisanal production, such as carpentry or joinery, also suggest the pos­si­ble movement of tools between the carpenter’s workshop and the photography studio. It is by now well documented that, across west Africa, many photog­raphers ­were ­either carpenters or had close relationships with the carpenters who built their cameras.53 Fi­nally, any discussion of the influence of artisanal production on photographic intermediality in west Africa must not omit sous verre painting, a technique of two-­dimensional figurative painting on glass that is distinctive to Senegal. The relays and exchanges between photography and sous verre images differ significantly from t­ hose governing the relationship between photography and painting in Eu­rope. First of all, photography predated sous verre

102

chaPter two

and, it has been argued, any other form of two-­dimensional likeness or figurative repre­sen­ta­tion in this part of Africa.54 In addition, as Mamadou Diouf and Giulia Paoletti have underscored in their research, many sous verre images are actually facsimile reproductions of photo­graphs.55 Diouf furthermore notes that, in the colonial period, sous verre images w ­ ere often copies of photo­ graphs of Mouride spiritual leaders, and that t­ hese painted images circulated in lieu of photographic images of Mouride saints that had been censored by French colonial authorities.56 This suggests a crucial axis of difference with Eu­ro­pean traditions, insofar as, ­here, the interreferentiality of photography and painting emerges in response to colonial surveillance and the attempted censorship of par­tic­u­lar photo­graphs.57 ­These relays and exchanges—in which tools, technologies, skills, and knowledge developed in one craft or trade w ­ ere carried over into the photography studio, in which ­women united fashion and photography to express their po­liti­cal views, and in which photo­graphs ­were reproduced as sous verre paintings in order to escape colonial surveillance—­indicate a much broader field of intermediality than has typically been acknowledged in dominant histories of photography. Even where this field seems, as in the case of sous verre, to recur to familiar intermedial pairings, the specific contours taken by this intermediality in par­tic­u­lar cases inevitably reveal photography’s connections with forms of materiality, sociality, and technical knowledge that are distinctive to the west African context. And, as we saw in several of the above cases, west Africans took advantage of this broader field of intermediality to adapt photography and related images to explic­itly po­liti­cal, even decolonial, ends. Undoing the Colonial Backdrop

No discussion of photographic intermediality would be complete without at least some mention of the many props and backdrops that are found in studio portraiture from west Africa. ­These props and backdrops have received a ­great deal of attention in the critical and curatorial lit­er­a­ture, where they have nonetheless often been construed surprisingly narrowly, as repre­sen­ta­ tions of what Okwui Enwezor calls “petit-­bourgeois attachments to Western fetish objects.”58 Arjun Appadurai elaborates one version of this approach in his influential essay “The Colonial Backdrop,” in which he states that “telephones and cars signal technological modernity.”59 Other props prevalent in portraits from west African studios, which often include radios (figure 2.12), telephones (figures 1.4, 2.5, and 2.11), tele­vi­sions, watches, clocks, bicycles, scooters, cars, and cameras, have been interpreted as expressing this relationship to technological modernity.60 Elizabeth Bigham, in an impor­tant early

Wild Circulation

103

2.10 ​Portrait of a ­woman with a projector lamp and

costumes vis­i­ble at right. Photo­graph: Zinsou Cosme Dossa. Porto-­Novo, Benin, late 1950s/early 1960s. Modern print made by Léonce Agbodjélou with the photographer’s permission. Courtesy of the ­family of Zinsou Cosme Dossa.

104

chaPter two

essay on Seydou Keïta, describes the subject of a portrait by Keïta as leaning on a radio in a way that “asserts a self-­conscious modernity.”61 Tobias Wendl, writing about studio photography in southern Ghana, describes painted backdrops featuring skyscrapers, freeway exchanges, passenger jets, and airports as indicating the subject’s “modern potential.”62 A closer look at some of t­ hese props and backdrops suggests a more complex and multifaceted story, one which directly challenges ­these and other universalizing claims. The radio prop is a perfect example of this complexity, given that radio as a media technology has its own, specifically west African genealogies. A passing glance through the archives of local photog­raphers reveals that many dif­ fer­ent types of radios ­were used as studio props. In the 1950s, for example, large

Wild Circulation

2.11 ​Portrait of a

­ oman posed with a w telephone prop against a backdrop depicting a village. Photo­graph: Benoît Adjovi, Cotonou, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

105

console radios featuring vacuum-­tube technology ­were frequently used as props in studio portraits (figure 2.12). ­These persisted, in many cases, ­until the mid-1970s, when they ­were replaced by transistor radios. Even before the introduction of the transistor, however, west Africans w ­ ere exposed to multiple and overlapping modes for the transmission and delivery of radio signals, each entailing its own listening experience: wired versus broadcast, fixed versus mobile, public versus domestic, collective versus individual or private. In Senegal, for example, the history of radio dates to 1939, when the first radio transmitter dedicated to civilian radio broadcasts in French was established in Dakar.63 It was not u ­ ntil 1953, however, that the French colonial administration began broadcasting in African languages: in a campaign to reach audiences across the aof, programming was broadcast in Wolof, Fon, Mossi, Soussou, Man­ dinka, Baoulé, and Soninké.64 A multiplicity of experiences of radio listening was henceforth invited and magnified by the capacity for dif­fer­ent audiences to listen to broadcasts in dif­fer­ent African languages, as well as in French. ­Here, too, Larkin’s research is instructive, for it underscores the materialities of dif­fer­ent radio technologies, each entailing its own listening experience, with discrete aesthetic, embodied, social, and po­liti­cal dimensions. In the early years of radio in colonial Nigeria, Larkin observes, the British colonial authorities elected not to broadcast radio signals but rather to use a technology called “radio diffusion,” utilizing the wired relay of radio signals.65 One consequence of this dependence on wired transmission is that radio listening took place exclusively in public plazas that had been wired with loudspeakers, necessitating large gatherings of ­people: “Radio, which we tend to think of now as a domestic phenomenon, began its life in Nigeria as a public technology.”66 Wired transmission does not appear to have been used in the aof, where collective listening was nonetheless impor­tant—­a fact that I had confirmed quite by accident, in 2009, while d ­ oing research in Porto-­Novo, a city that boasts two dif­fer­ent public plazas known to locals as “Radio Hokon” (Radio plaza, in Gun) or “Place de la radio” (in French). In 2009, when I wanted to visit the home of a par­tic­u­lar photographer, he gave me instructions to travel by motorcycle taxi to the plaza named “Radio Hokon Kandévié” (not to be confused with the other one), as this was a con­ve­nient meeting place where he would then come and pick me up. On my first trip to the plaza, I looked, in vain, for a radio tower. Had I managed, despite my contact’s careful instructions, to wind up at the wrong radio plaza? I had assumed that the toponym referred, I know now mistakenly, to the physical location of a local radio station. In fact, t­ here was no tower, but ­there was a single transistor radio padlocked to an empty market

106

chaPter two

stall. Its presence, combined with the plaza’s name, suggests that radio as a technology remains tied to a history of public listening in Porto-­Novo.

By the late 1950s, the aof saw relatively wide dissemination of portable vacuum-­tube receivers, but only a privileged subset of well-­to-do urbanites could afford to buy their own radio (figure 2.12). This means that listening basically remained collective, and it was customary, given f­amily structures and habits, for many listeners to gather around a single radio set. In northern Nigeria, Larkin notes, a British radio programmer put the “normal” number of listeners using a single radio set at thirty.67 I have not been able to find comparable figures for ­either Senegal or Benin, although I have found per capita figures for radio penetration in Senegal: in 1960, as the aof territory with the highest rate of radio penetration, t­ here was reportedly one radio for ­every twenty ­people.68 Benin, where penetration was sparser in the late colonial period, was nonetheless known, in the post-­independence period, for its astonishingly high concentration of radio clubs (714 radio clubs in 1973), underscoring, again, the importance of collective listening.69 In the early days of in­de­pen­dence, radio clubs ­were state-­sponsored mobile radio organ­izations created for the dissemination of educational programming, particularly in rural areas. In urban contexts, t­hese clubs took the form of semipermanent associations that held regular meetings, during which members gathered to listen as a group.70 The deep investment of Beninese in radio clubs throughout the 1960s and 1970s suggests that experiences of collective and public listening persisted even with the rise of transistor radio. The art historian Candace Keller offers new insights into an unexpected aspect of radio props in studio portraiture from Mali, noting that, in Mopti, in the late twentieth ­century, the brand names of dif­fer­ent boom boxes encoded sitters’ ethnic identities.71 The choice to pose for a portrait with a Panasonic rather than a jvc, in other words, signified that one was Bozo and not Fulani. This example, articulating par­tic­u­lar boom-­box brands with the expression of ethnic identity, likely carries residues of the histories of collective radio listening and of programming in local languages just mentioned. E ­ ither way, our grasp of the significance of a par­tic­u­lar boom box—­Panasonic versus jvc—­ included in a studio portrait as an expression of the sitter’s ethnic identity is diminished by a monolithic understanding of technological modernity promoted in the critical lit­er­a­ture. At the same time, Appadurai’s description of

Wild Circulation

107

the power of “the colonial backdrop” to signify certain “social types” carries a certain theoretical resonance with the ethnic symbolism of the boom box. Appadurai writes, “Through such ele­ments, photographic subjects (especially when they are posed) signal their affiliation with social types and contexts as much as with their singular identities as persons, or members of families or other collectivities.” 72 Appadurai’s concern with “the work of imagination,” which he sees as “a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity,” is more fully developed as a theory of media in Modernity at Large.73 ­Here, Appadurai proposes a theory of ethnicity that would not make recourse to “primordial sentiments” and that sees ethnicity rather as an offshoot of modern media cultures—­a theory that seems highly appropriate to Keller’s boom boxes.74 Given this relationship between media and the imaginative construction of modern identities, it is in­ter­est­ing to consider a portrait of Khady Ndoye (figure 2.12), which features not one but two radios. ­These radios are, strictly speaking, not props. At least, the larger wooden console radio is not a prop ­because, when I visited Khady Ndoye’s home in Dakar, in 2008, it was still ­there. This does not mean, however, that the radio is not an ele­ment of the “backdrop” in Appadurai’s sense, which explic­itly extends beyond the literal definition of ­either a prop or a backdrop to become the background for this broader and ongoing work of the modern imagination. At the same time, the fact that ­there are, quite literally, two radios in this image forces us to acknowledge the coexistence, in a single image, of plural histories of a given media technology and, therefore, of a multiplicity of backdrops. The Road to Ouidah . . . ​and the Moon

2.12 (NEXT PAGE)  Portrait of

Khady Faye Ndoye with two radios. Photogra­ pher unknown. Dakar, Senegal, 1960s. Collec­ tion of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

108

At the opposite end of the spectrum are ­those props and backdrops that have been largely overlooked by Western commentators. One of my favorite examples of t­ hese are the wooden h ­ orses that the photographer Benoît Adjovi and I talked about, in 2009 and again in 2013, in the courtyard of his Cotonou home. ­These, too, encode imaginative acts and experiences of modernity that remain largely illegible when viewed through the lenses imposed by Western audiences. As we sat together looking through Adjovi’s archives on a quiet street in the Sainte-­Rita neighborhood, the photographer told me the story of how he had opened his studio, Studio Africa Photo, in 1959, in a neighborhood of Cotonou called Jericho. At the time, he had just completed a four-­year apprenticeship ­under Justin Tométy, one of the few African photog­raphers to own and operate a full-­time studio in Cotonou during the colonial period.75 As we got to talking about the business of his Jericho studio, Adjovi told me that he

chaPter two

2.13 (NEXT PAGE) ​Double

portrait of vaudoun priestesses with bells. Many urban studio photog­raphers also worked in itinerant practice in rural regions, shooting in villages while traveling for other reasons. Photo­graph: Benoît Adjovi. Benin, 1960s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

110

commissioned all of his backdrops from a single painter, Julien Gbaguidi, and that he always tried to have five backdrops in rotation at any one time. Gbaguidi painted the backdrops on a wooden board or heavy cotton sheet; Adjovi mounted them ­behind a curtain and above a series of shallow steps, on which the sitter was then posed. Gbaguidi’s backdrops are s­imple yet elegant, and many incorporate ele­ments drawn from Western portraiture: vistas extending down verdant garden pathways and tree-­lined alleys, or up flights of stone steps and through porticoes.76 ­Others are more unexpected and invite more fanciful or, perhaps, more didactic juxtapositions, as we may note in an image (figure 2.11) that combines a backdrop depicting a road winding through a village of thatched-­roof huts with a telephone. Is the sitter in the village or is she rather imagining that she is calling someone ­there? One day in 2009, as Adjovi and I leafed through contact sheets and prints looking at examples of vari­ous props and backdrops, we s­ topped on a photo­ graph featuring a wooden h ­ orse prop, of which I had seen several versions in photo­graphs in Adjovi’s negative archives.77 At first, I was baffled by the size of the ­horse, which seemed to me too small to be legible as a ­horse. Was it a goat? A calf ? The photographer reassured me that it was a h ­ orse, adding, with evident pride, that the wooden ­horse had been a very popu­lar prop: “Je l’ai inventée moi-­même” (I came up with it [the ­horse idea] myself ). He explained the appeal thus: “Même en l’absence d’un cheval, le ou la client(e) peut monter sur ça et avoir l’impression d’être assis sur un vrai cheval” (Even in the absence of a h ­ orse, the client can climb onto it and feel like he or she is sitting on a real ­horse).78 Just a day or two before, the photographer had told me about the first time he had ever seen a ­horse in Cotonou: the mount of a French gendarme. So rare was the sight that a large crowd had gathered, and Adjovi de­cided to take a picture. (Horses remain, ­today, relatively scarce in Benin, given its location in the tsetse zone.) Neither the gendarme nor the h ­ orse, however, was ­really the subject of this photo­graph. Rather, it was the crowd—­the largest one that the photographer had ever seen in Cotonou. In both cases, in the studio portraits featuring wooden h ­ orses and the documentary photo­graph of the gendarme’s mount, the ­horse signifies modernity and the rapid transformations that w ­ ere taking place in Cotonou in the 1950s, as much as any telephone or radio. Not a wooden ­horse but a miniature inflatable ­horse links ­these conversations that I had with Adjovi to yet another series of images that we looked at together in Cotonou. ­These ­were photo­graphs that Adjovi had taken in rural villages while traveling to Ouidah, a historically significant city in Benin and the photographer’s ancestral home. The photographer spoke with emotion about ­these trips to Ouidah, during which he liked to take portraits of vaudoun

chaPter two

priestesses and vaudoun initiates, or féticheuses (figures 2.13 and 2.14). As we sat looking at ­these portraits, the photographer pointed to certain details and decoded them for me, explaining that a par­tic­u­lar way of tying their pagnes (figure 2.14) or the fact that they held cowbells (figure 2.13) indicated the subjects’ readiness for worship or their devotion to a par­tic­u­lar deity. In a group portrait of féticheuses that we looked at, a small inflatable ­horse is vis­i­ble in the foreground, indicating, again, a connection with a par­tic­u­lar deity.

Wild Circulation

111

2.14 ​Portrait of four

vaudoun initiates. Photo­ graph: Benoît Adjovi. Benin, 1960s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

112

In a ­later conversation, in 2013, Adjovi reiterated that ­these road trips to Ouidah had been ­really impor­tant to him. For it was during ­these trips that he photographed el­derly ­people in the villages, and for many of them this was the first time that they had ever had their photo­graph taken. The photographer told me that he liked to do this work b­ ecause, if he did not photo­graph ­these ­people, no one would: “Et ceux-­là meurent sans laisser des traces” (And t­ hese ­people would die without leaving a trace).79 His insistence on the fact that he had taken ­these subjects’ first photo­graphs affirms what I myself and other scholars working in the region have felt compelled to point out: that the majority of ­people living in ex-­aof territories had their first photo­graphs taken not, as is

chaPter two

often assumed, by French photog­raphers or by t­ hose working for the colonial administration but by local studio photog­raphers.80

­ hese photo­graphs of vaudoun priestesses taken on the road to Ouidah alert T us to still other material and mediatic connections with religion, including, most notably, Islam. Prayer beads, prayer mats, and, painted on backdrops, images of Mecca and other impor­tant mosques figure prominently in the archives of west African studio photog­raphers, yet ­these, too, have gone largely

Wild Circulation

2.15 ​Double portrait of

elders posed in front of a patchwork backdrop. In interviews, photog­ raphers of the in­de­pen­ dence generation often stressed the importance, to them personally, of photographing el­derly ­people living in rural areas. Photo­graph: Benoît Adjovi. Benin, late 1960s or early 1970s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

113

unremarked by Western critics and curators. In figure 2.6, for example, three prayer mats depicting mosques are hung vertically to form a continuous backdrop. Mecca backdrops w ­ ere often used in photo­graphs commemorating the Hajj; sometimes, painted images of mosques ­were combined with prayer mats and bowls of food in photo­graphs taken to celebrate the conclusion of the Ramadan fast. T ­ hese photo­graphs pick up and repeat, on the visual level, a defining characteristic of Islam in west Africa: its distinctly urban form. ­These props and backdrops also reflect and refract experiences of media, intermediality, mobility, travel, and circulation that link African to Islamic modernity. Enwezor is one of the rare critics to have observed the significance of t­ hese and other markers of Muslim identity in studio portraits from west Africa, and, in the cata­logue for the 2006 Snap Judgments exhibition, he underscores the failure of Western commentators to grasp the myriad markers of Islamic modernity in Keïta’s photo­graphs.81 We might be tempted to argue, ­here, for the significance of something like the “Islamic” (rather than “colonial”) backdrop in west Africa, w ­ ere it not for the extraordinary diversity of forms of religious and spiritual expression that is evident in photog­raphers’ archives in both Porto-­Novo and Cotonou. (Although such diversity is pre­sent in Senegal, it is much more so in Benin.)82 In Adjovi’s archives, photo­graphs of vaudoun priestesses or féticheuses are sandwiched between photo­graphs of Muslims posing with their prayer beads and photo­graphs of young girls in white dresses on the occasion of their first communion (figure 5.7).83 ­These and other images highlighting the complexity and importance of religion and spirituality in west African socie­ties are amply pre­sent in studio photog­raphers’ archives, yet they are rarely included in exhibitions mounted for, or publications targeting, Western audiences.

One last prop that Adjovi and I discussed in his courtyard in Cotonou in 2009 brings to light another overlooked aspect of west African studio practice: collaboration between photog­raphers. I gained my first glimpse of this collaboration when Adjovi and I discussed the booth with the heart-­shaped cutout that appears in several photo­graphs taken in his Jericho studio. At first, I did not pay much attention to this booth—no doubt b­ ecause, in Dakar a year e­ arlier, I had seen a similar heart-­shaped foreground in photo­graphs that had been taken by Oumar Ly, in his studio in Podor in northern Senegal. Ly’s prop was inscribed, just above the heart shape, with the words Meilleurs voeux. It seemed to me more or less unsurprising that two photog­raphers should have the same

114

chaPter two

or similar booths or foregrounds in their studios, even if they ­were based in cities two thousand miles apart.84 Still, I asked Adjovi to tell me about it. He told me that he had first been introduced to the heart-­shaped foreground by sailors (“Je l’ai vu chez les marins”), adding that Cotonou, a port city, had lots of sailors passing through. He explained that sailors w ­ ere excellent clients ­because they often made repeat visits to his studio, and that they sometimes brought him photo­graphs that had been taken in studios in other cities where they had been stationed. This kept him informed of trends in the business and allowed him to see other photog­raphers’ work. One day, one of ­these sailors showed Adjovi a photo­graph featuring this type of heart-­shaped booth. Adjovi turned the photo­graph over to find the studio stamp of a Dakar-­based photographer, which included a street address. He took the information down and, on a whim, wrote a letter to the photographer, explic­itly asking him for more information about the booth. Not only did the Dakar-­based photographer (a Frenchman whose name Adjovi could not remember) respond to this letter, but he enclosed detailed instructions for building the booth, along with a blueprint drawn to scale. As we sat in the courtyard, Adjovi gestured t­ oward the ­house to indicate that he still had the blueprint somewhere and would try to find it if I was so interested. Could I come back in a day or two? Unfortunately, I could not, as my return flight to London was the next day. Oumar Ly passed away as I was revising this manuscript in February 2016, and I was never able to follow up with him about his heart-­shaped cutout.85 Podor was, historically, a strategic river port and home to a French military base, making it at least plausible that the idea for Ly’s cutout also arrived t­ here with sailors. Other stories that Ly recounted in our 2008 interview made it clear that he had been just as enterprising as Adjovi in his quest for new props and backdrops, designed to lure clients into his studio. Ly told me that the more frequently he changed his backdrop, the more likely he was to get repeat customers. Ly volunteered a story about the genesis of a particularly beloved backdrop featuring a passenger jet.86 He told me that he had taken the idea for the jet from a calendar that was hanging on the wall of his studio. He explained that all of the big department stores in Senegal, such as Maurel et Prom, Dèves et Chaumont, and Peyrissac—­modern incarnations of the old, Bordeaux-­based trading houses—­used to give t­ hese wall calendars out to their customers, and that he always kept one hanging in his studio. Once, he noticed that his clients had been particularly fascinated by the photo­graph of a passenger jet that had been included in one of t­hese calendars. He commissioned a backdrop featuring a similar jet, and it became one of his most popu­lar backdrops.

Wild Circulation

115

­ hese and other stories that I was told by photog­raphers about the genesis of T par­tic­u­lar props and backdrops paint a vivid picture of their studios as sites not only for the production, but also for the consumption and dissemination, of images. ­These images ­were drawn from media, spheres of production, and geographic and cultural sites near and far. Just how far away t­ hese sites could be was driven home for me one day when Adjovi and I came across a negative of a photo­graph that, he told me, he had displayed in his Jericho studio: a photo­graph of Neil Armstrong on the moon. The photographer told me that he had reproduced the image (through rephotographing it), which he had seen in a magazine, in part b­ ecause he liked it but also in order to demonstrate to prospective clients his rephotography skills. In 1969, it is almost certain that Adjovi’s studio would not have been the only, or even the first, place that Cotonou’s residents would have encountered photo­graphs of the American moon landing. But it was one such place of encounter, and clearly a privileged one, for it was ­there that they might have their own picture taken. The presence of the moon-­landing photo­graph in Adjovi’s archives only heightens our awareness of the studio as a space for accessing (and not only creating) images: film stills or glamour shots of movie stars, greeting cards or Valentine’s Day cards, images promoting the craft of par­tic­u­lar tailors or testifying to the popularity of a par­tic­u­lar po­liti­cal party, portraits of vaudoun priestesses or portraits commemorating the Hajj, images of jet planes or of Neil Armstrong on the moon.

116

chaPter two

Issue number 4 of the illustrated magazine Bingo, published in May 1953, featured an “­album” of snapshots (­album d’instantanés) submitted by its readers.1 The first of the four photo­graphs is of the falls at Koutomé, Guinea: a small group of figures in the left foreground, with their backs turned to the camera, gives a sense of the cataract’s scale. The second depicts the African American boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, performing (according to the caption) “in a dance number on stage at the French Casino in New York.” The third is a photo­graph of a young Malinké ­woman, from upper Guinea, making a manioc-­based dish, described as “typical of the region.” The fourth image depicts a young Wolof man “wearing his amulets around his neck.” T ­ hese last two images appear to be ethnographic photo­graphs that ­were taken by French photog­raphers working for the colonial administration, judging from their recourse to common ethnographic tropes (the first photo­ graph may also have been an administrative commission). The inclusion of ethnographic photo­graphs in an ­album of reader-­submitted images is a stark reminder to Western readers that such photo­graphs flowed easily in and out of local image ecologies, alongside portraiture, snapshots, fashion photography, and (in the case of the photo­graph of Robinson) media images, from which they ­were not always perceived as distinct.2 Bingo had commenced publication out of editorial offices in Dakar just three months e­ arlier, in February 1953. From its inception, the magazine explic­ itly targeted a Francophone African audience living mainly in l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof).3 The above-­described ­album of reader-­submitted photo­graphs was among several published in the magazine in its early years. In fact, Bingo had been launched with a call for reader submissions, with an

CHAPTER 3

Decolonizing Print Culture The Example of Bingo

obvious focus on photo­graphs: “Bingo is the reflection of African life. Its aim is to capture in images the present-­day activity and immortal beauty of black Africa. Read it; get the word out. Write and tell us what you think, what you would like to see in its pages. Participate in its life by sending us your photos.”4 Beneath the a­ lbum is printed a note of thanks to all t­hose readers who had sent in photo­graphs. The note doubles as an apology to ­those whose submissions did not make the cut: “Thank you to our readers who sent us photo­graphs. We had to cull from them only ­those best suited to reproduction. Many amateur photo­graphs are too blurry, which is a shame, for they are all of interest.”5 The note adds, to this gentle reminder to Bingo’s readers to consider technical quality, a reminder to caption their submissions and to attribute authorship when known.6 The reader who sent in the photo­graph of Robinson is singled out and chastised for submitting a photo­graph that was not r­ eally “personal” and for failing to identify himself, although it is in­ter­est­ing to note that neither of t­ hese issues prevented the image’s inclusion in the a­ lbum.7 The note closes with the mailing address, on rue Carnot in Dakar, to which readers ­were invited to send their photo­graphs. Bingo’s call for submissions, together with this note, suggests that Bingo’s policy of soliciting photographic content from its readers was initially addressed, in 1953, to amateur photog­raphers.8 If we look at the full run of the magazine, however, it immediately becomes clear that the bulk of the photo­ graphs that w ­ ere sent in by Bingo’s readers ­were studio portraits that had been taken by professional photog­raphers working in commercial studio practice in cities across the aof. In the magazine’s early years, t­ hese studio portraits of readers even made the front cover (figures 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3). For the next two de­ cades, despite changes in its editorial direction and in its format, the magazine pursued an innovative editorial policy of publishing ­these photo­graphs of (and not by) its readers. This policy, I argue in this chapter, reflected the monumental social and po­liti­cal changes that came with in­de­pen­dence in 1960. It also brought photography, and specifically portraiture, squarely into the space of po­liti­cal imagination, and it led to the creation of a vibrant archive of portraiture and other popu­lar genres from all over the (ex-)aof. In Bingo’s inaugural issue, Ousmane Socé Diop, its editor, characterized the magazine as the first illustrated magazine ever to have been produced “by Africans for Africans” in the aof: “This magazine is the first fully illustrated publication edited by an African from French West Africa for Africans.”9 Bingo’s editorial offices w ­ ere located in Dakar. The businesses that advertised in its pages and the readers whose letters and photo­graphs ­were published in its

118

chaPter three

3.1 ​Cover of Bingo no. 14 (March 1954), featuring a portrait of Mrs. Safia­ tou Camara of Conakry. Photo: Radio-­Photo T. Chanine, Conakry, no date. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

pages seem also to have been heavi­ly concentrated in Dakar, particularly in the magazine’s early years. On the level of its editorial and featured content, however, Bingo studiously avoided territorial or cultural identification with Senegal, or indeed with any other aof territory, foregrounding its ambition to reach a broadly pan-­aof readership. The magazine’s subtitle, “L’illustré Africain” (The African illustrated), clearly communicated ­these pan-­African ambitions. In ­later years, this subtitle was dropped in ­favor of “Le Mensuel du Monde Noir” (The monthly of the black world), laying claim to a seemingly limitless sphere of diasporic belonging and affiliation.

Decolonizing Print Culture

119

Bingo’s policy of soliciting readers’ photo­graphs is a power­ful testament to the existence, in the early 1950s, of widespread photographic cultures in the aof. This policy simply could not have succeeded without a critical mass of readers who ­were already engaged with photography, and at least some of whom had photo­graphs to spare. That the magazine’s readers w ­ ere ­eager to see their own photo­graphs, principally portraits, shared with an anonymous public supports a central premise of this book: that urban west Africans embraced photography, in the ­middle de­cades of the twentieth ­century, as a means of visual, social, and po­liti­cal experimentation. The willingness of Bingo’s readers to engage in this experimentation publicly, and to cast themselves repeatedly in the role not only of photographic subject but also of interpreter in its pages, is further evidence that photography was one of the technologies through which, to quote Stephanie Newell, “the expanded ‘publics’ of colonial Africa ­were variously ­imagined and addressed.”10 I should underscore that Bingo is my only case study drawn from a print publication, and the magazine is itself a rare example of a print publication that was produced for an African readership in the aof. As such, it gives us unpre­ce­dented insights into the ways that visual practices, interpretive strategies, and media literacies associated with photography ­were being actively translated, at this moment, into print. Ultimately, I argue that the magazine’s editors as well as its readers used photo­graphs to chronicle major social and po­liti­cal transformations that ­were sweeping through the region in this period. Together, they used the forum of a magazine that explic­itly solicited and published photo­graphs of its readers to create a decidedly transcolonial visual public, which, I demonstrate, allowed urban west Africans to consider, to debate, to reimagine, and to visualize their own place in ­these events. Paris on the Front Page

Bingo was never produced entirely “by Africans,” despite Socé’s claim. Rather, it was a Franco-­Senegalese collaboration. Charles de Breteuil, its publisher and financial backer, was a French aristocrat who, throughout the ­middle de­cades of the twentieth c­ entury, led a privately owned publishing empire that ran from Morocco to Madagascar. De Breteuil’s economic resources and social connections ­were unparalleled; his distribution networks on the continent, massive.11 Thierry Perret, in one of the rare scholarly monographs to have been published on the Francophone African press, emphasizes the quasi-­monopolistic nature of de Breteuil’s publishing ventures.12 By my calculation, de Breteuil owned publications in more than a dozen French-­controlled territories in Africa.13 Socé, Bingo’s founding editor, was a well-­known Senegalese writer and intellectual who had served as the Socialist mayor of Rufisque and as a senator in

120

chaPter three

3.2 ​Cover of Bingo no. 20 (September 1954), featuring a portrait of Miss Daba Dia, Miss ­Grand Dakar 1954. Photo: Studio-­Hollywood, Dakar, 1954. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

the French parliament.14 Together with Léopold Senghor, Socé was a member of the first generation of Senegalese intellectuals to have attended university in France. De Breteuil and Socé’s collaboration enabled them to maximize the combined financial and cultural capital of their networks, which extended far beyond France and Senegal and, in fact, well beyond French colonial Africa. Among the friends whom they consulted or looked to in launching and devel­ ere ­those in high places not only in Paris but also oping Bingo in its early years w in London, Johannesburg, and Chicago. I learned about the astonishing scope of ­these networks when I had the opportunity to interview Michel de Breteuil, Charles’s son and the heir to his publishing empire, in Paris in 2011.

Decolonizing Print Culture

121

Michel emphasized the trailblazing nature both of Bingo, of which he took the helm soon ­after its founding, and of his ­father’s ­earlier newspaper ventures. Michel told me that, in 1933, when his f­ ather founded his first newspaper, Paris-­ Dakar, “­there was no newspaper in Senegal.”15 Having got the idea to start one, he explained, his ­father went to seek the advice of friends at Paris-­Soir, the celebrated French daily, which had the distinction of having the largest circulation of any newspaper in Eu­rope at the time. Among the other publishing ­giants with whom Charles and Michel de Breteuil w ­ ere in contact over the years ­were Jim Bailey and John H. Johnson. Bailey was the publisher of the well-­known South African illustrated magazine Drum, which had commenced publication out of editorial offices in South Africa just two years before, in 1951. The de Breteuils had not only known Bailey personally, but Michel had visited him in Johannesburg. Johnson was the Chicago-­based publisher of Ebony, for whom Michel expressed g­ reat admiration in our interview, and whom he had traveled to the United States to meet. In fact, scholars have drawn comparisons between Drum and Bingo, as the first two African illustrated magazines.16 But, in our 2011 interview, Michel was adamant about the radical differences in the conditions and orientations of the two magazines—­underscoring the fact that, in the early 1950s, the aof and South Africa ­were heading in directions that ­were, po­liti­cally, diametrically opposed. Michel argued that a comparison between Bingo and Ebony would be more apt.17 Next, the elder de Breteuil arranged to have a printing press and other printing equipment flown to Senegal on some of the first commercial flights from Eu­rope to Africa. The equipment, including the very large—­and Michel emphasized animatedly—­extremely heavy platens, arrived in Dakar courtesy of “Jean Mermoz and the other Latécoère pi­lots.” Mermoz was a heroic figure of early French aviation, who made history by flying the first long-­haul routes over the Atlantic, from Dakar to Natal, Brazil. Attesting to the impression that ­these flights made on ­people living in Senegal, a neighborhood of Dakar still bears his name. Latécoère (­later called Aéropostale) was France’s first commercial airline. This unlikely image, of dashing celebrity aviators (among the other Latécoère pi­lots, and more likely to be known by non-­Francophone readers, was Antoine de Saint-­Exupéry) arriving in Dakar with planeloads of printing equipment as they ­stopped to refuel on their way to South Amer­i­ca, highlights the extent of de Breteuil’s networks and of his ability to mobilize them, along with large sums of capital. It also suggests that ­there was, in 1933, no printing equipment in Senegal, or at least none available for commercial use on the scale envisioned by de Breteuil.18 In our interview, Michel shared myriad other practical details, touching for example on the format and a­ ctual physical layout

122

chaPter three

of his ­father’s first newspapers. In the early years of Paris-­Dakar, Michel explained, the paper comprised four pages, which always followed a set formula. On the front page was the news from Paris; the local news from Africa ran inside.19 Benedict Anderson, in ­Imagined Communities, dubs this tried-­and-­ true mechanism of empire, in which news from the metropole is given pre­ce­ dence over local news from the colony, the “infinitely replicable asymmetry of the provincial press.”20 Michel went on to emphasize the newfound speed with which, in the 1930s, not just printing equipment but the news could be brought from Paris to Dakar, thanks to ­these long-­haul flights. Indeed, it is vital to underscore, given Anderson’s arguments about the role of the press in advancing new and explic­ itly imperial forms of territorialization, that this news had previously traveled from Paris by sea to Dakar and other colonial capitals, before traveling inland by telegraph. This acceleration of the speed at which the news could travel, facilitated by commercial air travel, revolutionized the timescales of colonial experience, reducing (although by no means eliminating) the time it took for news of events happening in metropolitan France to reach west African territories. At one point in our conversation, Michel seemed to suggest that, in the early days of Paris-­Dakar, the front page was actually flown in on ­these Latécoère flights, having been typeset in Paris.21 This revolution of the news and of associated timescales predicts and prefigures the even more radical acceleration of pro­cesses of deterritorialization, and reterritorialization, that ­were on the horizon with the evolution of other, ­later technologies, such as broadcast radio. According to Michel, when Paris-­Dakar moved from a weekly to a daily format in 1936, it became the first daily newspaper in sub-­Saharan Africa.22 Even a­ fter it became a daily, this provincial format was maintained: Paris on the front page, Africa inside. It is this format that Bingo would contest by putting Africa “on the front page,” and that it would, by placing photo­graphs of Africans on the cover, begin to decolonize.

Michel’s account of his ­father’s early publishing ventures is consistent with that found in the scholarship on the press in Francophone west Africa, produced by a handful of scholars, including Perret, Gil-­François Euvrard, and Rosalynde Ainslie.23 It is impor­tant to point out that, u ­ ntil Bingo’s founding, none of de Breteuil’s newspapers, in the aof or elsewhere on the continent, had been intended for an African readership. Michel did not explic­itly state this in our conversation, yet it was implied in his description of Bingo’s founding in a

Decolonizing Print Culture

123

moment of radical change. He said: “But in ’52, ­things ­were—­well, in 1952—­ you understand that ­things ­were ­really happening  .  .  . ​po­liti­cally, socially.  .  .  . ​ ­Things had ­really changed” (Mais ’52, c’était—­bon, 52—­vous voyez bien qu’il se passaient des choses . . . ​des choses politiques, sociales. . . . ​Les choses ont changé). Among the events that marked this moment, according to Michel, was the unpre­ce­dented success of Senghor’s po­liti­cal party, the Bloc Démocratique Sénégalais (bds), in the French legislative election of 1951. Soon thereafter, in 1952, the bds won the Senegalese territorial elections by a landslide, with the result that, for the first time in history, a single African po­liti­cal party gained control of an electoral body that was becoming, in the run-up to in­ de­pen­dence, a crucial driver of change. As Michel and t­ hose I spoke with in Senegal noted, the overwhelming success of the bds in both elections made increasingly palpable the shift in the center of gravity, away from Paris, to the continent. The bds had been founded in a schism with the French Socialist party (the French Section of the Workers’ International, known locally by its French acronym, as the sfio): the party with which Bingo’s editor, Socé, was associated. The scholarship on the press histories confirms that, u ­ ntil the 1950s, de Breteuil’s publications, as well as the majority of newspapers and magazines circulating in the aof, ­were produced by and for a small but apparently very well-­read population of resident French.24 Ainslie writes, “­These ­were papers produced by Frenchmen for Frenchmen,” adding, “No effort seems to have been made to reach African readers.”25 A significant counterweight to this omission can be found in the many under­ground anticolonial newspapers, which had a very ­limited circulation and which ­were technically illegal—­a class of publication that was indeed produced by Africans for Africans, on which still less scholarship has been done. Even in cities such as Saint-­Louis, with its long history of French-­language education and deep library culture (connected not only to French colonialism but also to much longer traditions of Arabic-­language scholarship), colonial policy, economic conditions, and other ­factors thwarted the development of a robust local press.26 Euvrard’s study of this history of serial publications in the aof confirms, in quantitative terms, the comparatively late flourishing of a local press targeting African readers and produced with their participation. His data are based on an inventory of serial publications cata­logued by the French national library between 1895 and 1960 (the start and end dates of the aof’s existence as a formal administrative body). Euvrard’s research is furthermore invaluable in clarifying the distinction between a “local” newspaper (that is to say, a newspaper edited or printed in the aof) and a fully functioning local press.27 He

124

chaPter three

reports that, in the sixty-­five years of the aof’s existence, 674 publications associated with the aof ­were cata­logued in the French national library. Of ­these 674, 74 ­percent commenced publication between 1945 and 1960, and 58 ­percent of ­these ­were published in Senegal (reflecting its privilege as the location of the aof’s capital city and a correspondingly high concentration of commercial and administrative structures associated with the French colonial presence). For obvious reasons, the cata­logue of the French national library should not be mistaken for an exhaustive list of publications that ­were produced in or circulated in the aof. The example of anticolonial newspapers is, ­here again, impor­tant: they w ­ ere, the evidence strongly suggests, assiduously collected by French authorities and physically deposited in colonial-­era libraries, but they w ­ ere never cata­logued (a fact that I discuss at greater length in chapter 4). The figures compiled by Euvrard in other words give us, by definition, a distorted repre­sen­ta­tion of the ­actual local publishing scene, although they remain a testament to the extraordinary dynamism of that scene between 1945 and 1960.28 Before closing this excursus on the emergence of local print cultures in the aof, it is impor­tant to note the stark contrasts with the situation in neighboring British-­controlled territories. ­There, as Newell documents, African-­owned newspapers began to appear as early as the 1880s, and the participation of Africans in editing, publishing, and writing for serial publications ensured that, by the last de­cades of the nineteenth c­ entury, British colonial territories in west Africa had become “a dynamic zone of literary creativity and textual experimentation,” in which local writers had “numerous opportunities to contribute material for publication, and editors repeatedly defined the press as a vehicle to host public debates.”29 Newell attributes t­ hese differences in the press histories of French-­and British-­controlled territories to “differences in French and British colonial policies ­towards education, citizenship, and language.”30 Ainslie gives a roughly parallel account, suggesting that, in French-­controlled territories, “the more selective, though intensive, system of African education” produced a much smaller percentage of the population that was literate in French.31 Ainslie goes on to cite the French colonial policy of “direct rule” as a further f­actor, noting that this policy supported “a tax on the import of newsprint and printing machinery into the African colonies, but none on the import of newspapers.”32 Fi­nally, we must keep in mind the often many ambiguities of literacy in both colonial and postcolonial African contexts. In west Africa in par­tic­u­lar, where literacy frequently means literacy in the colonial language, we must remember that attempts to mea­sure and define literacy ­were generally made

Decolonizing Print Culture

125

(and often continue to be made) within colonial cultural and po­liti­cal frameworks. In a burgeoning body of exciting research on west African print cultures, scholars such as Newell, Onookome Okome, Karin Barber, and Tsitsi Jaji have all argued for the necessity of expanding definitions of literacy beyond t­ hose imposed by colonial frameworks.33 ­These and other scholars have argued for a much broader and more complex understanding of literacy that would necessarily extend far beyond its conventional definition, to include, for example, collaborative and collective literacies as well as ­those that travel across, and combine, dif­fer­ent media. In light of this impor­tant and still nascent body of work, we can begin to grasp forms of literacy that extend beyond that of conventional alphabetic literacy practiced by an individual reader engaging, in isolation, with a single text to include literacies practiced by groups of readers (including some who might not be able to read the printed page) who may collaborate in collective acts of reading and interpretation. A fuller treatment of t­ hese questions exceeds the scope of this book, although I return to research by Newell and Jaji on the topic of African media literacies and their specific relevance to Bingo ­toward the end of this chapter. Suffice it to say for now, these broader historical arguments about changes in colonial education and differences in colonial policy confirm that it was not ­until the 1950s that both colonial authorities and urban Africans began to imagine something like mass literacy in French as pos­si­ble, or desirable, for a critical mass of ­people—­the moment at which Bingo was launched. Africa on the Cover

A photographic portrait of Mrs. N’Doye, née Fatou Seck, ran on the front cover of Bingo no. 11, published in December 1953 (figure 3.3). A young and fashionably coiffed ­woman wearing elegant jewelry looks, seemingly modestly, away from the camera. Her head and glance are turned to a point just over her left shoulder, creating a slight diagonal ­angle. The ­angle draws our attention to the multiple emblems of urban sophistication that feature prominently in the portrait: her fash­ion­able coiffure, consisting of wool hair extensions; the intricate design of her earring; her hair ornament, imitating a French military medal.34 The ­angles of her cheek and chin are complemented by the pattern on the woven-­straw backdrop ­behind her, which is in turn complemented by the cropping of the image and composition of the cover: the portrait is not centered but rather printed flush to the right, beneath the masthead, on which the word “Bingo” dances jauntily in block letters. The caption (printed on the contents page) gives us details of Mrs. N’Doye’s ­family status, ethnicity, religion, level of education, and social class. Deceptive

126

chaPter three

3.3 ​Cover of Bingo no. 11 (December 1953), featuring a portrait of Mrs. Fatou N’Doye, née Seck, of Rufisque. Photo: Olympia Photo Yitka Kilian, Senegal, no date. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

in its listlike simplicity, the caption invokes a startling density of identity markers: Portrait of Mrs. N’Doye, née Fatou Seck, of Rufisque. ­Daughter of Babacar Seck and Diass Samba, she is the very ideal of Wolof beauty. She still lives in the Merina, where she was born and where, in 1947, she married Mr. Abdoulaye N’Doye, who works at the Central Post Office in Dakar, as a telegraph operator for South American cables. The c­ ouple have three ­children: Mamadou, Ousmane, and Kardiata. Mrs. N’Doye, an excellent ­house­wife, speaks French very well and is fond of dancing and the cinema.

Decolonizing Print Culture

127

Her dream is to see Paris. An avid reader of Bingo, her only complaint is that it does not have enough pages! Photo credit: Olympia Photo, Yitka Kilian.35 First and foremost, the caption establishes Mrs. N’Doye’s status as a citadine, or urbanite, highlighting her own and her husband’s achievements, including, for example, his employment in Dakar’s Central Post Office as a telegraph ­operator. The subject’s own accomplishments, as an “excellent ­house­wife” with a high level of education, are ­here painted in a tableau that is almost a caricature of the image of the évoluée: “Her dream is to see Paris”; “She is fond of dancing and the cinema.” Importantly, the caption also pre­sents Mrs. N’Doye and her husband as a ­couple with three c­ hildren, a nuclear-­family-­style structure unknown in Senegal prior to colonization. Other details serve to locate the subject of the photo­graph in a par­tic­u­lar neighborhood of Rufisque (the Merina) and, si­mul­ta­neously, in a series of transcolonial, transnational, and global networks. Many of the qualities evoked in the description of Mrs. N’Doye’s lifestyle in the caption ­will be shared by any reader of the magazine: formal education in French (connoting a relatively high level of literacy in French); a friend or close f­ amily member earning cash wages and therefore with disposable income and leisure. And yet the caption conveys much more than bourgeois desires and aspirations, particularly when it is placed in contact, not only with the portrait, but with the magazine’s other published content. The cascade of proper names and place-­names mentioned in the caption, for example, suggests a self-­conscious cosmopolitanism articulated from a vantage point that is distinctively west African, embedded in both French colonial and Islamic cir­ cuits and networks of circulation and communication: Dakar is h ­ ere linked to South Amer­i­ca via telegraph, and Mrs. N’Doye’s Muslim identity is made explicit in the first names of her sons (“Mamadou” is a common west African form of “Muhammad”; “Ousmane” is a common Senegalese name derived from Arabic and closely associated with Sunni identity). We are told that Mrs. N’Doye enjoys (or aspires to) such “modern” and cosmopolitan activities as magazine reading, moviegoing, and international travel (Paris is her dream destination), provided that they do not take her too far away from her parents, whose names (her ­father’s name is also explic­itly Muslim) we are also told. ­These very strong associations between Islam and cosmopolitanism, which ­were typical of urban west Africa and which I touched on in the last chapter, are a red thread tying the caption to the magazine’s other published content, including advertisements.

128

chaPter three

3.4 ​An advertisement for Agfa cameras and films (including Agfacolor) that ran in Bingo no. 97 (February 1961), alongside a feature targeting amateur photog­raphers. The ad emphasizes local distri­ bution in Africa. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Take, for example, the advertisement for a brand of pencil called Minaret: “All types of pencils, for school and office” (figure Intro.4). The advertisement is predicated on the notion that the magazine’s readers ­will recognize, and lay claim to, the ties that bind Islam to literacy and modernity, while si­mul­ta­neously foregrounding the ideal reader’s access to formal education and employment (“for school and office”). Ensuring that the point is also made visually, the drawing of the pencil is accompanied by a small drawing of a minaret on a mosque. The advertisement also draws attention to the ideal reader’s status as a consumer, through a “buy African”–­style pitch for Moroccan manufacturing. Other advertisements that ran in the magazine in the 1950s included ­those for Tissus Boussac (a French fabric manufacturer), for Fructines-­Vichy (“delicious fruit-­flavored candies”), and for photographic equipment and supplies, including cameras, lenses, films, and papers. Advertisements for cameras and photographic supplies also drew on “buy African” motifs. (See the advertisement reproduced in the introduction, for the Berthiot Bloc Métal camera: its Pontiac lenses ­were manufactured in Casablanca, as is clearly stated in the advertisement [figure Intro.4].) Some advertisements for photographic supplies even mentioned the suitability of their emulsions to tropical conditions, and in ­later years they depicted what appear to be black African consumers (figures Intro.16, 3.4, and 3.9). The inclusion, in the caption, of Muslim and other identity markers associated specifically with urban west Africa paints a more nuanced picture than that of pure assimilation to French culture. Bingo urges its readers to interpret Mrs. N’Doye’s portrait—­and by extension its larger proj­ect—­through the lens of multiple and overlapping identities: she is at one and the same time African and French; wife, d ­ aughter, and m ­ other; a good Muslim who also likes dancing, an excellent ­house­wife who also likes reading, an upholder of Wolof ideals of beauty who is also a dutiful consumer of media images, in the form of movies and (it goes almost without saying) photo­graphs. Even the photo credit, “Olympia Photo, Yitka Kilian,” at the bottom of the caption, contributes to our understanding of the complex and multifaceted nature of the identities that Bingo sought to instantiate and reflect to its readers, for the credit suggests that the photographer who took this par­tic­u­lar image was neither African nor French. The surname Kilian is Czech; the first name Yitka is, in the Czech-­speaking world, usually a ­woman’s name and Jewish.36 This seemingly minor detail is impor­tant insofar as it reminds us that, in Rufisque, Dakar, and other large cities in west Africa, photography studios w ­ ere veritable crucibles of cultural exchange. Among the names of photog­raphers who, we know, oper-

130

chaPter three

ated studios in west Africa ­were not only French and African names, but ­those denoting Syrian, Lebanese, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Guianese or Martinican, and African American heritage. Michel affirmed that ­great care went into the se­lection of the magazine’s cover images, choosing as an example his ­father’s decision to run a photo­ graph of Charles Éboué on the cover of Bingo no. 1. Charles was the son of Félix Éboué, a famous politician of Guianese descent, who, when he was appointed governor of Guadeloupe in 1936, became the first black governor of a French colony.37 Éboué’s son Charles had an equally exceptional ­career path: he was the first black pi­lot ever to fly for a French commercial airline (Air France). Michel said that his f­ ather wanted the younger Éboué’s portrait for the cover of the inaugural issue ­because “the idea ­behind Bingo was to show Africans’ advancement” (avec Bingo, l’idée était de montrer l’avancement des Africains). It is impor­tant to emphasize, particularly given the assimilationist overtones of this comment, that assimilationist ideas w ­ ere not exclusively the weapons of the colonizers, and that they w ­ ere selectively appropriated and redeployed by Africans as weapons in the ser­vice of liberation. Republican ideas of citizenship and ideals of equality, for example, became a crucial driver of the Africanization of government structures in the late colonial period, and the rhe­toric of equality (“equal pay for equal work”) became an impor­tant ­factor in west African ­labor organ­izing.38 In view of t­ hese redeployments, Bingo’s decision to place the portrait of Mrs. N’Doye on the cover of Bingo no. 11, nearly a year a­ fter Éboué’s portrait, was, I would venture, an even bolder move. For in featuring an image of a ­house­wife (rather than a “­great man”) the magazine enlisted its readers in a proj­ect of visual decolonization that was extending to reach larger numbers of ­people and was, in this sense, becoming more demo­cratic. We may place, in counterpoint to ­these cover images, a letter that was published, in Bingo no. 3 (April 1953), from Mr. Nabbie Yaya Camara, a reader from Conakry. An employee of the finance department of the Conakry-­Niger railroad, Mr. Yaya Camara voices, in this letter, his own vision of the types of images that he would like to see in the magazine: “I read very avidly Nos. 1 and 2 of Bingo, the African illustrated. ­Because for unscrupulous journalists Africa is a bastion of frightful savages. B ­ ecause degenerate reporters seem to have made it their mission never to show our land in its true image [sous son vrai visage].”39 Mr. Yaya Camara’s letter suggests that he understands himself as participating, as a reader, in a po­liti­cal proj­ect—­one connected not with government or with party politics but rather with a “politics of repre­sen­ta­tion.”40 According to his analy­sis, a ­simple portrait could easily take on collective

Decolonizing Print Culture

131

significance and, by virtue of its public circulation and collective recognition by African readers, become the “true image” of Africa. Politics/Antipolitics of Repre­sen­ta­tion

Bingo’s publication of reader-­submitted photo­graphs was a stroke of genius from the standpoint of cultivating a loyal readership. It was, I suspect, also a practical expedient, and one that had an immediate impact on the ­careers of local photog­raphers. For this policy made it pos­si­ble to access meaningful (not to mention f­ ree) visual content guaranteed to appeal to a wide readership, at a time when French photog­raphers and press agencies held a mono­poly on reportage and photojournalism. In 1953, this mono­poly was, my own research suggests, just beginning to loosen, and it would have radically l­imited the pool of “African” images that the magazine could access. Lending credence to this hypothesis, photog­raphers with French surnames dominate t­hose listed in the magazine’s early credits: “A. Martin; Information Ser­vice of the Governor General; Information Ser­vice of the Cameroon Del­e­ga­tion; Photos Peroche in Dakar; H. Lacheroy; Interpress; Photos Simon-­Huchet; Y.M. Pech; Labitte (Dakar); Agence Diffusion Presse; Cameroon Information; Peroche; Rec­ord; Keystone.”41 The list, which includes the names of individual photog­raphers as well as t­ hose of French and British press agencies, conspicuously lacks a single African name. Nearly all of the photog­raphers advertising in the magazine’s early issues appear to have been African, however. Bingo no. 1, in which only Eu­ro­pean photog­raphers ­were credited, contains this advertisement: “Photo-­Mello. 16 bis Bd. de la Gueule Tapée, Tel. 67.20. All types of photos. Expeditions throughout French West Africa. Portraits–Enlargements. Photos taken in your home, by appointment” (figure 3.5). Another advertisement appearing in the inaugural issue is an advertisement for the studio of the well-­known Senegalese photo­ grapher Mama Casset: “African-­Photo: Hadj Casset Gnias. Ave­nue Blaise Diagne (­angle 31), Telephone 71–45. b.p. 7003. Dakar–Medina. Every­thing for photography. Portraits–Enlargements. Photographic reportages. Photo buffs. Expeditions to the interior” (figure 3.6). Casset’s studio is, like Photo-­Mello, located in Dakar’s Medina. The dominance of African-­owned and -­operated studios in the advertisements that appeared in the first issue—­even as African names w ­ ere missing from the published image credits—­makes it clear that, by 1953, local, African photog­raphers ­were not only well established but also ­eager to diversify their practice and expand their clientele. In issue number 3, published in April 1953 (the same issue in which Mr. Yaya Camara’s letter calling for au­then­tic images was published), the name “Photo Mix” appears in the list of credits. If this is the photographer Mix Guèye, he

132

chaPter three

is, by my calculation, the first African photographer to claim a credit in a feature story in the magazine. Immediately thereafter, African names came to appear increasingly frequently in t­hese feature credits. This rapid increase in the repre­sen­ta­tion of photo­graphs taken by African photog­raphers in the magazine’s feature content suggests that, not only for its readers but also for local photog­raphers, Bingo afforded an impor­tant space in which to intervene in a con­temporary “politics of repre­sen­ta­tion” from a vantage point that was distinctly African. That the magazine’s readers w ­ ere also in ­favor of this proj­ect is amply evident both from their letters about photo­graphs and from their letters about politics. Witness the exchange of letters that took place between Mr. Amadou Diop, a reader from Thiès, and Socé as editor, published in the magazine’s second (March 1953) issue: “I r­ eally enjoyed the first issue of Bingo. Its time has come, and my desire is to welcome it. Also, I hope you ­will permit me to ask a question. Are you pursuing, ­behind this magazine, a par­tic­u­lar politics? You are a party leader. Is Bingo a party organ? I would like your assurance on this point.”42 Socé’s response was as follows: Dear reader: Your desire to find in Bingo an apo­liti­cal magazine concerned exclusively with serving the interests of black Africa is entirely

Decolonizing Print Culture

3.5 (LEFT) ​An advertise­

ment for a photography studio, Photo-­Mello, located in Dakar’s Medina neighborhood, that ran in the inaugural issue of Bingo (Febru­ ary 1953). Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Natio­ nale de France. 3.6 (RIGHT) ​An advertise­ ment for the studio of the well-­known photo­ grapher Mama Casset that ran in Bingo no. 1 (February 1953). Ave­nue Blaise Diagne, which runs from the Medina to the Plateau, was fabled for its very high concentration of photo­ graphy studios. Courtesy of ­Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque ­Nationale de France.

133

justified. . . . ​Africa is ­going through or ­ought to be, in the second half of the 20th ­century, a decisive phase in its historical destiny. For t­ hose of us who are African, the only v­ iable solution is one predicated on the primacy of autochthonous interests. Bingo, by capturing in images and in words both our past—of which we have no archive—­and our pre­sent evolution, must affirm the dignity of the black man, help him to know who he is and to prepare, for himself, an equitable ­future. That is its sole ambition.43 Befitting his vocation as a writer, Socé conceives of the magazine’s mission in the form of a well-­rounded story: only once Africans have knowledge, in images and in words, of their past and their “pre­sent evolution” ­will they be able to realize a better ­future. Socé’s response adroitly deflects attention from ­matters of party politics. In effect, he argues that the magazine’s mission (its “sole ambition”) is less to develop a politics than an aesthetics serving the evolution of the aof. He calls this proj­ect of African self-­representation an “apo­ liti­cal proj­ect,” even as he invokes “the primacy of autochthonous interests,” a phrase that would have had a sharply po­liti­cal valence at the time. Michel, too, insisted that Bingo was not po­liti­cal. As I listened to our 2011 interview several years ­later, I was at first baffled by this claim. How could such a proj­ect, of telling a story about Africa that would serve the interests of black Africans ­under colonialism, ever ­really be “apo­liti­cal”? I was also struck, in hindsight, by the extent to which Michel’s account of the magazine’s founding privileged his f­ ather’s role, as publisher, over that of his Senegalese counterpart. At one point, he described Socé as a “charming” and “distinguished” man who was “not particularly po­liti­cal [qui ne faisait pas de politique particulièrement],” emphasizing his social graces and connections as a writer rather than as a politician. But Socé was not just a man of letters. Prior to becoming Bingo’s editor, he had been what by con­temporary standards I would call active in politics: he held the post of mayor of Rufisque (1936–1945) and had served in the French Senate; he went on to serve a second term as mayor a­ fter stepping down from the post of editor in the post-­independence years (1960–1964). In fact, in 1956, Socé founded his own po­liti­cal party, the Mouvement Socialiste d’Union Sénégalaise.44 Again, I was baffled by Michel’s description of Socé as “not particularly po­liti­cal,” given that he had both held elected office and founded a po­liti­cal party. Michel’s rather confusing repre­ sen­ta­tion of the perspectives of his ­father’s and his own Senegalese partners is a potent reminder that t­ here is more than one story to tell about the magazine, and almost certainly more than one perspective on its politics. I myself failed to access the Senegalese perspective in my research on Bingo: Socé died

134

chaPter three

in 1973, and, although I contacted his descendants, I was not able to interview them for this book. Add to which, Michel’s assertion that the magazine was “not po­liti­cal” makes a very par­tic­u­lar kind of sense in the French context, in which ideas about press freedom evolved differently than in other parts of Eu­rope and the Anglophone world. It makes even more sense in the aof, where the first newspapers targeting African readers w ­ ere often explic­itly associated with par­tic­u­lar po­liti­cal parties.45 To say that the magazine was “not po­liti­cal” is, in other words, in both the French and the larger, colonial or Francophone context, precisely not to say that po­liti­cal topics could not be discussed ­there. Indeed, Michel told me that the magazine was, like all of his ­father’s publications, a space in which the expression of a diversity of po­liti­cal views was welcome: “Every­one was allowed to write in the newspaper. They interviewed every­body. Every­one said what­ever he or she wished. That was the basis of my ­father’s newspapers, the basis of all of his publications [Tout le monde avait le droit d’écrire dans le journal. On interviewait tout le monde. Tout le monde faisait des déclarations. Ça, c’était toujours la base du journal, chez lui, de tous ses journaux].” Perret, too, emphasizes that the magazine embraced this (more or less liberal) conception of press freedom, and that this set it apart from its competitors. For this very reason, the magazine became a proving ground not only for a generation of African photog­raphers, but also for a younger generation of African journalists, who found in Bingo’s pages, according to Perret, “un espace relatif de liberté” (a comparatively f­ ree space).46 This was first and foremost a lifestyle magazine, to be sure, but one that was, in the guise of a lifestyle magazine, also a public forum. ­Toward a Transcolonial Visual Public

Not every­one can be a cover girl, and most of the reader-­submitted photo­ graphs that ­were published in the magazine ­were, in the magazine’s early years, printed at modest dimensions and grouped together on “La Page de Bingo,” which was often actually a two-­page spread (figures 2.8, 3.7, and 3.8). The images themselves could be wildly heterogeneous; their pre­sen­ta­tion, eclectic. Most of ­these photo­graphs ­were, as I noted previously, portraits taken by studio photog­raphers. Some but not all ­were captioned. No discernible effort was made to impose thematic princi­ples of organ­ization on them. “This magnificent three-­month-­old baby is not a Bingo reader yet . . . ,” reads the caption ­under one such image, “But . . . ​his ­father, Mr. Moustapha Cissé, a teacher at the École Clemenceau, in Thiès, is a faithful reader of The African Illustrated.

Decolonizing Print Culture

135

You ­can’t beat that!” (figure 3.7, center right). On the same page can be found a portrait of a civil servant standing ­behind his desk, on which we see displayed a marriage register. The caption states that the subject, Mr. Félix Sock, an employee of the mairie of Dakar, has presided over “his thirteenth marriage in a single week” (figure 3.7, top left). Self-­described businessmen pose with their briefcases, in African and Eu­ro­pean dress (figures 2.8 and 3.7). Still other photo­graphs sent in by the magazine’s readers commemorate festive occasions: a ­couple dressed to attend a Christian wedding (figure 3.7, center left); a group of university students seeing their friend off at the airport, on his way to France (figure 2.8, bottom right). The motto “All readers of the African Illustrated” appears in a spare yet elegant typeface amid the crowd of photo­graphs. Some of the photo­graphs appearing on “La Page de Bingo” ­were sent in for publication not by west Africans in the aof but by t­ hose living elsewhere in the French empire. Portraits sent in by west African soldiers, stationed in Morocco, Algeria, and Indochina, ­were symbolically impor­tant, at a moment when French control of territories in the Maghreb and in Asia was becoming increasingly tenuous—­and when the diaspora of west African soldiers stationed or fighting overseas, in the context of anticolonial strug­gles, was rapidly growing. An example is the photo­graph of two Senegalese brigadiers stationed in Casablanca, which I mentioned in passing in chapter 2 (figure 2.8; see also figure 3.8). The existence of this imperial readership highlights the magazine’s very wide circulation—­estimated to have been 100,000 at its height—as well as the many complexities involved in representing an increasingly diasporic image of west Africa.47 ­These and other photo­graphs sent in by west African soldiers stationed in French colonial territories in other parts of the world vividly document the power of imperial bonds to create and sustain west African identities. If Bingo’s readers ­were being convened as an emergent public—­and I wish to suggest they w ­ ere—­then the bonds that held this public together w ­ ere produced in part by the French colonial proj­ect, as ­these images of Senegalese soldiers stationed in other colonial territories attest.

Colonial and transcolonial identities and structures of belonging lingered in the magazine, including in t­ hose issues that, a­ fter 1960, openly celebrated the African in­de­pen­dences. ­These structures of belonging remain in evidence, for example, in the requests for pen pals that w ­ ere sometimes published in the form of short letters in the magazine’s back pages. In Bingo no. 112, published in May 1962, Tanoh Tanoh, a seventeen-­year-­old reader from Abidjan,

136

chaPter three

3.7 ​Readers who submit­

ted their photo­graphs could see them pub­ lished alongside other readers’ photo­graphs, on “La Page de Bingo.” In this early (1953) issue, a baby picture is featured alongside a photo­graph of a civil servant, a portrait of a young ­couple attending a Christian wedding, a magician performing a disappearing act, and other portraits, with the headline “Tous lecteurs de l’Illustré Africain!” (They are all readers of the African Illustrated!). Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

3.8 ​Another early (1953)

iteration of “La Page de Bingo” shows a typical mix of studio portraits, candid photo­graphs of west African soldiers stationed overseas (in France or in its other colonial territories), and ID-­card photo­graphs, all submitted by readers. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

states that he would like to exchange letters with young ­people in France, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, and Niger. Jean-­Charles Valet, a twenty-­three-­year-­old reader from Paris, states that he would like to exchange letters with young ­people in Cameroon, Senegal, Tahiti, and Madagascar. Enguené David-­Philippe, a twenty-­two-­year-­old reader from Bafia, Cameroon, casts a wider net, hoping to exchange letters with young ­people in Egypt, Senegal, Switzerland, Amer­i­ca, France, Indochina, and Germany. T ­ hese requests ­were frequently accompanied by the correspondents’ photo­graphs, suggesting that photography also had a role to play in facilitating and extending t­ hese bonds. As the magazine—­and, arguably, its readership—­matured, Bingo’s policy of soliciting and publishing readers’ photo­graphs was not dropped outright, but it gradually became less a method of sourcing content than what was basically a marketing strategy designed to incentivize subscriptions. As the 1950s wore on, it seems that the magazine came gradually to rely less and less on reader submissions, perhaps ­because it had become increasingly pos­si­ble to hire local photog­raphers. Subscribers’ photo­graphs—­almost invariably id-­card photo­graphs (a genre that I ­will discuss at length in chapter 5)—­were published ­under the heading “Le Club Bingo” and moved from the cover or from the first few pages (where “La Page de Bingo” had once appeared) into the back pages of the magazine (see figure 3.10).

Anderson famously grants a central role to print culture in creating and sustaining par­tic­u­lar forms of po­liti­cal belonging. In ­Imagined Communities and in his ­later books, Anderson ties the modern nation-­state and, therefore (if we accept, at least provisionally, the terms of his argument), modern po­liti­cal culture to the forms of “unbound seriality” that, he argues, are engendered by print.48 In Anderson’s own words, print and especially serial publications have an intrinsic ability to create and sustain ­imagined communities that are spatially and geo­graph­i­cally dispersed. They derive this ability, in part, from the promotion of a shared national culture through the extension of vernacular languages, and from the corollary fact that printed ­matter was “the first modern-­style mass-­produced industrial commodity.”49 Anderson therefore argues that print publications such as newspapers, precisely ­because they ­were mass-­produced, made it “pos­si­ble for rapidly growing numbers of p ­ eople to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to ­others, in profoundly new ways.”50 And he explic­itly connects this ability

138

chaPter three

of print to stimulate new forms of reflection, relation, and identity, precisely in vernacular languages, to capitalism’s own “vernacularizing thrust.”51 The ­imagined community of the modern nation thus depends, according to Anderson, on the production of identities that can be narrated by the classical instruments of print capitalism. Anderson is hardly the only thinker to have argued for the centrality of print media to modern culture. Jürgen Habermas’s well-­known theory of the bourgeois public sphere is similarly dependent upon claims for the magic worked by serial publications such as the newspaper.52 The Habermasian bourgeois public sphere, in contradistinction to Anderson’s i­magined community, however, is focused on print culture’s capacities to create and support a supposedly neutral sphere of critical discourse. The bourgeois public sphere mediates, at least in theory, the relationship between the ­people and the state and, as such, is closely articulated with the concept of civil society. Critics of Habermas have mounted cogent arguments about the diminished interest of the bourgeois public sphere for con­temporary democracies, for reasons connected with the total subsumption of mass media into cap­i­tal­ist structures (Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge) or with Habermas’s failure to think beyond the territorial and linguistic confines of the nation-­state (Nancy Fraser), and they have argued that it is therefore impossible to reconcile the concept of the public sphere with ­either transnationalism or globalization.53 Neither Anderson’s account of print culture as a species of print capitalism nor Habermas’s account of the bourgeois public sphere is adequate to describe a very dif­fer­ent type of ­imagined community—­one sustained by the colonial and transcolonial identities and structures of po­liti­cal belonging that we see in Bingo’s pages, and one facilitated by a print culture that arguably did not take place in a vernacular language and that was or­ga­nized by the circulation of photographic images as much as by any concept of rational critical debate. This is not simply b­ ecause nationalisms exerted a relatively weak force in anticolonial strug­gles in the aof, nor is it simply ­because the very concepts of rational debate and civil discourse ­were, like the concept of civility itself, deeply bound up with colonization in west Africa.54 It is above all b­ ecause, as Bingo amply demonstrates, photo­graphs predated printed texts as serially produced objects in west Africa, and that photo­graphs appear, therefore, to have been at least as impor­tant as printed texts in facilitating the new forms of po­ liti­cal belonging in this period. Without wanting to suggest that photo­graphy supplanted the printed word in west Africa, I would venture that Bingo requires us to rethink the role of photo­graphs in both print and public culture, and

Decolonizing Print Culture

139

that photo­graphs may have themselves had a “vernacularizing” force, whose consequences for late colonial and transcolonial cultures remain largely to be thought.

It is in­ter­est­ing to ask, in this re­spect, ­whether Bingo’s “club” of readers might more closely resemble what Newell calls a “transcolonial reading public,” which she carefully defines as one that is “po­liti­cally articulated and composed of individuals joined by their shared identity as members of [the British] Empire but separated ideologically in many other ways.”55 This public is not some weak expression of a would-be nation but is rather born of the very structural limitations and blockages inherent in the concepts of both the nation and the public sphere. A transcolonial reading public (or, in the case of Bingo, a transcolonial visual one) can emerge only in a colonial context ­because colonized ­people, by definition, are deprived of the capacities for full po­liti­cal participation that characterize the bourgeois public sphere. According to Newell, the transcolonial reading public is not a bad or weak version of the bourgeois public sphere and rather emerges from “the very blind spots identified by critics of Habermas.”56 This public also diverges from Anderson’s i­ magined community in that it is defined precisely by its members’ lack of sovereign status and by the structural impossibility of self-­determination ­under colonialism. Newell goes on to stress the incompatibility of both Anderson’s and Habermas’s paradigms with colonial experience: “Nothing could be further from Habermas’s notion of demo­cratic public dialogue than Eu­ro­pean imperial expansion,” adding that for most of the colonial period Africans “­were widely regarded by their rulers as incapable of reason or civility.”57 In a move that at first glance seems counterintuitive, Newell advances an almost utopian vision of the potentialities of print cultures in British colonial territories in west Africa, precisely ­because they offered Africans opportunities for participation in public and po­liti­cal debates that took place, by definition, outside the limits of po­liti­cal discourse permissible under colonialism. Ultimately, she argues that it was precisely in the absence of opportunities for demo­cratic po­ liti­cal participation in the colonial system that print publications allowed west Africans “to harness the printing press to a new, participatory style of politics,” which was antithetical to the po­liti­cal opportunities granted by the colonial power.58 Neeladri Bhattacharya pre­sents a similarly suggestive theory in his writing about the “colonial public sphere.”59 Like Newell’s transcolonial reading

140

chaPter three

public, Bhattacharya’s colonial public sphere is not an attenuated version of its Habermasian relative and rather represents a substantive reframing of ideas about the criteria of modern po­liti­cal participation. In contradistinction to Newell, whose focus is on print cultures as a space permitting new, para-­colonial and even anticolonial forms of po­liti­cal participation that ­were not readily or fully available to the colonized through official structures, Bhattacharya’s focus is on the discussion of community norms and values. He does not, therefore, grant any importance to printed ­matter in his definition of the public. Instead, he is concerned with the displacement of the locus of t­ hese debates from a communal forum that was previously not defined as public to one that, in response to colonial pressures, takes publicity as the norm.60 If we follow Bhattacharya, it is precisely thanks to colonization that the conditions u ­ nder which debates about community norms and values took place ­were transformed. In colonial India, t­hese debates w ­ ere increasingly staged with a view to a new, anonymous public, posited in the role of a spectator or commentator who stood outside them. Vitally for Bhattacharya, the status of the colonial public as a kind of spectator derives his or her privilege not from any essential relationship to visuality, but precisely from his or her anonymity and outsider status : “In all ­these public debates, two audiences ­were addressed: one, the community, as it was being defined, and its constituent ele­ments; and two, the wider public beyond the community that was implicated in the pro­ cess [not only] as spectator and commentator, but as outsider.”61 Or, again, the colonial public sphere is “not just a space where private individuals appear as public, transcending their individuality and autonomy to acknowledge their commonality. . . . ​It is also a space where communities are forced to come together . . . ​to reconstitute themselves as a public.”62 It is both this forced transformation of the conditions that allow a community to recognize itself as such (forced, that is, by colonialism), and the ability of individuals to move in and out of this space, sometimes belonging as a member of the community in question, sometimes looking on as an outsider, that I find compelling about Bhattacharya’s concept. It exceeds the scope of this chapter to produce an exhaustive theory of the transcolonial visual public, yet I draw inspiration from key ele­ments of both Newell’s and Bhattacharya’s theories of the colonial or transcolonial public: first is their concern with the specificity of colonial conditions as a f­actor in shaping the public sphere and second is their concern with forms of participation or implication in collective discourse and debates that cannot be accounted for e­ ither by ideas of self-­determination or by ideas of state sovereignty.63

Decolonizing Print Culture

141

Fascinating to consider from the standpoint of this transcolonial visual public are a series of thematic feature stories that ran in Bingo in the late 1950s and very early 1960s. Issue number 52 of the magazine, published in May 1957, ran stories on “African Bishops,” “Private Schools,” and “Dancing the Cha-­Cha-­ Cha” (figure 3.11). Education is the perfect example of a sphere of communal life that would have been debated and de­cided, prior to colonization, in “the community.” Alternating with reports such as this one on private schools, Bingo ran semiregular features praising advances in public, state-­sponsored education. In fact, the magazine presented so many dif­fer­ent stories about education, within a series of shifting frames, that readers could not have seen themselves included in all of the communities in question. A reader might relate to a feature story on education as a private school student or f­ amily or as an advocate for private education; or as a public school student or f­amily or advocate for state-­sponsored education; or as a Muslim interested in the fate of Koranic education; or as a Christian interested in the rise of African bishops. Complex and multifaceted questions of language, religion, literacy, and shared colonial histories traverse t­ hese debates, in a picture-­perfect example of a public being constituted and reconstituted with a view to difference as much as identity. In another vivid example of t­ hese public debates about community norms and values, the magazine ran semiregular features on polygamy. The practice was roundly condemned from the standpoint of feminism and of economic development (although it was sure to have been practiced by at least some subset of the magazine’s readers). Marriage is the classic example of a ­matter that, prior to the colonial period, would have been debated by the community.64 In the late 1950s, Bingo also began to publish a series of reader surveys, which are equally fascinating, and which give us still deeper insights into debates about norms and values that ­were moving into the public sphere at this moment. Higher education for ­women was a recurrent theme: should ­women be allowed to study abroad in Eu­rope? The question met—at least among t­ hose readers whose responses ­were published—­with a resounding “yes.” However, the vast majority of readers who weighed in on the question ­were male.65 In keeping with Bingo’s larger ethos, many of ­these surveys ­were illustrated with respondents’ photo­graphs. By the late 1950s, cinema had become a major preoccupation, and the growing importance of moviegoing as a commercial and cultural phenomenon was reflected in Bingo’s reader surveys. A two-­page story published in August 1960 (the month that Senghor was elected president of Senegal) presented

142

chaPter three

a thoroughgoing survey of moviegoing habits, titled “Pourquoi allons-­nous au cinéma?” (Why do we go to the movies?). Questions ranged from t­ hose eliciting quantitative data, such as the number of times per week that readers went to the movies and precise ticket prices (respondents ­were asked what percentage of their incomes they spent on movie tickets), to more open-­ended questions, including a question about respondents’ desires for the “new African cinema.”66 Of the twelve respondents whose answers ­were featured, all lived in Dakar. Three w ­ ere ­women. Their professions included teacher, accountant, driver, factory worker, university student (majoring in mathe­matics), primary school student, businessman, and receptionist in a neurological clinic in Fann. The list of their favorite films included Black Orpheus, The Last of the Mohicans, Viva Zapata, The ­Labors of Hercules, and The Origins of Islam. The list of their favorite actors included James Cagney, Eddie Constantine, Kirk Douglas, and Sophia Loren. The survey closed with a summary of findings vis-­à-­vis the moviegoing habits of “intellectuals” as compared with uneducated p ­ eople (illettrés, or illiterates). This last detail is highly suggestive, given the questions about expanding definitions of literacy that I raised ­earlier. For it demonstrates that Bingo’s public was understood, both by its editors and by its readers, to extend beyond ­those who ­were literate in the conventional sense. ­Here, we have a published survey about moviegoing habits that posits among the magazine’s reading public ­those who ­were not able to read, illustrating perfectly the emergence of a colonial visual public ­under late colonial conditions. In­de­pen­dence, Pan-­Africanism, and Consumer Marketing

With the coming of in­de­pen­dence in 1960, Bingo’s editorial direction passed to Paulin Joachim, ­under whom the magazine’s look and feel changed. Joachim was a writer, politician, and Beninese citizen.67 He was also a protégé of the French surrealist, poet, and po­liti­cal agitator Philippe Soupault, and Joachim is remembered as an out­spoken, and at times polarizing, figure.68 In that same year, Bingo initiated a series of features on “the African in­de­pen­dences.” ­These included profiles of the new heads of the new African states and other po­liti­cal leaders. Sekou Touré (“Young ­labor leader and founder of the cgta [Confédération Générale des Travailleurs Africains] and now the Vice President of the Government of Guinea”) and Modibo Keïta (the cofounder, with Senghor, of the Mali Federation and the first president of Mali) seemed to garner the lion’s share of coverage: both had broad popu­lar appeal, and both ­were conspicuously photogenic.69 Among the more memorable covers dating from Joachim’s tenure as editor is a 1969 cover featuring a photo­graph of Malcolm X, with the words “Malcolm

Decolonizing Print Culture

143

X: Amer­i­ca’s Lumumba” (figure 3.12). The cover, based on a familiar photo­ graph of the leader of the Nation of Islam, is a compositional masterpiece, with Malcolm X’s hand raised in an emphatic gesture, his fin­ger pointing ­toward the Bingo logo, now revamped to resemble that of Life or Ebony.70 The choice of the photo­graph of Malcolm X on the cover continues the magazine’s mission, ­under Joachim, to highlight the “advancement” of Africans, on the continent and in the diaspora. In comparison with the photo­graph of Charles Éboué, however, which ran on the cover of Bingo’s inaugural issue, the image of Malcolm X demonstrates that the pendulum has swung very far in the other direction, with emphasis now placed on leaders committed to black liberation and self-­determination in terms less indebted to assimilationist discourse. Visually and verbally, the cover draws an analogy between a black African (Patrice Lumumba) and a black American (Malcolm X), making crystal clear the desire of west Africans living in ex-­aof territories, to cut, once and for all, the umbilical cord to Paris. In 1969 (eight years ­after Lumumba’s assassination and four ­after

144

chaPter three

Malcolm X’s), the cover would almost certainly have been understood to announce an anti-­imperialist agenda, countering American hegemony. This is not to say that Bingo changed, u ­ nder Joachim, to become a “po­liti­cal” magazine in the sense that Michel had, in our interview, insisted it was not. ­Until the end of its life (in 1975), the magazine published a mix of coverage of con­temporary social and po­liti­cal issues and more lighthearted explorations of pop culture. Stories on fashion (the vogue for mini­skirts), biracial ­couples, and movie stars, tied to movie releases, remained a mainstay. (A 1961 feature on dominos, or biracial c­ ouples, managed to cover all three of ­these topics si­ mul­ta­neously and included a profile of actress Marpessa Dawn.) Coverage of fashion and movie stars was frequently tied to marketing campaigns, a mix that was so successful that Michel de Breteuil eventually founded, in 1972, a spin-­off lifestyle and fashion magazine called Amina, targeting African w ­ omen and t­ hose living in the Francophone diaspora. Amina is still in existence t­ oday, although its Ca­rib­bean and French readership now far exceeds its African one, Michel told me in 2011. In the 1960s, as Bingo’s content became more clearly aligned with consumer marketing, it also became more conspicuously pan-­African, and its previously pan-­aof axes of affiliation w ­ ere transformed, as far as was pos­si­ble, to extend beyond France’s former colonial territories in Africa. Rarely, however, did news coverage actually extend to other regions of the African continent. Anglophone countries, including ­those in west Africa, ­were largely invisible. It was not ­until the start of the Biafran War, in 1967, that po­liti­cal events in Anglophone west Africa ­were reported in any depth. Rather than constituting a turn ­toward the rest of Africa, then, this new pan-­Africanism seemed, above all, to constitute a turn ­toward the diaspora both in the Ca­rib­bean and in the United States. Apart from the 1969 feature on Malcolm X, however, American content was rarely explic­itly po­liti­cal and tended ­toward profiles of black athletes, movie stars, and entertainers. At the same time, ­these profiles and photo­graphs of black Americans ­were po­liti­cal within the framework of a politics of repre­sen­ta­tion. In this sense, they resonated with Bingo’s proj­ect of transforming a transcolonial reading public, which had been constructed within the par­ameters of the French colonial proj­ect, into a decolonial one—as the shift from the portrait of Sugar Ray Robinson (published in Bingo no. 1) to ­those of Muhammad Ali, whose ­career was assiduously followed in the magazine, beautifully expresses. This turn away from France ­toward other cultural and commercial centers was also articulated, subtly or not so subtly, with the desire for “modernization” on the part of postcolonial African states. This desire was evident in feature stories taking “pro-­modernization” positions, ­whether about marriage

Decolonizing Print Culture

3.9 (PREVIOUS PAGE)  ​An Agfa

Click advertisement that ran in Bingo in the early 1960s. Such advertise­ ments ­were cleverly placed below games, clubs, and (as was this one) write-in features that ­were illustrated with reader-­submitted photo­ graphs. In the 1960s, an increasing number of advertisements for cam­ eras and photographic supplies depicted what appear to be black African (rather than North African or black American) consum­ ers. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

145

or education, and epitomized by stories about large-­scale infrastructure proj­ ects. To be sure, in the late colonial period, too, the construction of dams, the modernization of ports, and the expansion of broadcast radio ­were all chronicled. But in the 1960s, ­these stories—­the photo­graphs could have remained unchanged—­showcased infrastructure building within the framework of five-­ year-­plans. ­Whether despite or b­ ecause of their reinscription within the territorial bound­aries of the postcolonial state, the ideas about “modernization” on which ­these stories depended w ­ ere often tempered by claims about the need for African unity and collaboration. Joseph K. Mensah from Togo wrote a poetic letter illustrating that Bingo’s readers ­were equally anxious to assert their desire for African unity. In issue number 186, published in July 1968, he writes that Africans are “­brothers of the same continent” and that “it is time for us to come together and lend each other a hand.”71 Other features blended popu­lar science with consumerism. They connected par­tic­u­lar modes of consumption to ideas about modernization, and they located consumer culture and aspirational notions of consumerization within a burgeoning discourse focused on regional identity. Stories detailing the technology used in transistor radios emphasized “international” brands. (Telefunken and Grundig placed their first advertisements for radios in the magazine in 1960.) Yet t­hese same stories w ­ ere almost invariably accompanied by advertisements promoting regional distribution and suppliers. Advertisements for cameras and photographic supplies, such as the Agfa advertisement that is vis­i­ble in figure 3.9, ran beneath the above-­mentioned requests for pen pals by Bingo’s readers. This placement made even more explicit the relationships between photography and other modes of media literacy, even as it brought to the surface tensions between Francophone linguistic legacies and axes of affiliation and the wider world of consumer products and images associated with the Agfa brand. Advertisers, ­whether manufacturers or distributors, continued to emphasize the importance of buying African—­even if this meant buying European-­manufactured products from African distributors. (See, again, figures Intro.4 and 3.4.) As we have already seen, the proliferation of dif­fer­ent media technologies and forms of media literacy predated in­de­pen­dence, but with the upsurge in Agfa camera advertisements—­rather than, say, Berthiot—­this proliferation of media technologies began to limn the contours of a postcolonial world.72

It is useful to consider h ­ ere the concept of “sheen reading” introduced by Tsitsi Jaji in her exquisitely written and illuminating book Africa in Stereo: Modernism,

Decolonizing Print Culture

3.10 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​“Le

Club Bingo,” in Bingo no. 182 (March 1968). In ­later years, read­ ers’ photo­graphs ­were moved to the magazine’s back pages, where they ­were printed at smaller dimensions and appear to have been used mainly to incentivize subscriptions. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

147

3.11 ​The cover of Bingo no. 52 (May 1957) featured the Senegalese cinematographer and film director Robert Caristan. Robert’s ­brother, Georges, was also a cinematographer, and their ­father (origi­ nally from the Antilles) opened a well-­known photography studio in Saint-­Louis ­after retiring from military ser­vice. Bingo no. 52 also an­ nounced a photography contest. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

3.12 ​The cover of Bingo no. 197 (June 1969) featured a photo­graph of Malcolm X ­under the words “Malcolm X: Le Lumumba d’Amérique” (Malcolm X: Amer­i­ca’s Lumumba). Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Natio­ nale de France.

­Music, and Pan-­African Solidarity. Without being able to do justice to Jaji’s nuanced and insightful arguments about the constellation of interpretive and cultural practices that she theorizes ­under the heading of sheen reading, I would stress two points. The first is that magazine literacy is, according to Jaji, “concomitant with a network of other media literacies” that ­were proliferating in cities all over the continent.73 In fact, she suggests, it is through their embeddedness in t­ hese networked, emergent, and plural media literacies that magazines worked “to train readers in a new set of interarticulated desires for new products and states of mind.”74 As Jaji also notes, magazines are particularly well suited to this task of training new readers, as they are themselves complex media forms, composed of textual, photographic, and other visual content, such as advertisements. The second and even more vital point made by Jaji that I wish to underscore is that the consumption of illustrated magazines in postcolonial Africa was not an “unreflexive cele­bration of consumption”; rather, she argues, magazine consumption allowed African readers to engage in reading, looking, and associated interpretive and cultural practices that “laid bare the many contradictions of aspirational consumption” in colonial and postcolonial Africa.75 Jaji situates sheen reading in relation to other forms of popu­lar literacy in Africa, including ­those theorized by scholars, such as Barber, Newell, and Okome, mentioned e­ arlier. This helps her to make the case that many African readers ­were learning to consume magazines in contexts privileging a multiplicity of media literacies, and in which alphabetic literacy was not always the norm. According to Jaji, sheen reading is “flexible enough to account for the wide range of literacy levels that characterized [African] media audiences,” and the very concept of “sheen”—as a glimmering on (or of ) the surface strives to acknowledge this movement across the dif­fer­ent levels of this range.76 In this re­spect, sheen reading can be situated in a long line of other dialogic practices that have allowed African audiences to assume nonconforming positions in relation to dominant interpretive regimes. It was pioneered by, and adapted to, readers who assumed such nonconforming positions by expressing “a degree of skepticism in the face of the rise of advertising.” 77 Sheen reading is not, therefore, a practice of reading as decoding, or of looking to find denotative meaning. It is a larger sociocultural orientation that contains, in this skepticism, new contestatory possibilities that escape the theoretical paradigms offered by ­either Anderson or Habermas. Jaji also underscores that sheen reading operates through the “visual assimilation” of disparate ele­ments: text and image, alphabetic and other forms of literacy, statements about African unity and advertisements for consumer electronics—­a list to which we would have to add, in

Decolonizing Print Culture

149

3.13 ​A photo essay

about a visit by Chad’s prime minister to Paris was printed alongside a Kodak advertisement in Bingo no. 112 (May 1962). Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

the case of Bingo, photo­graphs published as illustrations to news and feature stories and readers’ own photo­graphs. Know Your African Leaders

No richer proof of the synergistic role played by pan-­Africanism and photography in sustaining and transforming postcolonial forms of po­liti­cal belonging can be found than the “game” that ran in the back pages of the magazine, starting in 1961. This was a game, placed ­under the general heading of “Les Jeux de Bingo” (Bingo games), subtitled “Quel est cet homme d’état Africain?” (Can

150

chaPter three

3.14 ​A Kodak Brownie

advertisement that ran in Bingo no. 10 (Novem­ ber 1953). Early camera advertisements ­were generic and did not explic­itly target African consumers. Over the course of the 1950s, however, advertisements began to encourage readers to “buy African” and increasingly depicted black African consumers. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Natio­ nale de France.

3.15 ​“Quel est cet

homme d’état africain?” (Can you name this African head of state?), Bingo no. 97 (Febru­ ary 1961). In the immedi­ ate post-­independence era, game-­style contests challenged readers to demonstrate their po­liti­ cal knowledge as well as, si­mul­ta­neously, their photographic literacy. This par­tic­u­lar game was based on identifying African heads of state in photo­graphs that had been cut into pieces and transformed into puzzles. Courtesy of Michel de Breteuil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

you name this African head of state?).78 In issue number 97, published in February 1961, the portrait of an African po­liti­cal leader (run, it is explic­itly stated, in a previous issue of Bingo) was cut into seven or eight triangles and turned into a puzzle. The instructions read as follows: “Cut out the pieces of this photo­graph and try to put back together the image of this g­ reat African po­liti­cal leader, whose country gained in­de­pen­dence last year” (figure 3.15). Readers ­were asked to fill out a response card with the correct answer to be mailed in for a cash prize. (I have not yet been able to identify this statesman.) ­These photographic puzzles delivering po­liti­cal education demonstrate that photo­graphs ­were a central device through which Bingo sought to transform the transcolonial public that, in the early 1950s, it had cultivated and helped to create into a postcolonial one. Also in 1961, a new series appeared: a “how-to” page for the amateur photographer. Issue number 97 saw the introduction of a semiregular feature, by Chérif Damie, “Le plaisir de la photographie” (The plea­sure of photography), with tips on lighting, composition, focus basics, and so on.79 ­These “how-to” columns, ­later published without a byline, addressed such themes as “Advice for Successfully Photographing ­People Outdoors (Shade versus sunlight)” and “Let’s Take Pictures in the Rain.”80 ­These columns built on other attempts to cultivate Bingo’s readers as photog­raphers, exemplified by an ­earlier series of photography contests. See, for example, the cover of Bingo no. 52, published in May 1957, which announces a “Concours de Photographie” (photography contest) (figure 3.11). The contest is, appropriately enough, announced in large block letters under­neath a photo­graph of the Senegalese-­born cinematographer and film director Robert Caristan, pictured on set. It also hearkens back to the a­ lbum of reader-­submitted snapshots with which I began this chapter, which appeared to target amateurs. Complementing ­these “how-to” columns targeting the magazine’s readers as amateur photog­raphers and consumers was a new type of advertisement, for a new type of camera, such as the Agfa-­Click, Kodak Starlet, and Starflash; other advertisements touted Super 8 and 16mm movie cameras. ­These differed markedly from ­earlier photography-­related advertisements that ran in the magazine, which w ­ ere predominantly advertisements for studios (figures 3.5 and 3.6) and for equipment for professionals who w ­ ere ­doing their own darkroom work. They also differed from other advertisements that appear to have been “borrowed” from North African or American consumer markets in an ­earlier period (see, again, figure 3.9).81 In a stark indication of this change, a 1968 Kodak Instamatic advertisement was clearly aimed at consumers living in sub-­Saharan Africa. In it, a black nuclear f­ amily (their skin tone is noticeably

Decolonizing Print Culture

153

3.16 ​Snapshot of a young

­ oman in her bedroom w in Dakar. Vis­i­ble are framed ­family photo­ graphs and an illustrated magazine, quite possibly Bingo, open on the bed ­behind her. Photogra­ pher unknown. Dakar, Senegal, 1970s. Collec­ tion of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

154

darker than that vis­i­ble in other, previous Agfa advertisements) enjoys a moment of leisure; the mom, holding her Kodak Instamatic, shoots her husband and their two c­ hildren, a boy and a girl, as they play soccer; the playing field suggests the dry grasses of a Sahelian landscape. In the upper right-­hand corner, palm fronds conspicuously enter the frame. Across the top of both pages (the advertisement was large enough to merit a two-­page spread) ran the following slogan: “Discover it in your own f­ amily: movie-­making made ­simple.”82 With ­these “how-to” features for amateur photog­raphers, and with ­these camera advertisements addressed not only to African photog­raphers but explic­itly to Africans as consumers, we have come full circle. Both t­ hese features and ­these advertisements for photographic supplies that filled Bingo’s pages suggest that the capacity is now t­ here for its readers to participate, in a new way, in the photographic cultures on which the magazine had depended from its inception. Now, they have the capacity to participate in ­these cultures without ever having to visit a photography studio. This spelled the end of an era, as west African consumers began increasingly to experiment with snapshot photography, and as professional photog­raphers moved ever more energetically out of the studio and into the streets, into the domain of what they themselves called “po­liti­cal photography.”

chaPter three

­ eople can only imagine themselves in empty P homogeneous time; they do not live in it. —­partha chatterjee, the politics of the governed

Archives have been destroyed and damaged and ­will continue to suffer this fate, by archivists and users, by mold and termites, but also by ­enemy action and by partisans and liberators, by revolutionaries and counter-­revolutionaries. —­hans van der hoeven and joan van albada, lost memory: libraries and archives destroyed in the 20th ­century

4.1 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​

Léopold Sédar Senghor and entourage walking in the street with photog­ra­ phers ­running out in front. Photographer unknown. Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal, ca. 1963–1966. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine. 4.2 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​

Léopold Sédar Senghor and entourage walking in the street during an official visit. (This photo­graph was taken within split seconds of figure 4.1.) Photographer unknown. Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal, ca. 1963–1966. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

158

The image is awash in movement, creating the impression that we are witnessing an event (figure 4.1). The sense of fleeting time, produced by the photog­ raphers ­running out in front, is reflected in the orientation of the bystanders, to one another and to the lens. The second image (figure 4.2) affirms what remains, in the first, only elliptically evident: the ­people have gathered to celebrate a visit by Léopold Sédar Senghor, the famous poet and phi­los­o­pher and first president of the Republic of Senegal, as he moves through the streets of Ziguinchor. Neither print is dated, but we know they w ­ ere taken within seconds of each other on a single occasion in the early 1960s. That ­these photo­graphs are separated by an infinitesimal span of time becomes apparent when we notice that Senghor, depicted front and center in the second photo­graph (figure 4.2), is also vis­i­ble in the first, with the same entourage walking in an identical formation in the rear plane (figure 4.1). The date, location, and other relevant details can be established through oral historical information provided by Ibrahima Faye, a former Senegalese governor and member of the in­de­pen­dence generation from whose collection ­these photo­graphs are drawn (for a portrait of Faye, see figure 4.16).1 Details can also be gleaned from certain cues inscribed within the photo­graphs’ visual frame—­ for example, the make and models of the motorcycle in figure 4.2 or, in figure 4.1, ­those of the photog­raphers’ cameras. Both photo­graphs depict, in a sense, the end of colonialism and the “pro­ gress” of the newly in­de­pen­dent state. In figure 4.2, ­these events are in tight focus; in figure 4.1, however, they are hardly in the frame and have even been eclipsed by the sense of anticipation that the image conveys. To the right in the latter photo­graph, the c­ hildren dressed in white, resembling a school group (quite possibly a group that ­will perform for the president), catch the

part ii introduction

eye and hold it longer than expected. For whom or what are they waiting? Also striking is the sense of vertigo that ensues when we notice that they appear to be pitched slightly backward, due to the ­angle of the lens. This effect draws our eye, past the curve of their feet, in white sandals, to the bottom right corner of the frame. Young enough to have been born citizens of the newly in­de­pen­dent state of Senegal, the c­ hildren seem to stand in for so many o­ thers who are not pictured ­here. Most of the c­ hildren are looking at Senghor, but some are looking at the photog­raphers, amplifying still further the sense of anticipation.

Part I of this book looked at the democ­ratization of studio portraiture in Francophone west Africa. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, ­under the aegis of portraiture, photographic images and practices that had been associated, in an ­earlier era, with urban elites had begun to reach a much broader cross-­ section of urban populations. ­These chapters therefore pursued hypotheses about the expansion of the medium and how this expansion intersected with other changes—in ideas about and aspirations for image production and circulation, in media systems and associated urban infrastructures, and in public and po­liti­cal life. ­These chapters also drew out insights into the ways in which local photog­raphers working in urban west Africa, together with their clients and their publics, used photographic portraiture to expand both the networks through which they communicated and the types of dialogue in which they ­were engaged. Part II develops a parallel analy­sis from the vantage point of the new genres and practices of official, state-­sponsored, and para-­state “po­liti­cal photography.” This latter term was used by several of the photog­raphers I interviewed, and in chapters 4–6 I explore its genesis and ramifications. Many of the same f­ actors that helped to enlarge studio photog­raphers’ urban client base—­the spread of formal education and of salaried employment, increases in the proportion of urban populations earning cash wages, and technological changes in cameras and darkroom equipment—­also created new professional opportunities for African photog­raphers who (as we began to glimpse already in chapter 3) began to move outside the studio and into photojournalism, reportage, and documentary. African photog­raphers also made forays, si­mul­ta­neously, into vari­ ous forms of bureaucratic photography, which w ­ ere closely associated with the postcolonial state (including, notably, id-­card photography, marking a resurgence of portraiture at the center of state-­sponsored photography). In part II, I argue and try to show that the participation of African photog­raphers in this

part ii introduction

159

wider arena of “po­liti­cal photography” was the result not only of economic or administrative changes, such as the relaxing of censorship or lifting of other types of restrictions, but also of a newfound documentary impulse that was experienced by African photog­raphers in this moment, and the result, ultimately, of changes in their po­liti­cal consciousness. Chapter 4 looks closely at the Africanization of po­liti­cal photography in the 1950s and 1960s, through conversations that I had with photog­raphers and their families in both Senegal and Benin, as well as with other members of the in­de­pen­dence generation who w ­ ere involved in politics. On the basis of t­ hese stories and images drawn primarily from the collection of Ibrahima Faye (from which figures 4.1 and 4.2 are drawn), I argue that west African photog­raphers did not just expand their practice into existing genres and styles. Rather, they actively experimented with new meanings of, and aspirations for, po­liti­cal photography. Faye’s collection gives us a rare glimpse into the close collaborations that unfolded, with the coming of in­de­pen­dence, between po­liti­cal leaders and photog­raphers. ­These collaborations ­were ­shaped by individual and collective hopes and desires with regard to liberation, even as they raise a host of questions about the publics for which they w ­ ere intended and suggest that ­these publics may have been radically anticipatory. Chapter 5 centers on the production and (re)circulation of id-­card photo­ graphs, known widely throughout the region as identités. The identité is a po­liti­cal photo­graph in an obvious sense: when it is integrated into official documentation, it materializes the individual’s relationship to the state. And yet, in many west African contexts, particularly in the immediate post-­independence period, the experience of sitting for an id-­card photo­graph presented the individual with a rare and long-­awaited opportunity for making manifest her positive affective investments in the postcolonial state. ­These sessions ­were therefore often occasions for joy and cele­bration, suggesting that the special valence that ­these images have often had for west Africans is not readily accounted for by disciplinary or repressive understandings of the state. Building both on my own field research and on a growing body of research by other scholars, this chapter thus seeks both to challenge the stranglehold of dominant understandings of bureaucratic photography and to examine the ways in which id-­card photography positioned citizens of the newly in­de­pen­dent west African states as po­liti­cal subjects or agents. This chapter also brings in examples drawn from postcolonial contexts in Southern Africa and Indonesia. ­These comparative examples allow us to explore in greater depth the multiple and sometimes quite unruly cir­cuits through which id-­card photo­graphs have circulated, and they require us to complicate hypotheses about visual and

160

part ii introduction

photographic practices of citizenship that have increasingly dominated con­ temporary theories of photography.2 Chapter 6, the book’s final chapter and de facto conclusion, looks at two distinct sets of documentary images, which I saw in Faye’s collection in Senegal in 2007 and 2008 and in the Beninese National Archives in 2009. T ­ hese are overtly po­liti­cal photo­graphs in that they depict events connected with claims to po­liti­cal and territorial sovereignty, and each of ­these archives, the first documenting the Mali Federation (an ill-­fated attempt at an “African ­union” that predated in­de­pen­dence) and the second documenting the emergence of the Polisario Front and the ­battle for in­de­pen­dence of the Sahrawi ­people (also known as the p ­ eople of the Western Sahara), is a vivid testament to the importance of regional, pan-­African, and transnational po­liti­cal solidarities in west Africa in this period. T ­ hese material residues of a long-­ago impulse to African unity pre­sent us, I argue, with a further opportunity to reflect on the continued expression of po­liti­cal and decolonial ideas in photo­graphs. They also confront us with a series of methodological and theoretical questions that entail their own politics. Practically speaking, we must strug­gle to preserve ­these photo­graphs as physical and material objects, yet we must also remain aware that the acts of remembering and of interpretation that are so necessary to their preservation make them available, simultaneously, for new forms of myth-­making and recolonization.

part ii introduction

161

This page intentionally left blank

Photog­raphers of the in­de­pen­dence generation with whom I spoke in both Senegal and Benin often discussed their involvement in what they called “po­liti­cal photography.” The first photo­ grapher who ever spoke to me of this type of image and practice was El Hadj Adama Sylla, when, in a series of interviews that we did in July 2008 in Saint-­ Louis, he told me of his deep personal interest in “la photographie des choses politiques” (photo­graphs of po­liti­cal ­things).1 As we looked at and talked about ­these photo­graphs, I noticed that they seemed to range across two broad thematic categories: photo­graphs of politicians, po­liti­cal leaders, or other public

CHAPTER 4

Africanizing Po­liti­cal Photography

4.3  ​Léopold Sédar Sen­

ghor and an unidentified man at a microphone. Photographer unknown. Senegal, mid-1960s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

4.4  ​Caroline Diop, the

first ­woman elected to the Senegalese parliament (in 1963), speaking in front of a crowd. Photographer unknown. Senegal, 1960s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

164

figures fulfilling their official duties (heads of state, colonial administrators and other government officials, party leaders); and photo­graphs of events happening in public and often in the street, such as rallies, parades, marches, demonstrations, and the meetings of ­labor ­unions and po­liti­cal parties.2 Since that initial conversation with Sylla, I have had the occasion to look at other, similar photo­graphs and discuss them with other interlocutors, including, in Senegal, Faye, the former regional governor; his wife, Khady Ndoye Faye; his d ­ aughter, Gnilane Ly; and the photographer Oumar Ly (no relation). In Benin, I discussed this type of work with three photog­raphers: Benoît Adjovi, Zinsou Félix DeMesse, and Zinsou Cosme Dossa, who had all engaged in the production of po­liti­cal images, w ­ hether in freelance practice or in an official capacity, starting in the 1950s or early 1960s.3 Exceptionally among the photog­raphers with whom I discussed po­liti­cal photography, DeMesse had never worked as a studio photographer. He spent his entire c­ areer as a photo­ grapher in the employ of the state, first, working for the president of the Republic of Dahomey, Sourou-­Migan Apithy, and, l­ater, for the Ministry of Information and Propaganda. I ­will return to the details of DeMesse’s unusual ­career in the methodological section at the close of this chapter. Sylla explained to me, as we discussed his own forays into po­liti­cal and documentary practice, that he had sometimes been hired by the governor of the

chaPter four

region of Saint-­Louis (known ­today as la Région du Fleuve) to take this type of photo­graph, but that he had sometimes also undertaken po­liti­cal work for personal or “private” reasons: “We took pictures of the state, and ­things related to it [de l’état et des choses étatiques],” adding, “Sometimes we did this b­ ecause we w ­ ere hired to do it, and sometimes we did this for personal or private reasons.”4 Candace Keller, in her research on photog­raphers working in French Soudan (present-­day Mali), notes that photog­raphers ­there also took what she calls “politically-­oriented photo­graphs” starting in the late colonial period. She reports that “some w ­ ere commissioned by incipient African leaders while ­others, like Adama Kouyaté, created such imagery out of personal interest or moreover ­because they w ­ ere active participants in (or sympathizers with) the African-­ driven socio-­political movements of the day.”5 Through both t­ hese conversations that I had with photog­raphers and ­those reported by other researchers, I came to understand that the phrase “po­liti­cal photography” was being used by photog­ raphers and other members of the in­de­pen­dence generation to refer, sometimes, to images that had been commissioned or made for hire by national and regional governments and, sometimes, to photo­graphs that had been taken by photog­ raphers working freelance or for themselves, in the absence of any formal connection to the state. What, if anything, can we learn from the fact that this same phrase was used to refer to t­ hese state-­sponsored and ­these other images? The movement of local, African photog­raphers into this type of po­liti­cal practice in the waning years of the colonial period was connected, in part, with changes in photographic technologies, which, together with consumerization, increased the affordability and availability of handheld cameras—­many of ­these the same changes that influenced the democ­ratization of portraiture (the focus of part I of this book). Yet several of the photog­raphers I interviewed, who participated in po­liti­cal photography starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s, also emphasized the importance of their experience, on the eve of in­de­pen­ dence, of a newfound sense of personal freedom. Indeed, I found that photog­ raphers spoke openly and explic­itly of their desire to take pictures as they moved through new and rapidly transforming spaces of the cities where they lived and worked. This sense of freedom may have been connected, in some cases, with the loosening of colonial-­era licensing and other restrictions, but several of the photog­raphers I spoke to also emphasized that they took this type of picture out of a desire to document unpre­ce­dented ­things. Their expression of this newfound documentary impulse strongly suggests that it was not only for technical or logistical reasons that their generation was the first to undertake this type of po­liti­cal work, and that (as Ly’s comments and as Keller’s report of Kouyaté’s motivations both suggest) changes in po­liti­cal consciousness also played a role.

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

165

The years leading up to and immediately following the Second World War are commonly understood, both by historians and by t­ hose who lived through them, as the crucial years of Eu­ro­pean colonialism’s foun­dering, and, for ­people living in French colonial territories in Africa, the postwar years w ­ ere 6 characterized by sweeping changes. The year 1944 saw the return of west African troops from the Eu­ro­pean front: war veterans brought home with them elaborate technical knowledge, a pronounced sense of entitlement, and a new and often brutally frank assessment of the limits of Eu­ro­pean power—­all of which strengthened their po­liti­cal ­will and the forcefulness of their claims to rights connected with military ser­vice.7 January of 1944 also saw the first Brazzaville conference, which set into motion significant administrative reforms. ­These included the legalization of trade u ­ nions and the lifting of restrictions on rights of association and public assembly.8 A decree removing ­legal barriers to the creation of trade u ­ nions was passed in August 1944.9 Even before the legalization of the u ­ nions in 1944, the de­cades on ­either side of the war had given rise to a wave of unstoppable west African ­labor strikes, and, in 1952 a general strike with pan-­African ambitions tore through all nine territories of l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof).10 The ­labor movement was remarkably successful in cultivating regional, cross-­regional, and pan-­African solidarities in west Africa, and, as both Frederick Cooper and George Martens have emphasized, l­abor organ­izing was a major force in promoting the ideal of equality between Africans and Eu­ro­pe­ans.11 The repercussions of ­labor organ­izing ­were not lost ­either on African po­liti­cal activists or on colonial authorities. The Loi de Lamine Guèye, which extended full rights of French citizenship to inhabitants of all of France’s colonies, was passed in 1946. In 1956, the passage of the so-­called Loi Cadre transferred decision-­ making powers from legislative bodies located in Paris to t­ hose located on the African continent. This move, even if it was made within the framework of colonial reform, was the culmination of a de­cade of po­liti­cal upheaval, and it paved the way for still more radical phases of Africanization. To echo Michel de Breteuil, Bingo’s publisher (repeating a phrase I quoted already in chapter 3), by the 1950s “les choses ont changé” (­things had ­really changed).12 Despite the monumental nature of the changes taking place in public and po­liti­cal life in the years immediately following the Second World War, the evidence suggests that African photog­raphers’ participation in documentary, reportage, and photojournalism did not follow ­until nearly a de­cade ­later, in the second half of the 1950s. Cosme Dossa, a photographer with whom I worked closely in Porto-­Novo, became, in 1957, the first photographer named by the

166

chaPter four

colonial administration as an official photographer of the territory of Dahomey, and he was, as far as we know at this time, the first African photographer ever to have been credentialed as a photographer by the administration. In a reproduction of Dossa’s “press pass” (figure Intro.5), the word “photographer” has been substituted for the word “correspondent,” which has been crossed out below—an indication that the position of territorial photographer had likely not existed ­until that moment. Dossa himself told me that, in Dahomey, he held the position of official territorial photographer to the exclusion of any other photographer, African or French.13 Keller notes that French Soudan followed approximately the same chronology, and that, ­after 1956, “at least one African photographer in Bamako, Abderramane Sakaly, was regularly hired by the administration.”14 In Dakar, Salla Casset began taking photo­graphs of local po­liti­cal leaders and meetings of local po­liti­cal parties starting at roughly the same time. Corroborating this same timeline for Senegal, I saw a photo­graph taken by Salla Casset in the late 1950s that depicted a meeting of the railroad workers’ section of the Parti Socialiste d’Action Sénégalaise (psas) in a f­ amily collection in Dakar.15 If the sweeping changes in social and po­liti­cal life began in 1944 or 1946, what, then, accounts for the fact that African photog­raphers did not begin to photo­graph ­these changes ­until a de­cade had passed? Censorship, Po­liti­cal and Other

Research by other scholars suggests that French authorities did attempt to regulate photography, along with other media, in French colonial territories in Africa. But did this regulation actually limit African photog­raphers’ participation in po­liti­cal work? Such regulation seems most often to have taken the form of licensing requirements, which allowed authorities to monitor (and presumably restrict) the owner­ship, if not necessarily the use, of cameras. Yet ­these licensing requirements appear to have been erratically enforced, and they ­were unevenly enforced in dif­fer­ent aof territories. Both Keller and Érika Nimis, who have conducted extensive interviews with photog­raphers and their descendants in Bamako and other cities in Mali, report that licensing restrictions ­were regularly enforced ­there.16 Conversely, Seydou Keïta, whose studio was in Bamako, claimed not to have experienced any restrictions on his activities as a photographer ­there: “No one ever both­ered me. If you want to be a mechanic, you have to learn how; y­ ou’re ­free to learn. If you want to be a photographer—so much the worse for you—­just go ahead. Y ­ ou’re the one who buys the supplies; you only have to do as you like. The French government was happy when you learned a line of work. No one prevented anyone from that.

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

167

Every­one was ­free.”17 It therefore remains an open question to what extent colonial authorities actually saw photography as po­liti­cally dangerous. In addition, unofficial mechanisms w ­ ere often used to limit the commercial activities of west African photog­raphers. ­These largely market-­driven mea­sures are distinct from surveillance and from censorship in a po­liti­cal sense, yet they appear in many cases to have had a more pronounced effect than official censorship on limiting local photog­raphers’ participation in par­tic­u­lar types of practice. My research in Saint-­Louis, Dakar, Porto-­Novo, and Cotonou suggests that licensing restrictions ­were rarely if ever enforced in ­those cities, and, by the mid-1950s, when almost all of the photog­raphers I interviewed ­were active, not at all. Indeed, in Senegal, in all of the interviews that I did with photog­ raphers and their families, politicians, curators, museum personnel, museum directors, archivists, and photography collectors, licenses to own or use a camera ­were never mentioned once. In Saint-­Louis, in perusing Doudou Diop’s meticulously kept studio files, I saw invoices, bills of lading, and receipts for customs duties paid on shipments of cameras and other photographic equipment, but I never saw any license or paperwork pertaining to a license. In Benin, I found that photog­raphers spoke more frequently, and more bitterly, of French control, and my Beninese interlocutors tended to be more openly cynical with regard to French motivations. More than any substantive difference in affection for the French, however, I strongly suspect that this was a ­matter of circumstance, and it can be, at least in part, explained by the timing of my research. In 2013, during my penultimate visit to Benin—which is when I explic­itly broached the question of French censorship with Dossa in Porto-­ Novo and Adjovi in Cotonou—­anti-­French sentiment seemed to be spiking. This is not surprising, given that this visit overlapped, for a few very tense weeks in January 2013, with the arrival of French troops in Mali to fight a co­ ali­tion of militant Islamists and Tuareg separatists that had occupied a significant amount of territory in northern Mali. The arrival of French troops in the region was referred to universally in Benin as the “French invasion,” including by ­those who welcomed (sort of ) French support in the strug­gle against the separatists, to which Benin was also contributing troops. Porto-­Novo in par­tic­ u­lar was abuzz with a strange blend of euphoria and fear, as caravans of army trucks carry­ing Beninese troops rolled past my guest h ­ ouse, late at night, on their way to Mali. I was not immune to the excitement, and more than once, ­after hearing p ­ eople talk all day about the “French invasion,” I caught myself thinking, mistakenly, that t­ hese Beninese troops w ­ ere ­going to fight against—­ rather than alongside—­the French. Even against the backdrop of this heightened

168

chaPter four

anti-­French sentiment, however, the discussions that I had with both Dossa and Adjovi about the question of French interference in their professional lives as photog­raphers made it clear that neither had ever experienced what they perceived as censorship at the hands of the French. Dossa’s “press pass” (see, again, figure Intro.5) likely functioned as a kind of license, in the sense that it afforded him access to ­people and places that his uncredentialed colleagues would not have had. But this is, I strongly suspect, not the type of document that has been referred to by scholars working in French Soudan. Following in­de­pen­dence, Dossa went on to become the official photographer of Hubert Maga, the first president of the newly in­de­pen­dent Republic of Dahomey (figure 4.5). He was therefore the only photographer whom I interviewed for this book who made the transition from working for the French colonial administration to working for the newly in­de­pen­dent state in a formal capacity. In 2009, much to my surprise, Dossa told me that, in fact, Mathieu

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

4.5 ​President Hubert

Maga (the first president of the Republic of Dahomey) making the inaugural call on the first Cotonou-­Paris telephone line. Photographer unknown. Cotonou, Benin, November 9, 1961. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­ Novo, Benin.

169

Kérékou’s government had been more restrictive than the French.18 In Cotonou, Adjovi voiced a similar assessment of the relatively greater freedom that he had experienced as a photographer working in the colonial period, and he described, as a case in point, a ban on public photography that had been mandated by Kérékou ­after the 1972 revolution.19 Shortly thereafter, in 1974, Kérékou declared a Marxist-­Leninist state, based on a rigid (and, by all accounts, highly idiosyncratic) interpretation of Marxist-­Leninist doctrine. Adjovi told me that, a­ fter Kérékou came to power, his minister of information went on the radio and made an official announcement stating that it would henceforth be forbidden for photog­raphers working in private practice to take pictures of public pro­cessions, po­liti­cal rallies, or other public gatherings. When I pressed him to elaborate, Adjovi explained that Kérékou was sensitive to the fact that he had come to power through a coup, and that the international community had not approved, and he wanted to ensure that images of the country ­under his government did not fall into the wrong hands. Adjovi also told me that the ban provoked an outcry from local photog­raphers, and that he personally joined a del­e­ga­tion of local, Cotonou-­based photog­raphers who went to the minister of information to complain that the ban would jeopardize their livelihood. This story about the del­e­ga­tion is of par­tic­u­lar interest ­because it reflects the very high level of organ­ization exhibited by Beninese photog­raphers. (Still ­today, the entire country is divided into an elaborate system of photog­raphers’ ­unions, or syndicats, with each district of each city holding regular meetings, electing its own officers, and collecting dues.20) This story is also impor­tant ­because it attests to the fact of an explicit negotiation that was taking place, in the post-­independence period, between politicians and photog­raphers. The photog­raphers could not sway their new government, but Adjovi was undeterred. He told me, with a hint of pride and perhaps also machismo, that he regularly flouted the ban by photographing po­liti­cal rallies from a car.21 Sometimes, he explained, he would shoot from inside the car, but usually he would ask the friend who acted as driver to drop him off on the periphery of a public plaza where the events w ­ ere taking place and wait for him nearby. Adjovi would then shoot for a few minutes before returning to the waiting car to make his getaway. When I attempted to draw Adjovi out about his decision to break the law u ­ nder such a repressive regime, he acknowledged that he had taken risks, but that, in the end, they ­were not all that serious. Furthermore, he added, he had never been caught. In the end, both Dossa and Adjovi repeatedly responded to my questions about censorship in this way, by giving

170

chaPter four

negative examples—­that is, examples that did not speak directly to restrictions that they experienced at the hands of the colonial power but rather to t­ hose imposed by the new postcolonial regime.

By all accounts, the most repressive censorship of media in French colonial territories took place in the interwar period, and so considerably ­earlier than the time that Dossa and Adjovi ­were working. In 1934, Pierre Laval, then the colonial governor of the aof, signed a legislative decree that sought to limit the involvement of Africans in the production of motion picture films and sound recordings. This legislation, known as the Décret Laval, depended on a clumsy review pro­cess: the script for ­every film to be shot in the colonies had to be submitted for approval by the lieutenant governor.22 Scholars of African cinema, including Manthia Diawara and Paulin Vieyra, have argued that the introduction of sound in cinema, a­ fter 1928, was the censors’ main target.23 According to Diawara, in the s­ ilent era, the French had not been concerned about African involvement in local media production and had in fact been “indifferent to the state of cinema in the colonies.”24 With the advent of sound, however, they began to fear that movies made in colonial territories risked transmitting subversive messages. Diawara emphasizes that, although sound may have been the catalyst of French censorship of local media production, ­these mea­sures had a broader ideological basis in fear of anticolonial movements in Africa, which w ­ ere, in the 1930s, thought to represent an imminent 25 threat. Ironically, the first film ever to have been censored u ­ nder the Décret Laval was made by a Frenchman, René Vautier, sixteen years ­after the law went into effect. Shot in 1950 in Côte d’Ivoire, Vautier’s documentary film, Afrique 50, was confiscated by the French authorities almost immediately a­ fter it was made and was subsequently banned in France for many years.26 It is generally thought that it was banned ­because it depicts the French army violently repressing a protest, in Dimbokro, Côte d’Ivoire, by the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, which was at the time a hugely popu­lar po­liti­cal party and the largest in the aof. This late and patently idiosyncratic enforcement of the Décret Laval attests to the often highly erratic and even capricious dimensions of colonial administrative decrees.27 It also highlights the contrast between the centralized nature of film production, which is comparatively easy to monitor, and the radically decentralized nature of photography, in which t­ here is no equivalent

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

171

of a script that can be redacted, and no significant capital investment beyond a camera and film, and which therefore lacks a central point of control. Protectionism and Colonial Markets

A growing body of research suggests that the most effective forms of censorship came in the guise not of official surveillance or of licensing regulations, but of practical limitations placed on African photog­raphers in the commercial arena. T ­ hese limitations w ­ ere designed to protect the business interests of French nationals living in colonial territories in Africa. In the aof, for example, African photog­raphers ­were prevented from advertising via channels open to their French colleagues, and African-­owned and -­operated studios, including t­ hose that we know ­were very well established, ­were not listed in the local commercial directory, known in French as l’annuaire vert. Nimis notes that, ­until 1955, it appears to have been impossible for African photog­raphers working in the aof to have their studios listed in the local annuaire vert.28 According to Nimis, Mama Casset was the first African photographer ever to be listed in a commercial directory in Senegal, in 1955; in Benin, Alexandre Gbeyongbe was the first to be listed in a directory, again in 1955.29 The example of Casset, one of Senegal’s most celebrated photog­raphers, is particularly in­ter­est­ ing to consider in this context, given that he started working in in­de­pen­dent practice in 1925, having completed his apprenticeship to Lataque in 1920.30 If ­these dates are correct, this means that Casset was blocked from advertising in the French commercial directories during the first thirty years of his ­career. Note that Casset advertised in the back pages of Bingo in 1952 (figure 3.15), three years ­earlier than his first advertisement in the annuaire vert, suggesting that the latter may have been unusually conservative in its treatment of African photog­raphers. As is so often the case, the contrast with the situation in neighboring British-­controlled territories is stark. ­There, African photog­raphers advertised in local commercial directories, including the Red Book of West Africa, from a very early date, and ­there are multiple documented instances of British colonial administrators giving lucrative paid commissions to African photo­g­raphers. Nicolas Monti was the first to observe that several portraits published in the Red Book of West Africa in 1885 ­were made by George S. A. da Costa, an African photographer based in Lagos, Nigeria.31 David Killingray and Andrew Roberts note that da Costa received several paid commissions from the British colonial administration, and that he was hired, for example, by the British to document the construction of a major colonial infrastructure proj­ect, the railway line from Jebba to Kaduna, in 1909–1911.32 Another pioneer with regard to British

172

chaPter four

commissions was N. Walwin Holm, a native of Accra, in Gold Coast (present-­ day Ghana), who began operating a studio t­ here in 1882, ­later opening a Lagos branch of his studio, with the help of his son, J. A. C. Holm, in 1894.33 According to Killingray and Roberts, the elder Holm was hired by the British “to rec­ ord the raising of the British flag in parts of southwestern Nigeria” in 1891.34 Julie Crooks notes that Alphonso Lisk-­Carew advertised his studio in a local, Freetown newspaper starting in 1909, suggesting that African photog­raphers working in Sierra Leone faced fewer obstacles to developing their businesses than their aof counter­parts.35 In another example of the forms of de facto censorship that w ­ ere typical of the aof, French photog­raphers and businessmen made a point of limiting African photog­raphers’ access to selected and disconnected phases of the photographic pro­cess. A Frenchman might train an African assistant or apprentice to print but not to develop film, or he might teach him to retouch negatives but not to print in the darkroom. Nimis, Keller, and Tanya Elder have all presented evidence that this practice, of limiting access to the connected phases of the photographic pro­cess, was widespread in French Soudan.36 Even when African photog­raphers had the technical knowledge allowing them to participate in all phases of the production pro­cess, French photog­raphers ­were more likely than their African counter­parts to own enlargers and other expensive darkroom equipment, and they endeavored to limit darkroom access for their African colleagues. Elder notes that deliberate limiting of darkroom access was a widespread practice in Bamako in the early years of Keïta’s ­career, and that Pierre Garnier (lauded elsewhere in the scholarship for having encouraged Keïta) engaged in ­these and other protectionist tactics in order to ensure that African photog­raphers would remain dependent on him for their printing needs.37 According to Elder, Garnier “kept the printing pro­cess and ­later the film developing pro­cess hidden from African photog­raphers (making his store and his command over the darkroom a necessary point of passage).”38 Elder also reports that Garnier generally sold second­-­hand equipment to African photog­raphers, some of which was broken, and he sold a camera with a broken shutter to Keïta—­a wooden box camera producing prints in a 13 × 18 cm format, which Keïta openly acknowledged was broken in interviews, yet it was his favorite camera.39 The sale of second­hand and broken equipment, as well as expired films and papers (another common practice of which I found direct evidence in my own research), to African photog­raphers was a clever way for businessmen such as Garnier to profit from the increasing involvement of African photog­raphers in commercial studio practice in this period while si­mul­ ta­neously minimizing their ability to compete directly.

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

173

It is impor­tant to note, in light of ­these tactics, that the economic agendas of French businessmen living in colonial territories and t­ hose back home in metropolitan France ­were far from aligned. ­These differences appear only to have been magnified in the late colonial period, when metropolitan businessmen and suppliers became increasingly interested in marketing photographic supplies directly to Africans. Nimis has documented, through her meticulous historical research, that the consumer market in Eu­rope for photographic papers, films, and other supplies had become depressed in the interwar period, and that French manufacturers and distributors began actively conducting research into pos­si­ble African consumer markets in this period. For example, Nimis reports that, in 1934, a doctoral thesis submitted to the Université de Paris by one Bernard Engran detailed the prospects for converting French colonial territories into consumer markets for goods manufactured in Eu­rope, and ­these included a kind of feasibility report on the marketing of photographic supplies in colonial territories in Africa.40 That considerable energy was put into ­these efforts is amply evident in the wide range of print advertisements for cameras and other photographic supplies that ran in Bingo, examples of which ­were reproduced in chapter 3. One final point with regard to the relative freedom that appears to have been enjoyed by both Senegalese and Beninese photog­raphers as compared with their counter­parts in other French territories: throughout the official colonial period, both Senegal and Dahomey ­were (in)famous for having received preferential treatment by the French. Senegal had earned the dubious distinction of being France’s colonie préférée (favorite colony), and Dahomey was widely known as the Quar­tier Latin de l’ aof (the Latin Quarter of French West Africa), a nickname referring to the territory’s reportedly high levels of education and to the corresponding overrepre­sen­ta­tion of Dahomeans among the ranks of colonial functionaries. Also vital to emphasize in this context, photography studios, w ­ hether run by Africans or by Eu­ro­ pe­ans, had been established in urban Senegal and in other coastal enclaves much e­ arlier than in French Soudan. (As was noted in chapter 1, the first studio of which we have a rec­ord in Senegal was established in 1860.41) In fact, so closely was the early development of studio cultures linked to t­ hese two territories, that Jean-­Bernard Ouédraogo, a scholar of the photography history of Burkina Faso, notes that, in Upper Volta (present-­day Burkina Faso), photography followed directly in the footsteps of Senegalese and Dahomean functionaries.42 According to Elder, the first studio of which we have a rec­ ord in French Soudan was established in 1935—­seventy-­five years l­ ater than in Senegal.43 Practically speaking, it would have been more feasible for French

174

chaPter four

colonial authorities to regulate African photog­raphers’ activities in a territory like French Soudan as compared with a territory like Senegal, given the late establishment of local studios in Bamako, and the fact that the social as well as commercial structures governing studio practice ­were, in Bamako, in very early stages of development at the very moment that official colonial censorship was taking hold. State Formation and the Documentary Impulse

Ever since Sylla first told me, in 2008, that he sometimes took po­liti­cal photo­ graphs for official reasons and sometimes “for personal or private reasons,” I have wondered about the distinctions implied by t­ hese terms: between the official state-­sponsored photo­graph made for hire, an act of auto-­documentation carried out by the postcolonial state, and the quasi-­official or unofficial photo­ graph of public or po­liti­cal life, taken by the same photographer working freelance, or “for himself.” Sylla’s comments prompt us to reflect on an apparent schism in, or doubling of, the po­liti­cal imagination of the photographer, who acts at one moment on the state’s behalf in photographing the pro­cess, or pro­ gress, of decolonization, and at another moment as a “private individual.”44 They also steer us t­ oward a consideration of the conditions of possibility for a new documentary practice that was emerging. Adjovi, with whom I carried out extensive interviews in Cotonou between 2009 and 2014, also engaged in this type of official and po­liti­cal work on an unpaid basis in the early post-­independence years. He was particularly eloquent about the value that he placed on shooting “po­liti­cal ­things” that he saw happening in the streets of Cotonou, and he described to me his experience, in relation to ­these unpre­ce­dented ­things, of an emergent documentary impulse. Before opening his own studio, Adjovi had been apprenticed to the legendary Cotonou-­based studio photographer Justin Tométy, who had opened his studio in 1943. When I asked Adjovi why his generation—­the in­de­pen­dence generation—­had left the studio, ­going quite literally into the streets to take pictures, when their masters and mentors had not, he at first told me that ­there was not ­really any reason. They did it, he said, “­because [they] could.”45 Tométy, he insisted, had had no interest in this type of work. When I asked why not, he said, first of all, that his master had used a large-­format wooden camera on a tripod, and that he therefore lacked the physical mobility that would have allowed him to do this type of work. A few minutes and several digressions l­ater, we returned to the question of his initial motivation for starting to shoot in public. This time, the photographer told me that he had felt a desire to photo­graph ­things that ­were suddenly taking

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

175

place in public places in the city that he had never seen happening before. Adjovi spoke of specific public squares and plazas and more generally of public places (des lieux publiques). He said, “­These ­things had never happened before. We saw ­these t­ hings that w ­ ere happening, and we wanted to photo­graph them—­because we wanted ­others to see them.” As for his master’s generation, he added, Tométy could not even r­ eally have conceived of taking this type of picture: “Il n’a pas pu imaginer” (He could not even have ­imagined it), indicating an evolution not only of the photographic apparatus but also of po­liti­cal imagination.

In order to grasp this evolution, we would do well to return to Sylla, whose tripartite ­career—as a photographer, as a museum curator responsible for a significant photographic collection, and as a photography collector—­gave him a unique vantage point on the production and circulation of po­liti­cal photo­ graphs. As a photographer, Sylla’s c­ areer was wide-­ranging. He was not, strictly speaking, a photographer of the in­de­pen­dence generation, in the sense that he did not start working as a photographer u ­ ntil the 1960s, and so a­ fter in­de­pen­ dence came.46 Also critical to understanding Sylla’s position, and his ability to elucidate questions pertaining to postcolonial publics for photography, real or ­imagined, he was, at the time that in­de­pen­dence came, already working full-­time as a museum curator at the Saint-­Louis branch of the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (ifan), a network of colonial research institutions. In the early post-­independence period, the Saint-­Louis ifan became the Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal (crds), a free-­standing museum, archive, library, and research fa­cil­i­ty. Thanks to brilliant leadership over two generations, the crds has been able to convert itself from a colonial institution into a postcolonial one, serving a very broad public, making it truly exceptional among ex-­colonial institutions in ex-­aof territories. Sylla retained his museum post at the crds ­until his retirement in the 1990s, and he played an active part in this transformation. All the while, Sylla was not just a photographer but also an avid photography collector, and he has amassed a significant private collection of photo­graphs. As a photographer, Sylla has specialized knowledge of pro­cesses of photographic production as well as knowledge of commissioning practices. As a curator who was responsible for the photography collections of a public museum whose postcolonial transformation he helped to staff, he has invaluable insights into how photo­graphs ­were, and are, interpreted and displayed. Fi­nally, as a collector, he has a wealth of local knowledge regarding diverse cir­cuits of photographic circulation: how, and by whom, they have

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

4.6 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​

A suitcase filled with photo­graphs chronicling Ibrahima Faye’s po­liti­cal ­career. Faye’s extraordi­ nary collection attests to the close collaboration undertaken by politicians and photog­raphers, as they sought to docu­ ment public and po­liti­cal life in the immediate post-­independence period. Photo­graph: Leslie Rabine. Dakar, Senegal, 2008. Courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye and Leslie Rabine.

177

4.7 ​Léopold Sédar

Senghor and entourage walking in the street with soldiers standing at attention and citizens crowding rooftops. Photographer unknown. Senegal, mid-1960s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

178

been and continue to be lent, borrowed, bought, sold, gifted, collected, and traded.47 In 2008, Sylla talked to me about the financial and contractual dimensions of po­liti­cal photography, as he himself had practiced it in the immediate post-­ independence years. Our conversations touched on commissioning practices, possibilities for publication, and other logistical aspects of freelance work. His discussions of this work ­were often exquisitely detailed, so much so that I sometimes grew restless as we circled (it could seem, for days) around Sylla’s memory of a specific event. We discussed the visit of one or another dignitary or head of state, who had photographed it, and which politicians had traveled with their own photog­raphers. Sylla’s descriptions of ­these visits ­were punctuated by asides, during which we turned to look at par­tic­u­lar photo­graphs, even if ­these did not always match exactly the events that he described. Sylla had not been able to locate his own archives of po­liti­cal photography that summer, so we relied heavi­ly on photo­graphs from the collection of Ibrahima Faye, the

chaPter four

independence-­era governor whom I mentioned before. Among Faye’s images from the period that he spent in Saint-­Louis as the regional governor, as it happens, I came across at least one photo­graph by Sylla (in fact it was my friend and colleague Leslie Rabine, with whom I have collaborated closely on Faye’s collection, who first found this image). We also turned, from time to time, to look at examples of po­liti­cal photo­graphs that could be found in the collections of the crds, of which he had been the curator. Access to the crds’s collections was facilitated by the fact that we met in the photothèque to do our interviews each day. Sylla took g­ reat pride in the commissions that he had done for the local government of la Région du Fleuve. He told me that, when the regional governor wanted a photographer to cover one or another visit by a foreign dignitary or head of state, he would pick up the telephone and call Sylla directly. He said that sometimes it was Aly Diouf (who became governor of la Région du Fleuve in 1967) who called him, or Thierno Birahim Ndao (who became governor in 1975)—or, it seems highly likely, Ibrahima Faye (governor of la Région du Fleuve from 1971 to 1974), given the presence of photo­graphs by Sylla in his collection. Sylla told me that he depended, in ­doing this freelance work, upon the hour-­by-­hour itineraries of dignitaries’ visits, which, ­after in­de­pen­dence, ­were

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

4.8 ​Jacques Bugnicourt

and an unidentified ­woman at a rally for the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS). Photo­grapher unknown. Senegal, ca. 1973–1975. The UPS was founded in 1958 and became Senegal’s sole po­liti­cal party ­until the country returned to a multiparty system in 1974. I am grateful to Hélène Neveu Kringelbach for her help with identifications in this image. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

179

4.9 ​Jean Collin (front

row, seated left) and Ibrahima Faye (to his right, with pipe) in con­ versation at a po­liti­cal meeting. Photographer unknown. Near Mbour, Senegal, ca. 1962. Faye was the Commandant de Cercle of Mbour in 1962–1963, and Collin was governor of the Cap-­ Vert region in 1959–1962. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

180

made available to the public, and that he followed ­these itineraries closely, alongside other photog­raphers. He explained the importance of ­these itineraries, which made it pos­si­ble for photog­raphers to arrive ahead of their subjects by a few minutes, where they then jockeyed for position as they set up their shots. And he described the suspense of standing in a crowd of other photog­raphers as they waited, outside the door of a par­tic­u­lar building, for ­these itineraries to be released. Only l­ ater did I come to understand that t­ hese itineraries of dignitaries’ visits had been, quite literally, published. As I was killing time one after­noon in the reading room of the crds library by flipping through back issues of Dakar-­Matin from the 1960s and early 1970s, I saw ­these itineraries printed on the front page—­making it pos­si­ble, at least in theory, for anyone to follow them.48 When I asked Sylla ­whether his own photo­graphs had ever been published in the newspapers, he said, somewhat stiffly, that they had not, adding that ­these opportunities had been closed to him ­because they always had “their own” photog­raphers. I suspect that by “their own,” he meant French photog­raphers, although I cannot be sure. Keïta said, in his interview with Lydie Diakhaté, that, with the coming of in­de­pen­dence in Bamako, “All the Eu­ro­pean photog­raphers

chaPter four

went home,” and that, he implied, only then did certain professional opportunities begin to open up for African photog­raphers.49 In Senegal, however, the departure of Eu­ro­pean photog­raphers appears to have been somewhat less abrupt, judging from Sylla’s and other photog­raphers’ accounts. It is also in­ter­est­ing to consider this comment from the standpoint of the image with which this section began (figure 4.1), in which a Eu­ro­pean photographer can be seen ­running out in front of Senghor alongside his African colleague. Two photog­raphers are vying for the same shot, one ostensibly representing the ex-­ colonial power and po­liti­cal vision; the other, ostensibly, the postcolonial one.

4.10 ​An unidentified

man at a microphone addressing a regional council. Photographer unknown. Senegal, late 1960s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

I myself would be asked a version of this question about the publication of African photog­raphers’ work when I presented from this research, in its very early stages, in academic settings in London. In ­these settings, I found that the idea that west African photog­raphers had engaged in official and po­liti­cal work in any serious or significant way was met with an almost violent skepticism. More than once I was asked, “If they ­were so engaged in this type of work,

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

181

why ­were their images never published?” ­These questions ­were, I have since come to understand, circumscribed by a fundamentally narrow understanding of photography history in west Africa—by the assumption, for example, that print publications can be a standard for assessing the extent of photographic circulation (in a region that produced, as we saw in the last chapter, hardly any print publications by or for Africans up to this moment). They ­were also characterized by a surprising naiveté with regard to the mono­poly on photojournalism and other documentary work that was held by French photog­raphers in the aof u ­ ntil a very late date. I was therefore all the more gratified when, a few years ­later, I read an interview that Malick Sidibé did with Michelle Lamunière. She asks, “­Were any of your reportage photo­graphs ever published in newspapers ­here?” He responds, “No, not in the papers, no way! The only papers that could have published t­ hose kinds of photo­graphs ­were the state-­ run papers, and they had their own photog­raphers.”50 An explicit desire to combat this overly narrow understanding of the medium’s African histories has motivated my methodological decision to privilege the stories that ­were told to me by photog­raphers over almost ­every other type of source. The point is not to romanticize photog­raphers’ position as “eyewitnesses” to this period of history, or to attribute undue authority to a single voice, but rather to amplify their insights into photo­graphs that can, themselves, be very difficult to track down in any systematic way—­because ­these images w ­ ere rarely integrated into institutional archives and w ­ ere still more rarely published, or ­because they have not always endured as physical or material objects. It is also necessary, therefore, to define the materiality of the archive as broadly as pos­si­ble, to include all of ­these images that are not where we might expect them to be, or that do not exist anymore. It should be noted that archival loss is, objectively, an enormous prob­lem in archives and collections in west Africa, ­whether they are held privately, in ­people’s homes or in community-­based collections, or held by museums and other public institutions. Even in t­ hose cases where po­liti­cal photo­graphs taken by ­African photog­raphers who sought to document the birth of the postcolonial state have entered institutional collections, ­there are real challenges to their preservation—­for geopo­liti­cal reasons as well as for economic, po­liti­cal, cultural, and “natu­ral” or climatic ones. Indeed, my own and o­ thers’ research suggests that po­liti­cal photo­graphs of the postcolonial state in west Africa may be no more secure once they have entered the archives of that state.51 The precariousness of this inclusion can be explained, in part, by the fact that the “national” archive is a remnant of Eu­ro­pean colonialism in west

182

chaPter four

Africa—­a point that both Liam Buckley and Achille Mbembe have made in their trenchant analyses.52 But other ­factors also contribute to this precariousness, and I ­will return to ­these in the methodological section at the close of this chapter.

Sylla spoke with evident admiration of the inventiveness and openness to experimentation of the new African heads of state. He told me that t­ hese politicians often hired their own photog­raphers to document their activities on a freelance basis, rather than leaving this crucial work to government photog­ raphers, and that they managed their images with consummate skill. Faye’s collection, from which many of the photo­graphs illustrating this chapter are drawn (figures 4.1–4.4, 4.6–4.13), was amassed in part through this kind of commissioning. Faye’s ­career spanned nearly four de­cades of government ser­vice and included posts first in the colonial administration and l­ater as a regional governor, in multiple regions and in five dif­fer­ent cities in Senegal. Part of the interest of his collection stems, apart from the themes and quality of the images, from the fact that it mixes photo­graphs taken by photog­raphers who w ­ ere employed by the government in an official capacity with ­those that Faye himself commissioned in this quasi-­official mode. Faye told me, in 2007, that some of the photo­graphs in his collection had been gifted to him by photog­raphers working for the state, which may explain the presence in his collection of photo­graphs bearing the state information ser­vice stamp on the verso. This indiscriminate mixing of official versus quasi-­official po­liti­cal photo­graphs underscores—as did both Sylla and Faye in their accounts—­that ­these two classes of image ­were often taken by the same photog­raphers, with the stamp on the verso sometimes the only way to distinguish between ­these two classes of photo­graph (figures 4.17 and 4.18). While on the topic of politicians’ commissioning practices, Sylla and I spoke at length about Mobutu Sese Seko, the notorious dictator of Zaire (formerly Belgian Congo, t­ oday the Demo­cratic Republic of Congo), who had become president in 1965. Sylla told me that Mobutu always traveled with his own photographer. What in another context might have seemed a symptom of a ­future dictator’s megalomania was, as it unfolded in the context of a conversation about the deep investments shared by politicians and photog­raphers in po­liti­cal photography, subtly reframed. Sylla, furthermore, explic­itly linked Mobutu’s savvy in relation to his public image to the fact that, in the 1950s,

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

183

4.11 ​Dignitaries seated

on a platform during a state visit by Mobutu to Senegal. From left: Ibrahima Faye, Elisabeth Diouf, Mobutu Sese Seko, Abdou Diouf, and Marie-­Antoinette Mobutu. Photographer unknown. Senegal, ca. 1960s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

184

prior to entering politics, he had worked as a professional journalist in Léopold­ ville (present-­day Kinshasa). He told me that Mobutu had gone all the way to Belgium to attend journalism school. The desire of African politicians to be assiduously photographed stemmed (as Sylla seemed to imply with his detailed account of Mobutu’s early c­ areer) from their recognition of an urgent po­liti­ cal need to produce new, and distinctly African, images of state power. Elder makes this same point in her research on the early post-­independence period in Mali, writing, “The first de­cade ­after in­de­pen­dence was a time of euphoric display. . . . ​It was impor­tant to make the state and its representatives ‘visually’ accessible to the populace.”53 Aspirational Research

As our conversation about Mobutu’s early c­ areer drew to a close, Sylla and I attempted to match a photo­graph of Mobutu, drawn from Faye’s collection, which we suspected had been taken in Saint-­Louis, to an entry in the livre d’or, or guest book, of the crds museum (Figure 4.11). Mobutu had signed the

chaPter four

book during a visit that he had made to the museum during his February 1971 trip to Saint-­Louis; Sylla had been pre­sent for that visit in his post as museum curator, and, pulling the guest book for that year from the stacks in the crds library, he flipped almost immediately to the page. As I sat in the crds library perusing back issues of Le Soleil one day, I noticed that the coverage of Mobutu’s visit to Senegal, which ran on the front page on February 11, 1971, described this “return” visit paid by Mobutu to Senghor, who had visited “son ­grand ami” (his ­great friend) in the Congo in January the preceding year.54 A story published l­ater that same week, on February 15, 1971, detailed Mobutu’s arrival in Saint-­Louis.55 In 2008, Sylla and I labored u ­ nder the (I now know, fragile) illusion that, by matching the photo­graph to Mobutu’s signature in the museum’s guest book, we would be able to piece together a more comprehensive visual and textual rec­ord of that moment in Senegal’s postcolonial po­liti­cal history. We ­were guided, above all, by our shared aspirations for the capaciousness of the archive of the postcolonial state, and for certain postcolonial archival practices—in which Sylla, as a museum curator, had both a professional and a personal stake. Given longer experience of other institutional archives in the region, I now understand that Sylla’s desire to see po­liti­cal photo­graphs—­such as the one we held in our hands of Mobutu—­integrated into an official, state-­ sponsored archive of postcolonial po­liti­cal history was, in the end, largely aspirational. Despite their obvious significance to the politicians who commissioned them and to the photog­raphers who took them, ­these “photo­graphs of po­liti­cal ­things” have only rarely been incorporated in state-­sponsored archives in postcolonial space.56 In contrast to the capacious vision of a state-­sponsored archive of postcolonial po­liti­cal history that Sylla expressed as a museum professional, the views that he expressed as a photographer ­were noticeably more fraught. Indeed, during our 2008 interviews, Sylla explic­itly told me that one of his motivations for taking po­liti­cal photo­graphs was that he wanted to make t­ hese images accessible in a way that he had known or feared the state would not. And Sylla repeatedly underscored in our conversations that he was not any less qualified or competent to photo­graph the ­things that ­were being photographed by photog­raphers who ­were formally employed by the state and whose images did appear in the newspapers. In fact, he told me that they often photographed the very same ­things, that they ­were ­doing the same ­thing. He said, “We ­were ­doing exactly the same t­ hing. They [le ser­vice de l’information] ­were ­doing the same ­thing that I was ­doing, except that I was ­doing it on a private level. They ­were ­doing it on a public level.” “We,” he repeated, “­were ­doing it for private

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

185

4.12 ​Modibo Keïta (left)

and Léopold Sédar ­Senghor (right) riding in a motorcade near the port of Kaolack. Photographer unknown. Near Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

reasons.”57 He added that, although the photog­raphers working for the information ser­vice always took lots of pictures, no one could actually access them. How exactly Sylla ­imagined the greater access that his images, it was at least implied, would afford he never r­ eally specified in our conversations. If t­ hese photo­graphs ­were not published, and if he knew or feared all along that they would never be published, what form would this access take?

I would venture, cautiously, two observations about the conversations about “po­liti­cal photography” that I had with Sylla. The first is that he and other African photog­raphers engaged in po­liti­cal practice in this period w ­ ere responding less to changes in policy (the loosening of colonial-­era restrictions on African photog­raphers), or even to technological changes in the medium (the transition from large format cameras requiring tripods to smaller and lighter-­weight handheld cameras, improving maneuverability), than to changes in their own po­liti­cal consciousness. As such, they openly and deliberately staked a claim to po­liti­cal work, and they often understood their aims, in ­doing this work, to

186

chaPter four

be essentially dif­fer­ent from ­those of other photog­raphers, who might also be taking the same types of pictures or who had previously taken them in a dif­ fer­ent historical moment.58 The idea that ­these photo­graphs ­were somehow dif­fer­ent drives home the centrality of circulation, interpretation, and use to the definition of some photo­graphs as “po­liti­cal.” It also suggests that we have yet to grapple with the importance of t­ hese images’ ­imagined ­futures to their definition as po­liti­cal. The second observation is that African photog­raphers working in both Senegal and Benin w ­ ere not dissuaded from participating in the production of po­liti­cal images, even when they lacked access to formal media outlets. This lack of access to publication opportunities even appears, in key re­spects, to have been generative—­for example, by making local, African photog­raphers more available to independence-­era politicians, who, as we have seen, ­were ­eager to hire them to document their po­liti­cal ­careers. Indeed, African photog­raphers’ early engagements with po­liti­cal photography in the post-­independence era ­were structured in ways that maximized their freedom to collaborate with politicians and other public figures directly and to create a visual archive of public and po­liti­cal life on their own terms, without ­either the ex-­colonial power or the postcolonial state acting as intermediaries. African photog­ raphers’ lack of access to formal media outlets, particularly when coupled with the impulse to document certain events for posterity (in the words of Adjovi, “­These ­things had never happened before”), suggests that ­these images are characterized, above all, by a radical opening of both po­liti­cal and historical consciousness. This (still preliminary) exploration of po­liti­cal photography as it was practiced by African photog­raphers in the late colonial and immediate post-­ independence period leaves many questions unanswered. Did Sylla’s po­liti­cal photo­graphs, ­whether they ­were formally state-­sponsored or produced in freelance practice, and therefore taken “for his own reasons,” ever find the publics that he envisioned for them? What do we make of the fact that, t­ oday, the po­ liti­cal photo­graphs that ­were taken by Sylla and so many other photog­raphers like him working in freelance practice have, despite their eccentric movements and lack of a permanent institutional home, frequently turned out to be more accessible than ­those that ­were commissioned by the state? I ­will return to ­these and other questions about public access to “po­liti­cal photo­graphs” and to other images of the postcolonial state at the close of this chapter as well as, again, in the conclusion to this book.

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

187

4.13 ​Abdou Diouf and

entourage. Photo­ graph: Oumar Ly. Podor, Senegal, 1974. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

4.14 (NEXT PAGE) ​Portrait,

said to be of Soukeyna Konaré. (An alternative identification suggests the sitter may be Sokhna Kiné.) Photographer unknown. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, 1920s–1930s. Undated reproduction, cropped and enlarged. Courtesy of the CRDS, Saint-­Louis, Senegal.

188

Proto-­Political Images

A par­tic­u­lar photo­graph that I looked at and talked about with other ­people in Saint-­Louis, also in 2008, echoes in the margins of ­these conversations that I had with Sylla. The photo­graph in question, a portrait of a celebrated Saint-­ Louisian named Soukeyna Konaré, demonstrates that west African audiences ­were engaged in the collective interpretation of photographic images to which they ascribed po­liti­cal significance well before the advent of what Sylla’s generation called “po­liti­cal photography.” As such, this photo­graph returns us to the question of the status of the publics that might be ­imagined or envisioned for po­liti­cal images, now or in the past. ­These publics, as we saw in the preceding section, ­were vital for African photog­raphers engaged in po­liti­cal photography in the immediate post-­independence period, but ­were they entirely new? During the same two visits to Saint-­Louis during which I interviewed Sylla, in 2007 and 2008, I encountered multiple prints of this portrait, which I was told by multiple interlocutors, was of Konaré (figure 4.14).59 Ask almost anyone in Saint-­Louis, and they ­will tell you that Konaré is famous for having married a Malian chief. The elder generation w ­ ill also tell you that she was a major player in anticolonial politics starting in the 1930s. Specifically, she is remembered for her role in anti-­French politics in the city: as one w ­ oman, whom I met in Sor, put it, “She stood up to the French.”60 Konaré was described to

chaPter four

me, in Saint-­Louis, as a close female relative (a cousin or an aunt) and the po­liti­cal mentor of the well-­known Senegalese politician Lamine Guèye. ­Today, Guèye is the more famous po­liti­cal figure, so I was somewhat surprised when Guèye was characterized in ­these conversations as Konaré’s protégé. Guèye, a favorite son of Saint-­Louis, was born in 1891 and had already had a distinguished po­liti­cal ­career before being elected, in 1946, to the French National Assembly alongside Léopold Senghor (then Guèye’s own protégé). Neither Senghor nor Guèye was the first Senegalese deputy to the French National Assembly. That distinction goes to Blaise Diagne, who became, in 1914, the first black African ever elected to the French parliament. The right to send elected representatives from the four cities in Senegal known as the quatre communes (Saint-­Louis, Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar) to Republican institutions in Paris had been formally codified with the establishment of the Second Republic in 1848. When Guèye joined Senghor as a deputy in 1946, at the creation of the Fourth Republic, the repre­sen­ta­tion of French colonial territories in the French National Assembly was substantively reconfigured, and the number of seats allotted to elected politicians (deputies and senators) from territories in “black Africa” jumped from seventeen to twenty-­five, one of many harbingers of the new era. In the National Assembly, Guèye was the author of the Loi de Lamine Guèye, which, when it was passed in 1946, changed African—­and, arguably, world—­history forever, by granting full rights of citizenship to all of the ­people living in France’s colonies. In 1957, Guèye became the head of the psas, a major po­liti­cal party that was once described to me by a colleague in Saint-­Louis as one of the first black po­liti­cal parties in Africa (although it would be more accurate to call it one of the first black po­liti­cal parties in west Africa).61 Again, given Guèye’s renown, it was at first surprising to me to hear my interlocutors take him down a rung, which they seemed consistently to do by elevating Konaré above him. The w ­ oman in Sor, in whose living room I saw a copy of this portrait of Konaré, said to me, “She taught him every­thing he knew.” Konaré is best known for having led a ­women’s rebellion in Saint-­Louis on May 4, 1930. The w ­ omen protested against an attempt on the part of the colonial administration to suppress elections to Senegal’s Colonial Council, a local territorial council dominated by originaires (as inhabitants of Senegal’s quatre communes w ­ ere commonly known). Konaré is thus remembered not simply as an anticolonial activist, but as one who explic­itly defended the rights of Senegalese p ­ eople to participate in local elections, a defining issue of po­liti­ cal life in the aof and particularly in Senegal.62 The historical sources that I have been able to locate, oral and written, emphasize two points regarding the 1930 ­women’s rebellion: the first is that the French resorted to vio­lence to try

190

chaPter four

to quell it; the second is that this tactic failed.63 Konaré was, by all accounts, a formidable adversary, and she and the ­women of Saint-­Louis prevailed.

This image of Konaré (figure 4.14) is a perfect example of an honorific portrait, signifying power, prestige, and wealth. The portrait’s manifest formality affirms the sitter’s high social standing: she is the wife of a chief and member of an impor­tant ­family. The quantity and quality of her jewelry (much of it, it was repeatedly pointed out to me, gold) work to highlight this standing, as do the voluminous expanses of cloth, both worn on her person and displayed in her lap. Her seemingly intrepid engagement with the camera creates the impression of an unshakeable confidence. This impression might also be attributed, at least in part, to Konaré’s assumption of the “traditional” west African pose, in which the subject ­faces the camera head-on, with her torso square to the camera and feet symmetrically planted, and with her hands held facing forward with all of her fin­gers vis­i­ble in or above her lap.64 A closer look at the photo­graph reveals that it is part of a larger image, which has been cropped and enlarged. Karim Fall, a member of the staff of the crds photothèque, where I first encountered this image, told me that the person standing to the right of Konaré, and whose clothing remains vis­i­ble ­behind her left shoulder, is her son. If we assume that Konaré was slightly older than Guèye (I have not been able to find a birthdate for her in any written source), she would have been approximately forty years old in 1930, the year of the rebellion. Judging from her age in this photo­graph (I would put her, very approximately, in her thirties), we can date this photo­graph as having been taken before the rebellion, say, between 1920 and 1930. In July 2008, I saw three dif­fer­ent prints of this same photo­graph, all versions of this same cropped and enlarged print, made from what had been a ­family portrait. I saw the photo­graph in two dif­fer­ent rooms and contexts in the crds: in an exhibition installed in an upstairs gallery of the museum and in the photothèque. I also saw the photo­graph hanging, framed and glazed, in a gallery of portraits on a wall in a private home in Sor. I am almost certain that none of the prints I saw was a vintage print. B ­ ecause I saw each print in a separate space and in two dif­fer­ent neighborhoods of the city, I am not able to say with any certainty ­whether any one of ­these prints was older than the ­others. All had ­either been struck from the same negative or made (more likely) through serial rephotography. However the prints ­were produced, this photo­graph of Konaré is the earliest photo­graph that I saw in Saint-­Louis that

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

191

seems to have circulated widely in the form of multiples, and through very dif­fer­ent spaces: institutional and domestic, public and private, in the gallery of a museum, in a photo archive, and in a private home. Indeed, the fact of the photo­graph’s existence in the form of multiples, rare for a portrait of its time, and in the cropped version, with other members of her ­family having been removed and the focus therefore tightened on Konaré, only amplifies its significance as a photo­graph of a re­sis­tance leader, which is to say, as a po­liti­cal photo­graph. To be sure, Konaré’s photo­graph was not intended as a po­liti­cal photo­ graph at the moment it was taken, yet it has operated for many generations in Saint-­Louis as an early document of anticolonial politics, and it is one of the earliest visual rec­ords of an anticolonial figure I have seen that did not originate as a “trophy” photo­graph taken by French colonial authorities.65 Even if it does not fit the definition of a po­liti­cal photo­graph put forward by the in­de­pen­dence generation, Konaré’s portrait anticipates t­ hese ­later photo­ graphs, by virtue of the significance that it has accrued. The po­liti­cal nature of this photo­graph stems less from its repre­sen­ta­tion of a po­liti­cal event or of a par­tic­u­lar theme (la photographie des choses politiques), than from the plasticity of photographic reference and from its power to sustain collective po­liti­ cal consciousness. Konaré’s portrait hardly solves the riddle of what kind of “access” Sylla and photog­raphers of the in­de­pen­dence generation ­imagined for their po­liti­cal images, but it gives us a clearer sense of the modalities of photographic (re)production, circulation, interpretation, and use that allowed Saint-­Louisians to posit, and become, a public for a photo­graph long ­after it was taken, investing it with po­liti­cal significance ­only after the fact.

It is notable that this photo­graph of a re­sis­tance leader, which saw a comparatively wide circulation, remains accessible to a comparatively broad public ­today. In this re­spect, it is instructive to contrast Konaré’s photo­graph with the case of the small but impor­tant cache of anticolonial newspapers, dating from the 1950s, of which I learned while working in the crds library one day. Sylla himself (who told me about ­these newspapers) referred to them, as did the library personnel, as “under­ground” newspapers: des journaux clandestins. Sylla also sometimes referred to them as “illegal,” which they definitely ­were ­under the colonial administration. Crucial to remember in this context is that the crds was, prior to in­de­pen­dence in 1960, a branch of ifan, a network of colonial libraries and research facilities created by French colonial authorities.

192

chaPter four

If t­ hese newspapers entered the library’s collections before the end of the colonial period, this may be a testament to French surveillance of African po­liti­cal activity in the 1950s.66 The newspapers are still t­ here in the crds library, but they are, I found out in 2008, exceedingly difficult to access. More than sixty years ­after they ­were published, they have not been cata­logued. When, at the urging of Sylla, I searched for rec­ords for some of t­ hese newspapers in the card cata­logue, ­there ­were cards but no call numbers. Sylla, who seemed to know all about them (remember that he had been at the institution since 1956), encouraged me to continue my search, and he made suggestions to me and to Abdou Khadre Sarr, the librarian, as to where we might find them in the stacks. Sarr, a­ fter many hours of valiant digging, fi­nally found them in a pile, unpro­cessed and unlabeled, in a corner of the stacks. With names like Tribune Libre (­Free tribune), Clarté (Light), L’Action (Action), and L’Afrique force ouvrière (African workforce) (Sylla told me the latter was a Marxist publication and therefore illegal), t­ hese newspapers paint a vivid picture of the history of African liberation, and they make explicit the princi­ples and ideals that motivated the politicians, public figures, and ­people who participated in the rallies, parades, marches, demonstrations, and meetings of ­labor ­unions and po­liti­cal parties that are depicted in the po­liti­cal photo­graphs of this period. As I consulted ­these newspapers, they crumbled in my hands. It was hard not to shake the feeling that this was the first time anyone had consulted them in a very long time, and that it might well be the last time that anyone consulted them. Indeed, one consequence of t­hese newspapers’ fragility is that they are likely never to be cata­logued and therefore destined to remain inaccessible. Despite the overtones of “salvage ethnography,” which I deliberately invoke ­here, ­these anticolonial newspapers are not documents of some “lost” civilization. Rather, they are documents of the history of the postcolonial state as it was being i­magined and envisioned by anticolonial po­liti­cal actors, whose voices are fading and increasingly difficult for us to hear. T ­ hese archives are “endangered” in a technical sense (the sense in which this term is used by archivists and unesco), and, I would venture, they have arguably always been endangered, insofar as they started life as under­ground publications with an uneasy relationship to the very state-­sponsored institutions, such as archives and libraries, in which they live on. Photographic prints are generally more durable than newspapers, as the presence of Konaré’s portrait in multiple collections in Saint-­Louis reminds us. They offer dif­fer­ent archival materialities and temporalities and, therefore, dif­fer­ent possibilities for historical research as compared with written documents. I do not

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

193

want to suggest that photography archives are somehow less endangered or ­housed in less precarious conditions than documentary archives in west Africa.67 But I do want to suggest that photo­graphs’ dif­fer­ent rhythms, life spans, and modalities of production, reproduction, and circulation pre­sent untapped methodological opportunities for writing decolonial history, as do the dif­fer­ent experiences of memory and types of discourse to which they give rise. This is, I think, a fortiori true in the case of po­liti­cal photo­graphs, which may not—as Sylla was so keenly aware—­have a secure f­ uture in the archives of the postcolonial state, and which may, in any case, have moved through collections, sites, and spaces that are, precisely, less “official” before being relocated to state-­ sponsored institutions. Somewhat counterintuitively, ­these images remind us that it may be necessary to go well outside the ideological, institutional, and infrastructural confines of the postcolonial state in order to trace that state’s history. They also remind us, just as importantly, that images of the state and its institutions (de l’état et des choses étatiques) do not always represent a clamping down on freedom or on forms of po­liti­cal imagination associated with liberation. And ­every po­liti­cal image may itself constitute, as we have seen, a vital site of decolonial imagination, ­whether through the unruliness of its circulation, the plasticity of its reference, or its ability to call new publics into being. Methodological Reflection: Endangered Archives in the Postcolony

At that moment, in 2008, when Sylla and I had our initial conversations about po­liti­cal photography, I was struck by the photographer’s interpretation of his own po­liti­cal photo­graphs, and particularly by t­ hose that he took on a freelance basis, which he posited as somehow ­running alongside, or ­counter to, the “official” archive, consisting of images produced by photog­raphers working directly for the state. What I did not yet grasp, in 2008, is to what extent the so-­called official archive has in many cases dis­appeared, become fragmented, or been destroyed. In t­ hese cases, the personal or private archives of a photographer like Sylla, or a private collection such as Faye’s, have become the only photographic rec­ords of this period. ­These archives are or have become, in ­these cases, a kind of “counterarchive”—­a term with which I am uncomfortable but which I use as a kind of shorthand ­here.68 Rather than reinforcing official/unofficial distinctions, I want simply to underscore that the official archives of the postcolonial state are only one of several pos­si­ble sites where this photographic history may reside. ­There are many dif­f er­ent reasons for the loss of archives in the con­temporary postcolony. In some cases, photo­graphs have been deliberately destroyed—­and

194

chaPter four

4.15 ​Visitors at an

exhibition of historical photo­graphs at the CRDS in Saint-­Louis, Senegal. El Hadj Adama Sylla (right), who worked as a museum curator at the CRDS, points to an image for visitors. Ibrahima Faye (in white, next to Sylla) was governor of la Région du Fleuve, 1971–1974. Photo­graph: Julien Lopez. Saint-­Louis, Senegal, early 1970s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

not always for po­liti­cal reasons. In Benin in 2009, the photographer Zinsou Félix DeMesse confirmed the worst with regard to the fate of po­liti­cal photo­ graphs in the official, state-­sponsored archive in Benin. DeMesse spent the better part of his ­career, from 1964 to 1973, as the official photographer of the Ministry of Information and Propaganda in the newly in­de­pen­dent Dahomey.69 He is therefore the only photographer I interviewed during my research to have spent his ­career as a full-­time employee of a state information ser­vice and, likewise, the only photographer I interviewed who did not move into po­liti­cal

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

195

photography from studio practice. During our long and leisurely interview, at his home in Ouando (serendipitously, a stone’s throw from the main building of the Beninese National Archives), DeMesse recounted to me this exceptional itinerary. Just a few years before the coming of in­de­pen­dence, his f­ather put him, while still a teenager, on a plane to Paris—­without, however, informing his son where he was g­ oing ­until they ­were in the gate area of the airport and boarding had been called. In France, DeMesse attended the prestigious Collège Sainte-­Barbe, where a teacher encouraged him to take the competitive entrance exams for the photography school associated with the French national broadcasting ser­vice (Radiodiffusion-­Télévision Française), from which he graduated in 1962. DeMesse was, he told me, the only Beninese photographer of his generation to have been formally trained in France. In 1964, DeMesse suddenly had to return to Dahomey, at the insistence of Sourou-­Migan Apithy, who had been called back from French exile to be named president of the Republic of Dahomey, which had endured yet another in a seemingly endless string of coups. (For t­ hose not familiar with Beninese po­liti­ cal history, the instability of the government in the early post-­independence years is legendary. During the first de­cade of in­de­pen­dence, coups ­were a frequent, sometimes annual, occurrence, and no fewer than fifteen ­people led the government in the twelve years between 1960 and 1972.) DeMesse told me that he had expected to spend the rest of his life in Paris ­until, in 1964, he received this summons from Apithy: “The government fell again, and they brought Apithy back to Dahomey. I received this letter saying, ‘Pack your ­things and catch the next flight to Dahomey.’ ” 70 DeMesse was ambivalent about the relocation, but he had high hopes for putting his talents and training to work for the new postcolonial state. T ­ hese hopes w ­ ere soon dashed. He said to me, “They killed photography [Ils ont tué la photographie].” When I asked him to elaborate (who, exactly, had killed it?), he told me that it all began with the 1972 revolution, ­after the coup in which Kérékou had come to power. Specifically, he said that it had been the new minister of information who made the decision to jettison all of the negatives h ­ oused in the ministry’s archives: “­There was this room where they kept all of the negatives . . . ​ from the beginning, from the [colonial] governor to the president. They came and they told me to throw every­thing in the trash.” Despite his protests, the minister insisted that this was DeMesse’s job, as the head of the photographic section, and he ultimately carried out the command—a fact that clearly pains him t­ oday. DeMesse’s one act of re­sis­tance was to duplicate some of the photo­graphs that he himself had taken, and ­these remain in his personal collection. Lest we be fooled by the epic pa­norama of coup d’états and revolutions, the photographer ­explained

196

chaPter four

that the minister’s reasons for wanting to destroy the negatives w ­ ere not po­liti­cal. Rather, he was e­ ager to make the transition to color. With the advent of color, DeMesse said, “Photography became something completely dif­fer­ent,” and the minister of information had de­cided that the fledgling state’s black-­and-­white archives ­were obsolete.71 The deliberate destruction of black-­and-­white negatives with the arrival of color is, ­today, a familiar refrain of west African photography history, one that I have touched on elsewhere.72 Decisions that may seem tragic or just plain drastic to us ­today ­were made not only by governments but also by individual photog­raphers. Siaka Lawani, who opened his Cotonou studio, Espérance Photo in 1963, a­ fter apprenticing ­under Franck Kidjo (the f­ ather of the internationally known singer-­songwriter Angélique Kidjo), told me that he personally destroyed his black-­and-­white negatives, with the understanding that they had become obsolete and that color would soon replace them.73 Lawani also excelled at official and po­liti­cal photography, and he is remembered ­today as a beloved photographer of four of Benin’s presidents: Apithy, Maga, Christophe Soglo, and Kérékou.74 Lawani’s motivation was, in fact, similar to that of the minister of information who had made DeMesse destroy the postcolonial state’s early archives: both w ­ ere ­eager to “modernize” and to embrace the new technology of color photography. In other cases, the reasons for a given archive’s loss remain more mysterious. In Dakar in July 2008, I accompanied my friend and colleague Leslie Rabine to the presidential complex, intending to consult the photo­graphs that ­were h ­ oused ­there—or so we thought. We ­were hoping to find at least some part of the archives of the state information ser­vice, whose production had, we knew, been voluminous, based on the large number of images bearing the information ser­vice stamp that we had seen in private collections elsewhere. In fact, Leslie had an official letter signed by Abdoulaye Wade, then the president of Senegal, granting her permission, by name, to consult the photography archives h ­ oused in the presidential complex. Having presented the letter to the guards at the gate­house, we passed through security and to the next round of guards. They went on to make a flurry of promising-­seeming phone calls, confirming that we could be admitted—­but in the end we had no such luck. Although the guards had received permission to admit us, no one knew where the archives actually ­were. We could not be left to wander around the presidential complex looking for the elusive archives, and so we ­were sent away. On a return visit to Senegal (this time unaccompanied by me), Leslie had a major victory, which she animatedly narrated to me, in real time, in a rare moment of good cell reception: she had obtained the name and telephone number of an ­actual member of the archives personnel! This time, she was not only successfully

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

197

admitted to the presidential complex but taken to the place where the archives ­were kept, only to find that even the archivists did not know where the photo­ graphs reportedly in their collections actually ­were. In the spirit of no stone unturned, before I left Senegal in 2008, I had done some asking around about the archives of the regional governments that I knew had commissioned work from photog­raphers like Sylla. A ­ fter all, he had mentioned several regional governors to me by name. I made an appointment with an archivist at the Senegalese National Archives to try to find out ­whether materials associated with the vari­ous regional governments might be in the National Archives and, if yes, w ­ hether they included photo­graphs. To my delight, the archivist told me that such materials did indeed exist, that they definitely included photo­graphs, and that t­ hese had been integrated into the National Archives’ iconographic collections. A ­ fter repeat visits to the archives, however, I was not able to find any evidence of their existence. A few days ­later, I was told by Moustapha Niang, director of the audiovisual ser­vices division of ifan at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (ifan-­ucad) in Dakar, that the photographic collections I was looking for had indeed been integrated into the iconographic collections of the National Archives, but that ­those collections ­were no longer physically in the National Archives. Rather, they had been transferred to the main ifan-­ucad fa­cil­i­ty, located on the university campus, for which Niang himself was directly responsible. I could hardly believe the stroke of good luck! And so I made a visit to the ifan-­ucad photothèque, where I consulted what I was told by the personnel ­were all of their photo­graphs. I saw a wealth of ethnographic photo­graphs and other materials associated with the colonial administration (many of which duplicated the collections of the crds), but I did not see a single photo­graph that bore the stamp of the state information ser­vice. It is pos­si­ble that such images are in the ifan-­ ucad collections, but that they had not yet been pro­cessed at that time. It is also pos­si­ble that they ­were not or are no longer ­there. Each of ­these examples, of lost or missing postcolonial archives, is the product of divergent actions and chains of events. Yet each resonates with, and helps us to grasp in a multitude of registers, Sylla’s prescience in expressing his fears about ­people’s “access” to po­liti­cal photo­graphs. In Senegal, the vast majority of photo­graphs on which I saw the stamp of the official state information ser­vice ­were in private collections (figures 4.17 and 4.18), and I have seen, or been able to access, comparatively few po­liti­cal photo­graphs in national or other state-­sponsored archives in west Africa.

198

chaPter four

4.16 ​Portrait of Ibrahima

Faye, a Senegalese politician and member of the in­de­pen­dence generation, at home. Photographer unknown. Dakar, early 1970s. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

­ hese stories about lost or missing archives ­will, for some readers, be reminisT cent of all-­too-­familiar narratives about the “lack” of historical documents in Africa, which have long been at the center of debates about African history.75 We must be aware of, and constantly guard against, the colonial origins of t­ hese narratives. But we must also keep in mind that ­these ideas about a “lack” of documents continue to structure postcolonial histories and narratives, and we must actively work to develop methods that allow us to know, and to write, decolonial histories using sources and accessing perspectives that may not always be

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

199

represented in written documents. That said, it would be wrong simply to set photo­graphs in opposition to documents as an idealized “alternative historical source.” This seems particularly impor­ tant to bear in mind as we reflect on the types of photo­graphs that Sylla and other photog­raphers defined as po­liti­cal. Their explicit hope for ­these images was that they would, precisely, be or become historical documents. Also complicating our assessment of “alternative historical sources” for research on this period, Africans involved in politics in the late colonial period had, as I have already suggested, legitimate fears of Eu­ro­pean surveillance. ­These led them, quite rationally, to reject, hide, or minimize documentation of their activities. Ruth Schachter Morgenthau makes this point in her 1964 book, Po­liti­cal Parties in French-­Speaking West Africa, when she argues that the relative scarcity of documents faced by the historian of this period cannot adequately be explained by arguments about orality in African ­cultures.76 Rather, she notes that African po­liti­cal organizers w ­ ere, in this period, simply wary: “Eu­ro­pe­ans drew up most of the documents on con­temporary Africa,” she writes, adding that ­those involved in politics in the late colonial era naturally saw documentation of their activities as increasing their risk of exposure: “Most African party organizers felt that documents might be seized by the colonial administration and used against them.” 77 That their fears w ­ ere justified was amply evident in the story that I told about the under­ground newspapers in the crds. The many challenges that we had in locating ­these under­ground newspapers fifty years a­ fter the coming of in­de­pen­dence, even with knowledgeable personnel to guide us, remind us of the extent to which t­ hese silences may still linger in, and continue to shape, the archives of the postcolony. At a minimum, we must consider that ­these habits, developed at a crucial moment of postcolonial state formation, have continued to influence, in their way, postcolonial practices of archiving and documentation—­practices to which photography has too infrequently been admitted. 4.17 ​Stamp on the verso

of a photo­graph associ­ ating it with the office of the president in Senegal. The photo­graphs on which I saw such stamps ­were usually in private collections and not in state-­sponsored institu­ tions. Private collection, Dakar, Senegal. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

200

In Cotonou, in 2009, the photographer Benoît Adjovi narrated his dawning experience of the documentary impulse, in a story that I related ­earlier. When I asked Adjovi about what had changed that had made it pos­si­ble for his generation to do this type of po­liti­cal work, the photographer spoke to me of his desire to photo­graph ­things that ­were taking place in public that he had never seen happening before: “­These ­things had never happened before. We saw

chaPter four

t­ hese ­things that ­were happening, and we wanted to photo­graph them.” On a whim, I asked Adjovi if he could remember the first time he had ever taken a photo­graph in a public place. He responded that he could. A large number of p ­ eople had gathered in a public plaza in Cotonou; in fact, he had never seen so many ­people in one place before. Interestingly, they had not gathered for po­ liti­ cal reasons but rather ­ because 78 they wanted to see a h ­ orse. What Adjovi went on to say, ­after explaining about the ­horse, contains an impor­tant caution and serves as a stark reminder of the precarious situation of “photo­graphs of po­liti­ cal ­things,” whose relationship to the state is not always clear. By virtue of a strange twist of fate, Adjovi went on to explain, this same plaza, in which he had photographed the crowd that had gathered to see the ­horse, ­later became an impor­tant gathering place for po­liti­cal rallies and antigovernment protests in Cotonou. Was it not striking that the first crowd that he had ever photographed had gathered in a plaza that would only ­later become famous for large gatherings and po­liti­cal protests—and that was not yet famous at the time that he took the photo­graph? When I remarked on this out-­of-­jointness, the photographer did not disagree. Rather, he responded by telling me that this plaza was not even ­there anymore. He explained, in a slightly wooden tone, that, t­ oday, most young ­people in Cotonou had never even heard of it, adding quietly that his own nephew (whose young son had been playing in the courtyard where we had been talking) had never even heard of it. As for the crowd, so central to Adjovi’s story, both its novelty and its transience, it is a poignant reminder that “po­liti­cal photography” was never confined to a par­tic­u­lar type of image and above all not to photo­graphs of charismatic po­liti­cal leaders: the Mobutus and Senghors. For t­ hese images could also picture, ­whether inadvertently or by design, the citizens of the newly in­ de­pen­dent states acting collectively as citizens and assembling in public to participate in po­liti­cal life.

I have often wondered w ­ hether Sylla’s attempts to train me in certain research protocols (as we sought to match a photo­graph of Mobutu to his signature in a

Africanizing Po­l iti­cal Photography

4.18 ​Stamp on the

verso of a photo­graph associating it with the state information ser­vice in Senegal. Private col­ lection, Dakar, Senegal. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

201

guestbook) might be interpreted as a kind of methodological crash course for the researcher wanting to use, and perhaps even to reimagine, the archives of the postcolonial state. ­These methods may have been largely aspirational, in the sense that they ­were oriented, above all, by ideas about the kinds of documents that should be deposited and made accessible in an archive sponsored by the state—­rather than by the presence of ­actual documents. Adjovi’s description of this disappearing plaza, with its out-­of-­joint po­liti­cal significance (vis­i­ble or photographable only before it emerges into full view), might also be interpreted as a slightly dif­fer­ent methodological lesson, prioritizing research methods appropriate to “po­liti­cal photo­graphs” whose relationship to the state is decidedly less clear. E ­ ither way, ­those wanting to do research on the visual history of the postcolonial state must endeavor to work, where t­ he images are still intact, with as wide an array of collections as pos­si­ble: public and private; state-­sponsored and community-­based; ­those held by photog­raphers and their families; and, where they exist, in still other types of collections. And, in the end, our methods must seek to multiply the mechanisms through which all of ­these po­liti­cal photo­graphs (official and unofficial, state-­sponsored or freelance, cata­logued and pro­cessed, or other­wise) can find their publics, including ­those that are, perhaps, fading or even lost and that therefore need all the more urgently to be re­imagined.79

202

chaPter four

CHAPTER 5

The Pleasures of State-­Sponsored Photography

5.1 (PREVIOUS PAGE) 

I​ D-­card photo­graph of an unidentified w ­ oman. Photo­graph: Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Léonce Agbodjélou.

204

In 1996, an exhibition of African photography at the Guggenheim Museum in New York featured a series of id-­card photo­graphs taken, in the early 1960s, by photographer Cornélius Yao Augustt Azaglo in rural Côte d’Ivoire.1 Framed and glazed at generous dimensions, the images ­were displayed alongside other photographic portraits, produced in contexts likely more familiar to museumgoing audiences in New York. The decision (made by curators Okwui Enwezor and Octavio Zaya) to include t­ hese id-­card photo­graphs in an exhibition at the Guggenheim was not made in error. Rather, it is a testament to the historical, po­liti­cal, and aesthetic significance of id-­card photography in the former colonial territories of l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof).2 Contributing to this significance, which peaked in the post-­independence period, w ­ ere the timing and rhythm of the genre’s development in relation to the postcolonial state; complex affective experiences connected with postcolonial bureaucracy and with photography; and epistemological questions connected with the nature both of the state and of portraiture. T ­ hese and other f­ actors, such as the timing and rhythm of the visits of urban studio photog­raphers who set out for rural villages in itinerant practice in order to take ­these images, ensure that we cannot simply understand id-­card images, as they have commonly been understood by dominant theories of bureaucratic photography, as perennially troubled images circumscribed by the heavy-­handed intrusion of state power.3 ­After 1960, id cards ­were required of the citizens of the ex-­aof to enact their participation in the postcolonial state proj­ect: to vote in elections, to participate in banking in the formal franc economy, or, in the case of minors, to register for formal education.4 And so the fledgling postcolonial states found themselves in the unenviable position of having to photo­graph all of their citizens practically overnight—­because, the evidence suggests, they did not inherit a coherent regime of identity documents or consistent practices of identification from the French colonial administration. For many ­people living in ex-­aof territories in the immediate post-­independence period, the experience of sitting for an id-­card photo­graph, or identité (as ­these photo­graphs are known universally in the region), was thus intimately tied to the experience of decolonization. Jean-­François Werner, one of the few scholars to have worked with Augustt (the Ivoirian photographer whose identités w ­ ere exhibited at the Guggenheim) in his lifetime, notes that, although cartes d’identité, or id cards, bearing photo­graphs ­were periodically used by the French colonial administration in Côte d’Ivoire in the late nineteenth c­ entury, they ­were “massively [emphasis added] used by the postcolonial states.”5 Tanya Elder, in her research on photography in Mali, seconds this observation, pointing out that, although France required ­people living in French Soudan to carry an id card,

chaPter five

“­after in­de­pen­dence, the id card took on new meaning and was enforced with renewed vigor.”6 Campaigns to produce identity documents, which ­were often coupled with censuses or­ga­nized (­whether de facto or more systematically) by regional government officials, as much as the practice of studio portraiture, also furthered the pro­cess of photography’s democ­ratization. This frenzied rush on the part of postcolonial west African states to photo­graph their citizens is, still t­ oday, largely untheorized, and a vivid example of the “modernization” to which t­ hose states aspired. On the one hand, ­these campaigns carried out by photog­raphers working for, or in the margins of, the state extended the reach of postcolonial bureaucracy into rural regions. At the same time, my own and ­others’ research

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

5.2 ​ ID-­card photo­graph

of an unidentified ­woman appearing to be a clergywoman. Photo­ graph: Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Léonce Agbodjélou.

205

strongly suggests that ­these visits also worked to fan the flames of popu­lar po­ liti­cal imagination. Indeed, the experience of having an id-­card photo­graph taken by a local studio photographer who had been designated, or who accompanied, an agent of the postcolonial state was, for many west Africans, often their first experience of having a photo­graph taken. The genre’s unlikely arrival, particularly in rural areas, as a handmaiden of decolonization ensured that t­ hese images w ­ ere, for many west Africans, met with enthusiasm, cele­bration, and plea­sure. Equally importantly, the experience was often a collective one, and the population of an entire village could be photographed in a single day. My discussion of id-­card photography in this chapter draws on interviews with photog­raphers of the in­de­pen­dence generation who took identités and on modern prints made from their negative archives; on criminological photo­ graphs and documents detailing photographic procedures employed in colonial policing, starting in the 1920s, and ­housed in the collections of the Beninese National Archives; and on work published by other scholars who have theorized bureaucratic photography in west Africa and in other parts of the world. ­These materials suggest that the rapid spread of id-­card photography as a consequence of decolonization led the citizens of newly in­de­pen­dent postcolonial states to associate ­those states with photography—­and, therefore, I argue in this chapter, with specific (often collective) forms of aesthetic experience, with seasonal social and communal rituals, and with uniquely photographic forms of plea­sure. ­These materials also suggest that, in west African contexts, bureaucratic photography s­ haped the citizen’s relationship to the state, and vice versa, in ways that differ from ­those that have, to date, been theorized largely in the context of Euro-­American histories of photography. Ultimately, ­these differences hint at more generative, and even playful, experiences of state-­sponsored photography. As such, they mark a significant departure from ideas about photo­ graphy’s relationship to the state that have dominated con­temporary theories of photography, particularly t­ hose that have tended to privilege disciplinary or repressive frames. They also mark a departure from theories privileging visual and photographic dimensions of civility or of citizenship construed in counter­ point and even outright opposition to the state.7 The Citizen Stops for a Moment

Oumar Ly, the photographer from Podor whom I interviewed in Dakar in 2008, said to me in that interview: “We all did id-­card photo­graphs [identités], and we all did portraits”; “All of us who did portraits also did id-­card photo­ graphs.”8 So common, in fact, was the involvement of African photog­raphers working in urban studio practice in the production of identités throughout

206

chaPter five

the region that all but one of the photog­raphers belonging to the in­de­pen­ dence generation with whom I spoke or with whose collections I worked in Senegal and Benin took identités at some point in their c­ areers.9 Most studio photog­raphers working in urban settings took id-­card photo­graphs as part of their day-­to-­day routine, but a significant subset also took id-­card photo­graphs in rural villages that could be quite distant from the cities where they lived. Closing their studios for a ­couple of weeks or months each year, ­these photog­ raphers traveled from village to village, stopping to shoot the inhabitants of a given village in a day or over several days. Seydou Keïta was among t­hose photog­raphers who, we know, participated in this type of seasonal itinerant practice. He stated in published interviews that, with the coming of in­de­pen­ dence, he periodically closed his Bamako studio to take id-­card photo­graphs in rural regions of the newly in­de­pen­dent Republic of Mali.10 id-­card work could be exceptionally lucrative for photog­raphers.11 It was also described to me explic­itly by photog­raphers or by their descendants as personally rewarding, historically significant, and memorable.

Ly told me, in our 2008 conversation, that he engaged in this type of itinerant practice in la Région du Fleuve (the administrative region in northern Senegal), starting in 1963 and continuing through the late 1970s.12 Working in an ever-­expanding radius from his home base in Podor, Ly took thousands of photo­graphs for use in the cartes d’identité of the citizens of the newly in­de­ pen­dent Republic of Senegal. When he first embarked on this type of work, he frequently traveled to the villages in the com­pany of a government clerk, who brought with him a suitcase filled with forms, together with the requisite ink, stamps, and seals that allowed him to produce an array of documents on site: birth certificates, marriage certificates, and id cards, which required a photo­graph of their ­bearer. In addition to his camera, Ly himself would bring enough supplies to develop and print for several days, a veritable mobile photo lab.13 Traveling together, photographer and clerk could produce the requisite certificates and id cards, complete with stamp, seals, and a photo­graph, for an entire village during a single visit. Ly said that, on t­ hese visits to villages across the Fouta Toro (a precolonial name for la Région du Fleuve, still in frequent use ­today), he could photo­graph upward of one hundred ­people each day.14 Echoing Ly’s descriptions of the work he did in northern Senegal, the photog­raphers Cosme Dossa in Porto-­Novo and Benoît Adjovi in Cotonou characterized their involvement in id-­card work as especially memorable. In

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

207

Porto-­Novo, Léonce Agbodjélou, the son of photographer Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou, and Ida, Baudelaire, and Ézéchiel, the ­children of photographer Édouard Mèhomè, ­were all proud of their ­fathers’ participation in id-­card work—so much so that Baudelaire (a professional photographer who inherited his ­father’s Porto-­Novo studio) and Ézéchiel seemed to enjoy discussing t­ hese images to the exclusion of other genres. In Porto-­Novo, in 2009, Ida Mèhomey, the photographer’s ­daughter and herself a professional photographer (of Mèhomè’s twenty-two ­children, four became professional photog­raphers), told me that her ­father had even been called to the main préfecture de police in Porto-­ Novo to take identity photo­graphs.15 At first, this information gave me pause, and I expected Ida to tell me that this had been a ­bitter pill for him to swallow. Surely working for the police would have entailed taking mug shots? Ida confirmed that it did. Yet this invitation marked, for her, the zenith of her ­father’s ­career, and she added that she herself had been lucky enough to break into préfecture work not long before our conversation. The enthusiasm with which she told me about her own employment by the police made it clear that criminological photography is a line of work still coveted by many local photog­raphers, and that involvement in the production of identity documentation is seen as something to boast about, ­whether in a civil or a criminological context.16 Liam Buckley, in his spellbinding study of photog­raphers working in the post-­independence period in The Gambia, describes the practice of photo­g­ rapher Ousmane Njie, who took id-­card photo­graphs in itinerant practice ­under conditions closely resembling ­those relayed to me by Ly in Senegal.17 Buckley’s account, too, emphasizes the very high volume of photo­graphs that Njie shot during his visits to ­these villages: somewhat astonishingly, Buckley reports that Njie could shoot up to one thousand ­people per day.18 Njie used many of the same methods as Ly to speed this pro­cess, such as, for example, shooting up to five ­people in a single photo­graph. This photo­graph, of a group of five, would then be cut into five smaller images at roughly passport-­sized dimensions. Ly told me that he shot sitters in groups in order to economize on time but above all to economize on supplies, particularly on paper. Contact prints made from negatives from the studio of Édouard Mèhomè in Porto-­Novo show similar groupings of three or more ­people, illustrating that photog­raphers often employed this same method of grouping several subjects together in a single photo­graph when shooting identités in urban contexts (figures 5.3 and 5.4), where paper was also at a premium. ­There is, at first glance, something unsettling about t­ hese group identités when one sees them intact, in the form of modern prints made from old negatives. Their power to unsettle stems at least in part from the knowledge that

208

chaPter five

t­ hese images w ­ ere destined to be cut up, and the figures whom we see, quite literally, dismembered.19 This quality is doubtless also connected with ­these photo­ graphs’ destabilization of a certain concept of “identity,” if and insofar as we consider this to be the property of an individual and articulated with the logics of possessive individualism on which modern republics have historically depended, at least in the West. T ­ hese group identités also recall arguments that have been made by scholars, such as Jean Borgatti and Richard Brilliant, about prephotographic practices and definitions of African portraiture.20 Both Borgatti and Brilliant claim that African practices of the genre have tended to decenter description, or a repre­sen­ta­tional likeness of the individual, in f­avor of the expression of identities that are constructed through “historic narrative[s] of ­family,

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

5.3 ​Double ID-­card

photo­graph of unidenti­ fied sitters. While taking identités, it was quite common for photog­ raphers to group two or more sitters together, to economize on paper. Photo­graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s or 1970s. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

209

5.4 ​­Triple portrait of

unidentified sitters. The photographer’s son, Ézéchiel, told me that this photo­graph was likely not intended for use as an identité, given ele­ments of the framing. Photo­graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s or 1970s. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

210

community, or nation,” and that therefore privilege abstraction and conceptual over repre­sen­ta­tional frames.21 At a minimum, this analy­sis suggests that the group identité may pose fewer challenges to African identities or concepts of identity. Perhaps this method, of grouping several subjects together in a single id-­card photo­graph, cannot be entirely explained by a desire to economize on scarce resources, and the id-­card photo­graph may even amplify aspects of the photographic portrait that are, elsewhere, only latent. I w ­ ill return to this idea, that the id-­card photo­graph is or has the power to become a superior form of portraiture, when I turn to Karen Strassler’s research on id-­card photography in Indonesia.22

chaPter five

Ly told me that it had not been his choice to enter into id-­card production. Rather, he had been pressed into ser­vice by the regional government. Not that he objected, but he had been told rather than asked to do it: he was, at the time, the only person in Podor who owned a camera. What­ever he may have felt about this type of work initially, it was clear from our conversation that he had come to enjoy it, and that he reaped significant financial and other benefits from state-­sponsored or, more accurately, state-­mandated work. This work gave him a steady stream of paying clients, and the volume of clients, which necessitated a rapid pace of work, helped him to hone his technical proficiency and his business acumen, both of which ­were invaluable to him when he returned to his Podor studio. Ly suggested that the physical mobility dictated by itinerant practice also conferred certain advantages. For example, he was delighted by the opportunity that this work sometimes gave him to travel in the Citroën of a local municipal authority. (Without it, he traveled on foot.) And he cherished the contact that this work afforded with photog­ raphers from other parts of west Africa, with whom he could talk shop. In 2008, Ly recounted to me the slightly hilarious story of one such encounter, which took place when he crossed paths with a photographer from Ghana who was also taking id-­card photo­graphs in rural Senegal. The Ghanaian had a camera that Ly greatly admired and that, Ly immediately noticed, allowed him to work at a much faster pace than Ly himself was able to. U ­ nder cover of night, Ly saw an opportunity to “borrow” the Ghanaian photographer’s camera—­without his permission (he was apparently aided by the photographer’s assistant)—­and he hired a local carpenter to make a replica of the Ghanaian’s camera. The carpenter disassembled the camera and meticulously copied each part, working from dusk ­until dawn, when it was necessary to reassemble the original and return it, with the help of the assistant, to the Ghanaian. ­After the camera had been returned, however, Ly discovered that the replica did not work. And so they had to “borrow” the camera a second time. On the second night, upon re-­examination of the original camera, Ly and his accomplices discovered that the replica was lacking a piece of ground glass against which to mount the film. They puzzled over this seemingly insoluble prob­lem ­until someone de­cided to take a piece of glass down to the riverbank and polish it with sand. This worked, and Ly told me that he went on to use this copy of the Ghanaian’s camera for the rest of his ­career. In fact, it had been one of his favorite cameras.

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

211

Beyond illustrating the opportunities for competition and exchange that flowed from the vibrant post-­independence market for identités, Ly’s story about “the camera from Ghana” underscores the enduring importance of African trade routes (overland rather than coastal) to west African photography histories not only in the nineteenth ­century but also in the twentieth. To quote Siaka Lawani, the Cotonou-­based photographer (whom I quoted in the introduction), again, “Every­thing came from Ghana.”23 Based on Ly’s description of it, the camera from Ghana was almost certainly a djoni djoni, a large wooden pinhole camera known for taking “instant” photo­graphs, sometimes also called by the same name.24 In Ghana, this type of camera is also sometimes called (in Ashanti), a Gyena ho gye, which means “wait-­and-­collect.”25 The name djoni djoni is thought to come from the En­glish “Johnny-­Johnny,” clinching further the association with Anglophone photog­raphers, with whom this type of camera frequently traveled in the context of itinerant practice, almost invariably connected with id-­card photography. The Gift of Electric Light Late at Night

In his essay, “Studio Photography and the Aesthetics of Citizenship in The Gambia,” Buckley argues that the very presence of an urban studio photographer in a village could be seen as cause for cele­bration by residents, and that, in The Gambia, photog­raphers’ visits to rural areas to take id-­card photo­graphs ­were often associated with recreation and plea­sure. According to Buckley, ­these associations stemmed from specific affective and sensory experiences connected with the portrait session, but they w ­ ere also linked to f­ actors con26 nected with the rhythms of rural life. An itinerant photographer’s visit to a village could intersect with, and impact, t­ hese rhythms on multiple levels. A photographer’s visit, as Buckley demonstrates, could affect the rhythms of the villa­gers’ day: Njie, for example, started his developing and printing at sunset. While developing, he used an electric fan, which he ran off a generator, to dry the negatives. The presence of a generator, which Njie transported with him and connected to his Land Rover, was unusual: “­Later at night, Njie ran the generator to power strings of lights set up around his Land Rover—­this attracted the villa­gers and staved off his loneliness. Sometimes, the locals would take advantage of the unusual presence of lights and stage late-­night wrestling competitions or have dances, attending in the good clothes that they had worn for their pictures.”27 Jean-­Bernard Ouédraogo, in his original research on the history of photography in Burkina Faso, also stresses the connection between electric light and the presence of itinerant photog­raphers in villages in Burkina Faso.28

212

chaPter five

Candids by Ly documenting similar nightlife scenes, in which ordinary routines ­were suspended thanks to the presence of a photographer, dot the exhibition cata­logue Oumar Ly: Portraits de Brousse. In one such image, young ­people mug for the camera as they sit at dusk around a t­ able laden with ­bottles. In another, young ­couples can be seen dancing “cheek-­to-­cheek.”29 ­These images, together with the id-­card photo­graphs that ­were, in many cases, likely their antecedents, can seem to exist in an uneasy tension, at least on the surface. And yet the fact that t­ hese two classes of photo­graph may have stemmed from the same occasion suggests that neither can be so easily squared with the dominant theoretical paradigms, which have tended to privilege bureaucratic photography’s connections with the disciplinary or repressive apparatuses of the state, or with more diffuse regimes of governmentality.30 Or, as Buckley puts it, “If we conceptualize the census according to a metropolitan model that posits a relationship between portraiture and governmentality, then Njie’s camera was part of the budding administrative technology of nationhood. However, if we privilege the local calendar to which the census necessarily submitted, then the camera contributed to a ‘festive technology.’ ”31 Buckley’s comment furthermore brings out the clash between metropolitan experiences of time, and attendant theoretical models associated with the state form, and the forms of cyclical time more closely associated with rural village life. (It is in­ter­est­ing to contrast this emphasis placed by itinerant photog­raphers and scholars writing about them on cyclical time, and the seasonal temporality associated with agrarian and religious calendars, with the emphasis on clock time, and “l’heure de la descente,” so prominent in stories I was told about urban studio photog­ raphers, such as Doudou Diop in Saint-­Louis, which I related in chapter 1.) Buckley also stresses the seasonal nature of photog­raphers’ visits, and their intersection with the broader cyclical and annual rhythms of village life. ­These visits often took place during the dry season, when regional travel is easier ­because roads are less likely to be flooded and more likely to be intact. This timing also linked photog­raphers’ visits to traditional calendars based on cyclical agricultural activity (­there is ­little work to do in the fields in the dry season), or to the calendar of religious holidays, such as, in Senegal, Tabaski. Werner observes that, in rural Côte d’Ivoire, young photog­raphers often plied their trade in the period between planting and harvesting.32 In her research on itinerant photog­raphers engaged in id-­card production in rural Mali, Elder notes that, in the dry season, it was not uncommon for rural populations to migrate, looking for work—­a ­factor that increased demand for id cards: “This is, therefore, also the period when photog­raphers involved in the production of id-­card pictures ­will have lots of work.”33 She adds that village weddings

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

213

are often timed during the dry season in order to take advantage of the slack time, often with the effect of luring emigrants home.34 The fact that a photographer’s arrival was thus likely to coincide with a religious holiday, a wedding, or other cele­bration, with its attendant ebb and flow of migratory populations, would have colored villa­gers’ experience of sitting for an identité, and the celebratory tenor of ­these festivities would, by extension, have colored their perceptions of the postcolonial state.35 Buckley hypothesizes: “The timing of the census raises the question of how ­people actually experienced being photographed for identity cards and how they may have reflected on the advent of In­de­pen­dence.”36 Elsewhere in the essay, Buckley is less tentative in formulating this connection between the pleasures of id-­card photography and ­those of the postcolonial state. W ­ hether in the city or in a village, he argues, the experience of having a photo­graph taken was understood by Gambians as a special event and a joyous occasion (content xew), and, in urban studio contexts, p ­ eople sitting for a personal-­use portrait and t­hose sitting for an id-­card photo­graph actively sought the same aesthetic experience, that of “feeling cherished” or “honored” during the portrait session.37 Thus clients commissioning an id-­ card photo­graph in an urban studio liked to pose with certain props—­a lace doily or antimacassar on the sofa in the studio, or a par­tic­u­lar type of air freshener—­ objects denoting opulence or elegance and calculated to enhance the Gambian citizen’s feeling that he or she was a “cherished” recipient of a “special invitation.” Thus, Buckley writes, the practice of id-­card photography must be understood “along an embodied aesthetic continuum that links portraiture with the administration of new nation building.”38 According to Buckley, “The relationship between the invitation to be photographed and the feeling of being wanted originated during In­de­pen­dence.”39 The lace doilies and air fresheners would, of course, have been cropped out of an id-­card photo­graph; but the feeling of being cherished or the recipient of a special invitation would have lingered in the image itself.

In chapter 2, I related the story that Benoît Adjovi (who opened his studio in the neighborhood of Cotonou known as Jericho in 1956) told me about his seasonal trips to Ouidah, a historically significant commercial port (it was an impor­tant center of the transatlantic slave trade) and the photographer’s ancestral home.40 During ­these trips, Adjovi liked to stop to take pictures in

214

chaPter five

the villages that he passed along the way. Adjovi spoke to me with solemn seriousness about the photo­graphs that he took in ­these villages, over several successive interviews in 2009, 2011, and 2013. He repeatedly emphasized the personal and historical importance of this work, and the fact that his visits to ­these villages constituted, for him, a special occasion. Adjovi downplayed any pos­si­ble ties between his itinerant work and the postcolonial state, to which he had no formal connection. Instead, he spoke to me of the importance of photographic commemoration, and his awareness that, in photographing ­people living in rural villages, he was shouldering a significant responsibility. In the case of el­derly villa­gers, he was often the only photographer that they had encountered—­and likely the only one they ever would. If he did not photo­ graph ­these ­people, he said, no one would: “Et ceux-­là meurent sans laisser des traces” (And ­these ­people would die without leaving a trace).41 Adjovi’s insistence on the fact that this was, for ­people living in ­these villages, their first opportunity to have a photo­graph taken is crucial, for it attests to the fact that, for many p ­ eople living in ex-­aof territories, local studio photog­raphers working in itinerant practice ­were the first photog­raphers who took their pictures. Werner echoes this point for Côte d’Ivoire: “For most villa­ gers,” when Augustt came to their village to take their id-­card photo­graph, “this was the first photo­graph ever made of them.”42 Buckley underscores this same timing in The Gambia, noting that the first national census “was the first opportunity that most Gambians had to stand in front of the camera.”43 ­These and other similar comments strongly suggest that, despite the myriad decrees and laws on the books that codified and promoted practices of identity documentation in the context of colonial policing and administration, t­ hese practices ­were never fully realized, and due to their erratic implementation, they failed to reach the majority of the population of the aof. For many citizens of the new west African states, and particularly for t­ hose living in rural areas, ­these images ­were, therefore, doubly commemorative, marking their first encounter with the postcolonial state and, si­mul­ta­neously, their first opportunity to be photographed. Two Ears, Six Copies

In urban contexts, both identités and other portraits w ­ ere usually taken in the studio, where a photographer might work in both genres in rapid succession, moving from a client commissioning an identité to one commissioning a portrait for some other use within a ­matter of minutes—­using the same camera and the same film, with both sessions taking place in the same space. This

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

215

proximity appears to have been less common in rural settings, where photog­ raphers (such as Adjovi) also took other types of portraits, but where, if they had arrived for a census-­type visit, they felt pressure to focus their energies on identités. It is critical to add for present-­day interpreters that, at the time that Augustt took the id-­card photo­graphs that ­were exhibited in the Guggenheim, very few local actors would have made any distinction between an id-­card photo­graph and some other portrait—­with the exception, it seems, of photog­raphers. Indeed, across west Africa (and, as we ­will see in a moment, in many other parts of the postcolonial world), the id-­card photo­graph has often been used as a proxy for what might be considered more conventional forms of portraiture—if, that is, given culturally variable definitions of portraiture and portrait conventions, the idea of a “conventional” portraiture can even be sustained.44 On a practical level, such substitutions are not surprising, particularly in cases where the identité is the only existing photo­graph of a subject: if an individual or her ­family is in possession of a unique photo­graph of that individual, at some point, they are g­ oing to use it. And, when they do use it, it is prob­ably not ­going to be for the purpose for which it was intended by the state. This is not to say that no distinction can be made between the id-­card photo­graph and other forms of portraiture. Yet the question remains w ­ hether the state-­sponsored photo­graph, produced by the state or by the citizen at the state’s behest, invites this substitution for other photo­graphs of the citizen in a more absolute or definitive way.

In our 2008 interview, Ly told me that he took portraits as well as id-­card photo­graphs in the villages of the Fouta Toro. He also said that he personally did not like to mix state-­sponsored work with ­these other forms of portraiture, and that he usually took the latter on a return visit to the village. This is how the sequence unfolded: during an initial visit to a village to take identités, Ly would be invited by the inhabitants to come back and take their portraits at a ­later date. This second visit, Ly explained, could take place ­after weeks or months had elapsed, and it usually played out at a more leisurely pace. Ly told me that he often chose a date for ­these return visits on or near Tabaski, a time when ­people try to look their best, put on their best clothes, bring out their best jewelry, and style their hair—­and are therefore particularly ­eager to have a portrait taken. (For photo­graphs taken in what appears to be a similar context in Benin, see figures 5.5 and 5.6.) This holiday finery provides us with the rare clue, vis­i­ble or legible within the visual field of a photo­graph, allowing us to

216

chaPter five

distinguish between ­these two types of images, which can other­wise be challenging to distinguish (particularly when working with negatives), given that they ­were so often taken by the same photographer, of the same clients, using the same camera and the same film. Another such clue is, Ly explained, the type of backdrop or background used. Indeed, this appears to have been one of the handful of formal requirements stipulated by the new west African states: that the id-­card photo­graph should have a neutral background rather than a decorative one. Ly told me that it was, in fact, often a challenge to find a neutral background when shooting in village settings. In urban contexts, such a background, often in the form of a solid-­colored curtain, was easier to find. If subjects w ­ ere shot in an interior courtyard (the location of many an urban studio), they might also be posed

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

5.5 ​Portrait of a ­woman

wearing atcho oké, a style of dress worn by ­women of high status during impor­tant cer­ emonies, such as wed­ dings or ­those announc­ ing the birth of a child. Photo­graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

217

5.6 ​Portrait of an uniden­

tified ­woman. The sitter’s pose approximates what is sometimes called the “traditional” west African pose, with the sitter’s torso square to the camera and her fin­gers clearly displayed. Photo­ graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

218

against a blank masonry wall. (See, again, figures 5.3 and 5.4, taken by Mèhomè in Porto-­Novo.) This is one reason why Ly preferred to travel, when the opportunity presented itself, in the Citroën of the local government authority: the plain white door was the perfect background for an identité. In Ly’s archives, it is pos­si­ble to see examples of ­these photo­graphs, in which the subject is seated, legs crossed, on the ground in front of the Citroën’s passenger-­side door.45 All of the identités that I have reproduced as illustrations to this chapter are modern contact prints made from photog­raphers’ negative archives. Working from ­these negatives rather than from the id cards that ­were produced from them, in some cases aggravates—­and, in ­others, alleviates—­the challenges of distinguishing an id-­card photo­graph from another portrait on the basis of ­these, and other, clues. Among the other clues that can be helpful are

chaPter five

the ­little bits of paper that can be seen, in some of Ly’s photo­graphs, clutched in the subjects’ hands. ­These ­were the numbered pieces of paper, Ly explained to me, that the clerk gave out to ­people ­after he had assigned them an appointment time. ­These ­little bits of paper, on which the appointment time was noted, would have been cropped out in the production of the id-­card photo­ graph and tossed out with the rest of the print, yet they remain vis­i­ble to us in negatives. Par­tic­u­lar ­angles and poses could also be a clue as to w ­ hether or not a given photo­graph was an identité, and I found that photog­raphers loved talking about t­hese ­angles. In fact, in our seemingly endless discussions of ­angles, I discovered that photog­raphers, and ­others, ­were surprisingly knowledgeable about the ­angles stipulated by the state for id-­card photo­graphs not only in their own country, but also in other countries. In Cotonou, Adjovi was quick to tell me that, in Côte d’Ivoire, the three-­quarter ­angle was required for some period of time. In Benin, by contrast, the ­angle was consistently frontal. Adjovi used a memorable expression to describe the frontal a­ ngle required in what was then the Republic of Dahomey: “Il faut que les deux oreilles sortent” (“Both ears must be vis­i­ble” or, more literally, “Both ears must stick out”). In Porto-­Novo, Cosme Dossa described this same a­ ngle to me using a similar phrase, reminiscent of an instruction manual: “Il faut qu’on voie les deux oreilles” (You must be able to see both ears).46 The “both ears” rule was invoked, again, in Porto-­Novo by Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè. In Senegal, too, the “both ears” rule was invoked. In multiple conversations that I had in Benin, with Dossa and with the photographer Félix DeMesse (who, it should be noted, did not engage in id-­card photography), it was stressed that some of the ex-­aof states had been fickle about the stipulated a­ ngle, and Côte d’Ivoire was almost always held out as an example. The identités submitted for publication by readers of the illustrated magazine Bingo are a perfect snapshot of this history of ­angles. When they ­were published on a single page, ­these photo­ graphs testify, in the aggregate, to the a­ ngles that w ­ ere stipulated for id-­card photo­graphs in over a dozen countries (see, for example, figure 3.10). I can only speculate as to why photog­raphers, and, in some cases, ordinary p ­ eople (friends, ­family members, neighbors who often came and went during my interviews, jumping in and offering their commentaries on the images on the t­ able whenever they felt so moved), ­were so knowledgeable about the ­angles required for id-­card photo­graphs in other west African states. ­After all, what percentage of a photographer’s id-­card work would have been done for foreign nationals? In constantly repeating this “both ears” rule, and in citing other conventions governing the production of id-­card photo­graphs in neighboring countries, my interlocutors repeatedly conveyed that they w ­ ere

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

219

well versed in the technical and bureaucratic conventions of the genre. But why? The fact that readers of Bingo routinely sent their own identités to the magazine for publication, as I have just mentioned, underscores that a wider knowledge of the conventions of id-­card photography was not necessarily the special province of photog­raphers. Indeed, the publication of t­hese images in the pages of a popu­lar illustrated magazine is proof positive that identités ­were seen by its readers as more than merely technical or bureaucratic artifacts, and that they had a more popu­lar valence and a broader public in this period.

The idea that the production and circulation of identités could take on a more popu­lar valence is corroborated by a story that was shared with me in 2013 in Porto-­Novo, by Mèhomè’s sons. In our first formal interview, Baudelaire and Ézéchiel repeatedly circled back to the topic of their f­ather’s involvement in id-­card work.47 At first, I found their preoccupation with the genre slightly disconcerting: ­because I had not yet paid much attention to it and b­ ecause I already knew, based on prior interviews with their ­sister, Ida, which I did in Porto-­Novo in 2009 and 2011, that the elder Mèhomè had been an accomplished portraitist, who had produced an impressive body of what I would not hesitate to call fine art portraiture. Among the many exquisite examples of ­these images that I saw in Porto-­Novo ­were ­those that he had hand-­colorized in a signature paint­erly style: black-­and-­white prints that the photographer had enlarged to impressive dimensions before highlighting them in black ink and hand-­colorizing them with gouache (figure 5.8). In other, group portraits that I saw, the photographer had forged a distinctive urban style, characterized by very tight framing of the subjects. The subjects w ­ ere then brightly lit with projector lamps aimed head-on or from below, lending them a brash energy and making them seem larger than life (figures 5.9 and 5.10). Still, when I interviewed Baudelaire and Ézéchiel in 2013, they w ­ ere most ­eager to talk about their f­ather’s involvement in the production of identités. In fact, they told me, he had garnered a reputation as the go-to photographer for an id card in his day. As proof of this reputation, they told me that their ­father had been given the affectionate nickname “Six-copies” by p ­ eople in the neighborhood: six was the number of prints that he would provide to a client commissioning an id-­card photo­graph and two more than the standard number that prevailed in other studios at the time. This nickname captures more forcefully than any expository statement ever could the sense of playfulness

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

5.7 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Contact

prints from the studio of Benoît Adjovi. Note that one of the images is a communion photo­graph (bottom right), while an­ other is a group portrait of vaudoun priestesses or féticheuses (top right). Vari­ous sites, Benin, early 1970s. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi. 5.8 (NEXT PAGE) ​A hand-­

colorized vintage print: the print has been tinted with gouache, the sitter’s hair and jacket have been inked in, and his necktie has been retouched or drawn on with graphite. Photo­graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1960s or 1970s. Courtesy of Ida Mèhomey. Reproduction: Ida Mèhomey.

221

that was clearly associated with id-­card photography for Mèhomè’s clients, and that was so often expressed to me in conversations about the genre. Describing local investments in identités in Mali, Elder speaks of Malians’ “obsession with id card pictures.”48 Not Every­one Was Happy

5.9 ​Double portrait, lit

with projector lamps. Photo­graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, late 1970s or early 1980s. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

This is not to say that the identité was not experienced more equivocally by some. Pace the misadventures of Dieng, the protagonist of Sembène’s 1966 novel and 1968 film, Mandabi (The money order), as he attempts to obtain the identity documents that ­will allow him to cash the story titular money order.

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

223

5.10 ​Group portrait, lit

with projector lamps. Photo­graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

224

Dieng’s repeat failures in navigating the postcolonial bureaucracy are treated with derision. Through ­these misadventures, which constitute its plot, the story paints that bureaucracy as built on corruption and extortion, and Dieng’s character as woefully out of touch with modern life.49 id-­card photography is hardly cause for cele­bration ­here—at least not for Dieng—­yet its connections with the postcolonial state are unmistakable. Nor is the ludic sensibility that inflected tales I was told about the genre entirely lacking in the film: Salla Casset, the well-­known Dakar studio photographer, makes a cameo appearance in the movie. Casset plays the photographer who takes Dieng’s identité.50 The joke is presumably as much on the moviegoer as on Dieng, for, in Sembène’s novel, it is stated that Dieng would have liked to have had his photo­graph taken by Casset but could not afford it.51

chaPter five

I do not want to suggest that the colonial administration did not use bureaucratic photography in ways that w ­ ere violent, or that the spread of postcolonial bureaucracy did not entail its own forms of vio­lence. This vio­lence is amply apparent in the identity documentation, including but not l­imited to mug shots, that can be found in criminological and police archives. Just as importantly, decolonization was often, among other ­things, a pro­cess of recolonization in the form of the state and its attendant bureaucratic apparatuses—­ and this is surely also Sembène’s point in Mandabi. Yet, in the euphoria that appears to have characterized, for many, the coming of in­de­pen­dence, the limitations of the state form ­were not always immediately apparent.52 On the contrary, this was a moment when the state was being vividly ­imagined by many west Africans as an agent of liberation. Only l­ater, ­after the visions of African u ­ nion or federation that had presented themselves as alternatives to colonialism had failed to materialize, would the state form come to represent a radical curtailing of this long-­awaited liberation and be subject to scathing commentary along the lines of that we see in Sembène. We should be equally cautious about generalizing the positive associations of id-­card photography in west Africa to other French colonial territories. In many other parts of the French empire, bureaucratic photography had an undeniable association with colonial power and continues to carry a fraught legacy. Witness the well-­known photo­graphs taken by Marc Garanger and published in a recent exhibition cata­logue, Femmes Algériennes 1960 (Algerian ­women 1960).53 Garanger was a French soldier whose job it was to take identités as part of his military ser­vice in Algeria, in 1960, during that country’s long and bloody war for in­de­pen­dence. Most of Garanger’s subjects w ­ ere Algerian ­women (hence the title of the exhibition) who ­were being held in concentration camps, and who had been forced to unveil in front of a French soldier in order to be photographed. We are a far cry, h ­ ere, from the ludic experiences, connoting liberation or making one feel cherished, that I described above. In the photographer’s own interpretation, the vio­lence associated with the ­women’s forced unveiling, coupled with the extreme vio­lence of the Algerian war for in­de­pen­dence, suffuse ­these images with shock, anger, humiliation, and “a mute re­sis­tance.”54 And yet, in 2004, when Garanger returned to Algeria to share ­these identités, which ­were taken ­under such violent circumstances, with ­these ­women and their descendants, they reportedly welcomed his return—in part ­because, as Carole Naggar notes, in the case of many of his subjects, t­ hese ­were the only photo­graphs ever to have been taken of them.55 The only hint of anger or humiliation that surfaced during my interviews with Ly in which we discussed id-­card photography came in a remark that

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

225

the photographer made, in passing, about the financial burden associated with paying for an identité. He told me that the cost of the photo­graph was invariably shouldered by the client, and that this cost could be exorbitant for ­people living in rural areas—­where cash was, in any case, scarce. Thus Ly explained that the ­people he photographed occasionally had to sell something, often a personal possession of some value, in order to obtain the money they needed to pay for their identités.56 This backstory, detailing a dif­fer­ent sort of photographic dispossession from that which has been more commonly theorized (that centered on the supposed “theft” of the subject’s image), reminds us of the many complex transactions taking place in the margins of the photo­graph that only rarely enter its visual field. It also aligns the id-­card photo­graph with the more explic­itly extortionate power of the postcolonial state, which we began to see emerge in Mandabi. Indeed, as Elder incisively notes, the practice of id-­card photography was neither static nor univocal in its social and po­liti­cal significance in the post-­ independence years. Rather, she argues for an evolution of identity documentation and associated practices, and she makes a distinction between the early years of Malian in­de­pen­dence, when the id card was “used to construct a postcolonial identity” and helped to legitimize the new west African states by creating “a sense of community and identity,” and l­ ater phases of the practice of id-­card photography, in which the practice came increasingly to be associated with state control over movement and migration and with ruses for the extortion of cash from postcolonial populations.57 Elder hypothesizes that “­these dif­fer­ent dimensions of the id picture . . . ​are not necessarily exclusive” and that “together they may form a continuum,” thus accounting for the seemingly contradictory affective experiences that even a single identité may evoke.58 Bureaucratic Inspiration

The official documentary rec­ord attests to myriad attempts by the colonial administration in the aof to roll out diverse forms of identity documentation. ­These attempts paint a rather dif­fer­ent picture from that which emerges from interviews with photog­raphers of the in­de­pen­dence generation, or from their negative archives, which remain tightly bound up with the forging of postcolonial identities. The marked divergence between ­these two dif­fer­ent archives calls our attention to the fatal flaws and fissures that often existed between official accounts of colonial policies and the mark left by t­ hose policies in popu­lar and collective memory. Indeed, in looking more closely at the documentation of colonial policies, we notice that the many contradictions

226

chaPter five

expressed with regard to the affective dimensions of id-­card photography are destined to be repeated on the level of the archive itself.59 The official documentary rec­ord indicates that regimes of civil identity documentation, although they existed on paper, ­were not systematically undertaken in the aof, particularly as compared with other parts of the French empire. In her meticulous and thought-­provoking research on the growth of colonial policing and security apparatuses in the aof in the interwar period, Bénédicte Brunet-­La Ruche notes that French efforts to implement civil identity documentation in the aof pale in comparison with ­those undertaken in the Maghreb, Indochina, and Madagascar, all of which saw more extensive and methodical implementation of civil identity documentation.60 Adding nuance to this claim, documents that I came across while ­doing research in the Beninese

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

5.11 ​Portrait of an uniden­

tified w ­ oman. The use of a patterned backdrop signals that the image, despite its framing, was not intended for use as an ID-­card photo­graph. Photo­graph: Édouard Mèhomè. Porto-­Novo, Benin, 1970s. Courtesy of Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Mèhomè.

227

5.12 ​Civil identity card or

passport of Oumarou, a trader from Kano resid­ ing in Dahomey, dated 1923. The First World War intensified concerns about the activities of foreign nationals in French colonial territories, and ­these concerns appear to have been a ­factor motivating the produc­ tion and registration of identity documentation in the ADF. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­Novo, Benin.

228

National Archives strongly suggest that, in Dahomey at least, the first and most energetic efforts to implement civil identity documentation did not target African populations at all. Rather, they targeted non-­French Eu­ro­pean nationals residing in, or traveling through, the aof. Fi­nally, in both civil and criminological contexts in the aof, the use of photography in identity documentation appears to have been an object of self-­conscious experimentation on the part of administrators, each of whom had his own, often highly idiosyncratic priorities. When new policies governing identity documentation targeted Africans, they ­were fueled, above all, by growing anx­i­eties about African migration within and between aof territories. This migration was a thorny prob­lem that was hopelessly entangled with a host of other, even thornier prob­lems such as urbanization, the development of new transportation systems, and changes to colonial forced ­labor policies. In 2009, while working in the Beninese National Archives, I came across several folders stuffed with passports and other identity documentation created or retained by the colonial sûreté, dating to the late teens and early 1920s. Most of ­these ­were identity documents of non-­French Eu­ro­pean nationals, mostly British, although several Americans, Canadians, and South Americans residing temporarily in Dahomey had also been required to register with the colonial security office. Only a handful of t­ hese documents bore the photo­graphs

chaPter five

and names of Africans, and most of them appear to have been residents of present-­day Nigeria, and therefore British subjects, who also claimed temporary or part-­time residency in Dahomey (figure 5.12). Their ­bearers’ ethnicity is often listed as Nago, an ethnonym for a group considered to be a subgroup of the Yoruba and often used, historically, to refer to Yoruba p ­ eople living in and around Porto-­Novo. That most of the documents bearing the photo­graphs, and names, of Africans that I saw in t­hese colonial security files identified their ethnicity as Nago suggests that this exceptionally mobile group of Africans, often with f­ amily ties on both sides of the border separating British from French colonial territories, was among the first to be targeted. (Figure 5.12 is an example of one such document, a passport of an En­glish national named Oumarou, from Kano, who was in Dahomey in connection with his job as a trader.) This cache of documents is obviously not comprehensive, and it is perfectly pos­si­ble that copies of identity documents for Africans considered to be indigenous to Dahomey w ­ ere simply held elsewhere. Yet the focus of t­ hese documents on exceptionally mobile populations, such as Nago traders and Eu­ ro­pe­ans (or Americans), who w ­ ere explic­itly identified as representatives of foreign capital, is unmistakable. Perhaps not surprisingly, the earliest efforts by French administrators in the aof to produce identity documents for indigenous Africans also targeted exceptionally mobile populations: sailors and soldiers. The ties that bind photography to colonial military ser­vice are legion and have been well documented in the historical lit­er­a­ture.61 Perhaps not surprisingly, ­these connections between photography and military ser­vice linger in popu­lar memory as well.62 West African soldiers, w ­ hether conscripts or ­those who entered into voluntary ser­vice, are thought to have been the first Africans in the aof ever to have been systematically photographed by the colonial administration. Elder affirms that soldiers from French Soudan transited through Senegal, where they had id-­card photo­graphs taken, before being deployed to other aof territories.63 Conversely, African soldiers from across the aof ­were often trained in military ser­vice as photog­raphers. When they returned home, they brought their cameras with them. Another distinct class of exceptionally mobile ­people of whom id cards ­were routinely required by the colonial administration ­were ­those wanting to obtain a driver’s license: what would have been, in the 1920s (when ­these notices first appeared), one suspects, a very small number of p ­ eople, and prob­ably ­limited to ­those employed by the colonial administration or by a handful of Eu­ro­pean businesses.64 A fascinating notice published in the 1921 Journal Officiel du Sénégal concerns the use of photo­graphs on driver’s licenses. The notice updates a decree

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

229

pertaining to the procedures for obtaining or renewing a driver’s license passed a few years ­earlier. It states that, should the photo­graph of the ­bearer become damaged or deteriorate to the point where the b­ earer’s identity could no longer be established, his license and driving privileges should be revoked ­until the time that he reports with a new photo­graph to the local police commissioner.65 The text is already in­ter­est­ing for its explicit concern with the quality of the photographic likeness. (How to deal with damaged or just plain bad photo­graphs?) But it is even more so for the insights it affords us into the complex rhe­toric of ­these decrees, whose authors seemed all too aware that implementation was bound to be haphazard. ­These decrees announce themselves, rhetorically, in the form of directives, yet they quickly become bogged down in discussions of implementation ­under less-­than-­ideal conditions. In other cases, the language of ­these decrees betrays the more frankly aspirational aspects of implementation. In the 1921 notice describing the procedure for the replacement of a damaged driver’s license photo­graph, for example, it is explic­itly acknowledged that, in some parts of Senegal, such licenses ­will not actually contain photo­graphs—­making the decree’s detailed description of the procedure for replacing a damaged photo­graph seem slightly absurd.66 Fingerprinting is, in this case, suggested as a ­viable alternative.67 An ­earlier text, published in 1914 in the official bulletin of the French colonial administration, shows a similarly improvisational spirit in its description of a new regime of id cards for African sailors. The notice, signed by one M. Raynaud, states that starting June 19, 1914, the Inscription maritime, or maritime authority, ­will in each colonial territory issue an id booklet to each African sailor embarking on French vessels with home ports in metropolitan France.68 The date of the notice (one month shy of the start of the First World War) is significant, for it suggests that the perceived threat is not in colonial space and instead stems from ­those who might arrive, via vessels coming from Africa, on Eu­ro­pean shores. Once again, the rhetorical dance is impressive. The text seems, on the one hand, to set forth stringent regulations (such-­and-­such a page is to bear such-­and-­such a stamp) while si­mul­ta­neously conveying the need for flexibility and even creativity on the part of local authorities. In the best-­case scenario, the new id booklet should, it is stated, contain a photo­graph: “in all ­those colonies where the possibility exists, the identity document and the data page ­will bear a photo­graph of the indigenous person [emphasis added].”69 In fact, the 1914 notice refers to a decree made just a few months e­ arlier by the governor general of the aof, which had—at least on paper—­made id cards or passbooks (livrets d’identité) mandatory for all Africans who w ­ ere colonial subjects or u ­ nder French protection (but not for French citizens), and it refers

230

chaPter five

to a “sample” id card that has been enclosed. Raynaud urges local officials to consider using the sample, while also noting that they are ­free to invent their own—­provided that they have the ability to print one.70 The recommendation closes with Raynaud’s suggestion that, although the new regulations regarding id cards apply only to African sailors on ships destined for ports in metropolitan France, officials should feel ­free to “draw inspiration from them [vous pouvez cependant vous en inspirer]” in devising regulations that they may wish to apply elsewhere. This statement, that officials should feel f­ ree to “draw inspiration” from one set of regulations regarding id cards as they devise new regulations, reveals the enormous latitude that was granted to local authorities in implementing policies and practices of identity documentation, and the extent to which, in 1914, t­ hese practices ­were still largely experimental. The sphere of judicial identity, comprising criminological and forensic photography, was also an arena of experimentation, and in this case, too, evidence suggests that regimes of identity documentation connected with policing ­were initiated somewhat ­later in the aof than in many other French colonial territories. Brunet-­La Ruche’s research on colonial policing in the aof is particularly illuminating h ­ ere, and she shows that, in Dahomey in par­tic­u­ lar, efforts by colonial security ser­vices to roll out criminological photography came significantly l­ater than in other French-­controlled territories, including

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

5.13 ​Example of a crimi­

nological ID photo­graph in the arrest rec­ords of the colonial security ser­vice in Porto-­Novo, dated 1934. Many of the men whose mug shots I saw in colonial police rec­ords in Dahomey appear ­either to have fled from forced ­labor or to have been arrested for other reasons before being sentenced to forced ­labor. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­Novo, Benin.

231

Algeria, Tunisia, and Indochina.71 The documentary rec­ord confirms that administrators ­were deploying Alphonse Bertillon’s system of criminological photography in the Maghreb and Indochina in the 1890s, yet the first police photo­graphs ever to have been taken in Dahomey ­were not taken ­until the interwar period—­forty years ­later.72 Importantly, Brunet-­La Ruche contextualizes ­these irregularities in the implementation of criminological photography, both in colonial territories and in metropolitan France, in the broader context of irregularities in urban policing, which, in France, was practically non­ex­is­tent outside Paris ­until the twentieth ­century.73 In the colonial context, she notes, “Each colony of the aof or­ga­nized a police force according to local circumstances,” affirming, once again, the extraordinary latitude that was granted to local authorities in individual territories.74 The Beninese case is particularly suggestive in this regard. As Brunet-­La Ruche notes, between 1889 and 1910, Dahomey passed through six dif­fer­ent incarnations of its colonial police force, reflecting rapidly changing attitudes ­toward the proper colonial “management” of indigenous Africans, who ­were, in this moment, becoming increasingly urbanized.75 ­These urban populations consisted of a mix of both évolués (urban elites who had been integrated into colonial proj­ects from an early date) and Africans who had left rural enclaves for the cities in more recent waves of migration. Small won­der that colonial authorities ­were encouraged by their metropolitan counter­parts to experiment and to draw “inspiration” from a range of dif­fer­ent and often disparate policies and practices, given that the law enforcement structures in which criminological and forensic regimes of identity documentation w ­ ere necessarily embedded ­were themselves remarkably varied. My own research in the Beninese National Archives did turn up files containing both criminological and forensic photo­graphs dating from the 1920s—­ and so from a period roughly con­temporary with the civil identity documents of the Eu­ro­pe­ans and of Oumarou from Kano.76 ­These ­were mug shots (affixed to a more comprehensive rec­ord known, in French, as a portrait parlé) that formed part of the arrest and detention rec­ords of the sûreté (see figures 5.13 and 5.14).77 Unlike the passports and civil identity documents that I mentioned ­earlier, ­these criminological photo­graphs ­were exclusively of Africans. When I first came across ­these images, the experience was unsettling, beyond anything I had anticipated: t­ hese are instances of bureaucratic photography that was most definitely associated with colonial vio­lence and, very specifically, with the criminalization of Africans who w ­ ere resisting the brutality of forced ­labor. (Note that, directly above the mug shot that I have reproduced, not

232

chaPter five

without reservations, at figure 5.13, it is written that the subject has fled from the corvée.) No doubt contributing to this unsettling quality, ­these arrest rec­ ords ­were mixed in, in the same folders, with the passports of the Eu­ro­pe­ans (mostly wealthy businessmen and representatives of Eu­ro­pean corporations) who had been required to register with the police while in Dahomey. Prob­ably ­there was no reason for the mixing of t­ hese two classes of identity document—­apart from the fact that they date from the same period, and that the sûreté looked ­after both documents. Yet, thrown together—as they ­were when I came across them—in a single folder, they could not pre­sent a more striking contrast. The Eu­ro­pe­ans’ documents make manifest the privilege of mobility enjoyed by this population, listing the names of dif­f er­ent ports (last port of embarkation: Liverpool, ­etc.) and detailing the financial resources at the ­bearers’ disposal.78 The Africans’ documents are, by contrast, largely arrest rec­ords and “wanted” notices (avis d’évasion), devised for the express purpose of depriving t­hese men of their mobility. Archived, as they ­were, in a single folder, t­hese two dif­fer­ent types of identity documents make explicit the extent to which the French, other Eu­ro­pe­ans, and Americans ­doing business in French colonial territories in this period w ­ ere directly profiting from colonialism and, more specifically, from the l­abor of t­ hese men, whom the arrest rec­ords describe as having fled the corvée. ­These histories of truly violent exploitation remain indelible in the identity documents that can be found in the official colonial archives of the territory of Dahomey. Yet ­whether ­because they are distant enough in time or for other reasons, they appear to have left no mark in popu­lar memory or in con­temporary perceptions of state-­sponsored photography in Benin, in which criminological photography figured mostly as a lucrative business opportunity for photog­raphers, if indeed it figured at all.79 Heterogeneous Visualities and the Ideal Image

Researchers working in parts of colonial Africa where identity documentation was produced at a much ­earlier date, and where it was pursued more systematically by the colonial power, have also argued for a reconsideration of id-­card photography. Even in places with significant settler populations and elaborate hierarchies of racial identity that ­were tied to pass laws and regimes of differentiated mobility—­for example, South Africa (first a Dutch, ­later a British, colony) and South-­West Africa (present-­day Namibia: first a German colonial territory, ­later a British protectorate)—­historians of photography have pointed out the limitations of approaches to bureaucratic photography adapted from Eu­ro­pean and North American contexts. T ­ hese cases offer critical insights

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

233

5.14 ​Avis d’évasion, or

wanted notice, including a mug shot, for a man who escaped from forced ­labor in Porto-­ Novo in 1933. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­Novo, Benin.

234

into the wider fields of colonial and postcolonial visualities in other parts of Africa, in which id photography was implicated from a comparatively early date (particularly as compared with the aof), yet where it was apparently no less improvised and no less open to experimentation. Lorena Rizzo, a historian of photography who has done extensive research on bureaucratic photography in South-­West Africa, cogently sketches the limitations of what she calls the “repressive argument,” referring explic­ itly to Allan Sekula’s well-­known argument about the relationship between portraiture and bureaucratic photography. Rizzo writes, “Colonial administration is often associated with the production of repressive and highly standardized forms of imagery, such as anthropometric, medical, or forensic photography. . . . ​But the visualities produced in the context of identifying citizens and subjects w ­ ere more heterogeneous than a generalized theory of the racist colonial gaze might suggest.”80 The second half of the nineteenth ­century saw fierce competition for territory between Afrikaners and British settlers (in South Africa), as well as between the British and the Germans (in

chaPter five

South-­West Africa). This competition fanned growing anx­i­eties about racial and ethnic identity, and it added anx­i­eties about nationality to this already volatile mix. Regimes of identity documentation w ­ ere implemented in tandem with broader efforts to control and monitor ­people’s movements across borders separating British from German and Dutch or Afrikaner-­controlled territories. Even in South-­West Africa, however, where elaborate systems of pass laws placed burdensome restrictions on Africans’ mobility, and where, as Rizzo notes, “citizenship was or­ga­nized primarily along racial lines and aimed at excluding the African population,” id-­card images and associated practices ­were far from standardized.81 This lack of standardization is, of course, part of what allowed identity documents to be a space of visual, and other, experimentation on the part of colonial administrators, and, as Rizzo adeptly demonstrates, it allowed for the construction and imagination of dif­fer­ent (and explicitly differentiated) concepts and categories of citizenship. In the midst of late colonial attempts to create dif­fer­ent classes of citizens, however, id cards and related forms of identity documentation si­mul­ta­neously inaugurated a space for experimentation with new concepts of personhood, and for the articulation of what Rizzo calls “(­counter)subjectivities,” a potential that was immediately recognized by Africans who requested or applied for ­these documents.82 Due to their novelty, but also to their wild heterogeneity, the very regimes and practices of bureaucratic identification that w ­ ere being used to control Africans’ movements in South-­ West Africa also created, Rizzo argues, opportunities for them to explore, and to perform, new visual identities. The novelty of t­ hese practices was not confined to colonial Africa, as was already suggested by Brunet-­La Ruche in the French case. Indeed, it is imperative to keep in mind, in reflecting on identity documentation in colonial space, that the first worldwide attempts at standardization of passports did not occur ­until the 1950s.83 The significance of this timing cannot be overstated, for it means that, in colonial Africa as in the rest of the world, p­ eople requesting passports and other identity documentation prior to the 1950s did not necessarily submit identités or “id-­card photo­graphs” as part of their applications at all. Rather, they submitted portraits taken by photog­raphers working in existing commercial studio contexts—­a fact that Rizzo’s research on the heterogeneous, nonstandard, and openly experimental visualities of early id-­card photography only underscores. Fi­nally, ­there ­were few or no official specifications as to what ­these images should look like. This means that the images affixed to ­these documents emerged from the portrait studio and ­were, therefore, indistinguishable from other portraits that ­were taken ­there (see, again, figure 5.12:

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

235

the gray curtain strongly suggests a commercial studio)—up ­until, that is, the 1950s, when standardization took place, and this ­thing called the “id-­card photo­graph” was in­ven­ted.

Karen Strassler also insists on the limitations of the repressive argument, in her brilliant and expansive research on the history of photography in Indonesia. Strassler’s case studies of “the social life” of id-­card photo­graphs, known as pasfoto in Indonesia, illustrate that the use of id cards by the postcolonial state as a form of overt and aggressive surveillance did not prevent Indonesians from developing their own, more popu­lar, familial, and ritual practices involving the pasfoto, which they often (still ­today) appropriate and repurpose for diverse uses. Strassler’s research is particularly lucid in demonstrating the ways that “state-­bureaucratic and sentimental, ‘repressive’ and ‘honorific,’ visual practices” cannot clearly be distinguished, and rather “overlap and inform each other.”84 Among the case studies that Strassler explores are t­ hose in which id-­card photo­graphs are included in f­ amily ­albums, framed and displayed in homes or in public places, or used for purposes of commemoration at funerals. In view of ­these and other similar acts of appropriation and repurposing, she argues, “The same photo­graphs required for ‘official’ purposes of identification . . . ​could be enlisted to display and sustain social ties and personal memory, tapping into dif­fer­ent regimes of recognition.”85 In a particularly potent example of the repurposing of id-­card photo­graphs for what she calls “sentimental” use, Strassler narrates the story of a composite image in which the pasfoto of a man and a ­woman, a married ­couple, ­were joined to make a portrait of them as a ­couple ­after the husband’s death.86 Strassler notes that, in Indonesia, the id-­card photo­graph has often been the unique photo­graph of the individual: “For many, the identity photo­graph served as their sole portrait”—­a situation that was also common in rural west African contexts in the immediate post-­independence period, as we have already seen.87 Strassler, however, is not content to accept that ­there may be an incidental connection between the id-­card photo­graph and its frequent appropriation and repurposing for sentimental use. (The hypothesis that the id-­card photo­graph is appropriated and repurposed for this use ­because ­there is no other photo­graph.) Rather, she argues that the id-­card photo­graph may be better suited than other types of photo­graph to this type of appropriation and repurposing. She writes, “Beyond their ready availability, the formal qualities of identity photo­graphs made them particularly adaptable to commemorative

236

chaPter five

purposes,” and goes on to cite “the extreme conventionality and reductiveness of the identity image,” as well as the “stiff and uniform pose,” “frontal gaze,” “vacant facial expression,” and “blank backdrop” as qualities inviting the identity image’s ­future use.88 It is in­ter­est­ing to consider, in this light, the composite image that I saw among contact prints in Adjovi’s studio archives in Cotonou (figure 5.15). An el­derly man’s identité was used as the basis of a formal, commemorative portrait, with the body of another person, taken from another portrait, completing the image. Using montage and rephotography, the photographer made a commemorative portrait for a client by using the only existing photo­graph of the deceased—­his identité—­and grafting or collaging someone e­ lse’s body onto it.89

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

5.15 ​Commemorative

portrait produced on the basis of an ID-­card photo­graph using mon­ tage and rephotography techniques (a detail of figure 5.7). Photo­graph: Benoît Adjovi. Porto-­ Novo, Benin, late 1960s or early 1970s. Digitized contact print. Courtesy of Benoît Adjovi.

237

As is typical of many commemorative portraits in west Africa, the body grafted onto the id-­card photo­graph exhibits the “traditional” west African pose: square to the camera at a full frontal ­angle with hands on knees. Only ­later, upon reading Strassler’s work, did it dawn on me that the id-­card photo­graph was, in this instance, truly an ideal image for repurposing. The frontal a­ ngle stipulated by the state as a convention of the id-­card photo­graph in Benin is a perfect fit, aesthetically, with the frontal a­ ngle of the commemorative portrait in which we see the “traditional” west African pose. This suggests that, ­whether or not the identité is the only photo­graph of the deceased, it may well be the ideal photo­graph for repurposing as a commemorative image in west Africa.

In 2015, while in South Africa for research unrelated (or so I thought) to this book, I happened upon another series of bureaucratic photo­graphs that had been repurposed and integrated into a series of new images destined for a more sentimental use. In South Africa, id cards and other pass documents w ­ ere, it goes without saying, deeply imbricated in intensive programs of state surveillance, particularly in the apartheid period, which saw a radical intensification of attempts to control and limit the movements of South Africa’s majority black population. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the images that I saw w ­ ere commissioned and kept by black families, who, through airbrushing and other techniques of manipulation, had transformed passbook and identity photo­ graphs into composite portraits of ­couples. An astonishing subset of ­these images are called “wedding portraits”: a veil has been airbrushed onto the bride’s id-­card photo­graph, a tuxedo onto the groom’s. ­These wedding portraits ingeniously allowed c­ ouples who, thanks to the havoc wreaked on families by apartheid-­era ­labor policies, w ­ ere frequently separated by long distances, or who for other reasons never had a wedding, to display in their homes a photo­ graph of their “wedding,” attesting to the special status of their relationship.90 It is hard to think of a more potent illustration of the ways in which, to quote Strassler, “state-­bureaucratic” and “sentimental” visual practices overlap and inform one other, when the photo­graphs used to consecrate ­couples’ relationships ­were taken from the same passbooks that had been used, by the apartheid state, to keep ­those ­couples apart. Perhaps t­ hese images can be interpreted as resistant. Yet it seems, to me, less in­ter­est­ing to pursue a line of argument in which their repurposing is understood as a conscious or deliberate decision made by the photographic

238

chaPter five

subject, or even by a given photographer or airbrush artist, with the intention of rejecting or subverting colonial and apartheid-­era photo­graphs and photographic practices, and more in­ter­est­ing to consider the ways in which this repurposing exists on a continuum with state-­sponsored and bureaucratic images and practices. For this repurposing only extends the experimental, improvisational, and creative qualities that have, from their inception, been so crucial to bureaucratic images and practices. Also impor­tant are the unmistakably democratic par­ameters of the visualities they produce. Every­one has or wants a wedding portrait (every­one falls in love, or aspires to); every­one has a funeral portrait, or should (every­one dies); and every­one is controlled by the state—or, alternatively, aspires to be a citizen—­which means that every­one has, or should have, an id card or a passbook. In my conversations with Ly and other photog­raphers in both Senegal and Benin, it had initially seemed that ­there ­were two dif­fer­ent classes of photo­ graph: the id-­card photo­graph and some other, more “conventional,” portrait. Thus Ly said, “We all did id card photo­graphs [identités], and we all did portraits”; “All of us who did portraits also did identités.” At first glance, ­these images sometimes seemed difficult to distinguish. This, at least, was how I initially understood the coaching I received from my interlocutors in the relevant interpretive protocols (the camera ­angle or pose, the neutral backdrop, the ­little bits of paper clutched in the hands of the sitter, the presence of other ­people posed in a par­tic­u­lar way). This seeming difficulty in telling ­these two classes of photo­graphs apart was perhaps not surprising, given that they w ­ ere taken by the same photog­raphers, of the same ­people, often (although not always) using the same cameras, same film, often in the same studio. Upon fuller exploration of the history of identity documentation across multiple archives, however, the idea that t­ hese are or can be rigorously understood as two dif­ fer­ent classes of photo­graph does not always hold up. One reason for this is that the id-­card photo­graph appears to have descended, historically, from the studio portrait. Another reason is that the pro­cess of becoming a postcolonial citizen presented west Africans with an unpre­ce­dented opportunity to commission a truly ideal image of themselves, one that might go on to serve them in ­future contexts that remained, at the time t­ hese photo­graphs ­were taken, radically undetermined.

The Pleasures of State-­S ponsored Photography

239

CHAPTER 6

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

­ eople in Francophone Africa someP times speak of what they call les fausses indépendances, meaning the “fake” or “false” in­de­pen­dences. Such formulations refer, first of all, to the ongoing meddling of Eu­ro­pean powers in African affairs—­a species of what Kodwo Eshun dubs, in a well-­known essay on Afrofuturism, “colonial revenge.”1 This meddling, preventing a lack of self-­determination on the part of west African states is, in large part, a symptom of the bad faith with which decolonization was undertaken by Eu­ro­pe­ans. It has also been interpreted in light of a more general and systematic “failure” of the postcolonial state, which began to be theorized by po­liti­cal theorists in the 1970s and 1980s, and which has been treated, most famously, by Jean-­François Bayart and Achille Mbembe.2 Still more recently, the “fakeness” or “falseness” of the west African in­de­pen­dences has been analyzed

on a continuum with an evolving neo­co­lo­nial­ism and forms of recolonization connected with late-late capitalism: structural adjustment, the influence of the World Bank, neoliberalism, ngo-­ization, and the thorny nexus of economic and po­liti­cal development known, ­today, as “La Chinafrique” (China-­ in-­Africa, patterned on the ­earlier “La Françafrique,” or France-­in-­Africa).3 Given the centrality of t­ hese debates to po­liti­cal life in con­temporary west Africa, scholars d ­ oing historical research on the immediate post-­independence period must be careful not to succumb to the lure of nostalgia or redemptive narratives. This is a fortiori the case for t­ hose of us enchanted by the image of this history that can be found in old photo­graphs, ­whether in the starkness of black-­ and-­white or, more poetically, in sepia tones. Despite what we see or think we see in ­these photo­graphs, decolonization and liberation movements did not succeed on the terms that they set for themselves. Untold dreams ­were dashed. What is the epistemological and aesthetic status of all t­ hese photo­graphs depicting a more hopeful image of postcolonial west Africa? By what methods are we able to excavate both the histories and the ­futures that t­ hese photo­graphs contain? Many of us have argued, explic­itly in our scholarship or implicitly in our curatorial and art practice, that a methodological or theoretical privilege can be granted to photography in chronicling the emergence of postcolonial po­liti­cal imagination. But what, more precisely, accounts for this privilege? Is ­there something that photo­graphs of, or associated with, the formation of the postcolonial state in west Africa can show or tell us that other documents dating from this period cannot? Even if we bracket the question of this privilege, what f­ utures can we assure for ­these photo­graphs, when old black-­and-­white negatives and prints on paper are fading and decaying all over the world at an alarming rate? I believe that such reflection—on the promise as well as, perhaps, the limitations of photography for thinking about decolonization—­has become more urgent than ever ­today, at a time when west African archives are increasingly at risk of disappearing and when, at the same time, the world is experiencing a boom in colonial nostalgia.4 Against the backdrop of this nostalgia, the messianic image of a coming liberation for Africa risks eclipsing the possibilities for meaningful analy­sis of the pre­sent. The bitterness and disillusionment that came in the wake of the false in­ de­pen­dences cannot be attributed exclusively to the “dependence” of postcolonial African states on Eu­rope. They must also be understood as a function of attempts by African po­liti­cal leaders to exploit this dependence for their own ends. Many of the po­liti­cal actors who worked heroically to realize a vision of African liberation in the 1950s and 1960s went on to let the dream of liberation die and even to hasten its death. As Bayart writes, “Far from being the victims of

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

6.1 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Female

troops, possibly Algerian, marching in review in connection with the strug­gle for liberation in Western Sahara. By 1975, the war in Western Sahara had become a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union. Photographer unknown. In or near Western Sahara, ca. 1975–1976. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­ Novo, Benin.

241

their very real vulnerability, African governments exploit, occasionally skillfully, the resources of a dependence which is, it cannot ever be sufficiently stressed, astutely fabricated.”5 Any attempt to interpret photographic images documenting the invention of the new, postcolonial states as static artifacts of anticolonial po­liti­cal imagination—as documents of a past that is simply past—is, in this re­spect, doubly treacherous. It is not by accident that Bayart writes in the pre­sent tense. Manthia Diawara captures the tenor of ­these debates in his marvelous and elegiac book In Search of Africa, in a description of an encounter that he had with the Guinean writer Williams Sassine, in Conakry (the capital of Guinea), in the mid-1990s. Diawara relates his conversation with Sassine with a mixture of admiration, humor, and anguish (it is among the last he would have with Sassine before the latter’s death). In the conversation, Sassine engages in a series of ironic wordplays on the po­liti­cal slogans of the in­de­pen­dence generation, one of which revolves around the phrase indépendant triste. The pun is on indépendantiste, the French word for ­those who ­were, in the 1950s, pro-­independence. Diawara translates indépendant triste, in En­glish, as “autonomous sadness.” Sassine delivers his punch line thus: “We wanted to be ­free, and we became the sadder for it.”6

This chapter examines the photographic afterlives of ideas about African unity and alternatives to in­de­pen­dence, which linger in the background of ­these debates, and which can still be glimpsed, I suggest, in po­liti­cal photo­ graphs dating from the immediate post-­independence period. It pursues this examination through an analy­sis of two subsets of images, both of which depict alternatives to in­de­pen­dence and novel forms of African unity or solidarity that w ­ ere envisioned by African po­liti­cal leaders on the eve of decolonization. The first is a series of photo­graphs documenting a state visit of Modibo Keïta, the first president of the in­de­pen­dent Republic of Mali, to Senegal. ­These photo­graphs, which I saw in several dif­fer­ent archives in Senegal, are, I venture, closely connected with the memory of the Mali Federation, an ill-­ fated ­union of what are ­today two, in­de­pen­dent African states (Mali and Senegal), which existed for a few fleeting months in 1959.7 The second set of photo­ graphs, which I saw in the National Archives of Benin, w ­ ere taken in Western Sahara and document the strug­gle for in­de­pen­dence of the Sahrawi ­people (or the “­people of Western Sahara”). ­These photo­graphs, too, pre­sent an image of African unity that was ­shaped, at least in part, by broader desires for coopera-

242

chaPter six

tion, collaboration, and solidarity in the immediate post-­independence period. Both sets of images resonate with the above debates and conversations in that they allow us to glimpse a historical moment when the “in­de­pen­dence” of sovereign nation-­states was seen as only one of many pos­si­ble roads to liberation.8 On a theoretical level, t­ hese images raise larger questions about the multiple and multidimensional temporalities of photography, and about the continued opportunities for solidarity that photo­graphs in west African archives may still contain. Fi­nally, the inclusion of each of t­ hese two subsets of photo­graphs in an archive in, or belonging to, another postcolonial state underscores the endurance of pan-­African solidarities across a fractured archival landscape. ­These fractures, I suggest, may reflect or refract certain territorial fractures that linger in con­ temporary po­liti­cal imagination and in the con­temporary research landscape. Responding, in part, to ­these archival fractures, this chapter concludes with some speculations on the possibilities for creating ­viable infrastructures for photography archives in west Africa. As I illustrated in previous chapters, po­liti­cal photo­graphs dating from this period have never been fully or adequately integrated into the official, state-­sponsored archives of postcolonial west African states. This is despite the aspirations of museum professionals like El Hadj Adama Sylla and ­later generations of museum and cultural heritage professionals, to ensure their safe passage into institutions with secure structures (locked buildings, trained personnel, and equipment allowing for temperature and humidity control) and a modicum of state sponsorship.9 At the same time, it remains a question ­whether state-­sponsored institutions are the most appropriate place for ­these photo­graphs, given that the official histories of postcolonial states may be at odds with the more radical and more actively decolonial visions they contain. Fi­nally, I leave the reader with a series of questions about pos­si­ble alternatives to state-­sponsored institutions. Can the surge of interest in west African and other non-­European photography histories engender new institutions for photography? What new forms of collaboration, knowledge production, and resource sharing are becoming pos­si­ble, given the emergence of new technologies and new theoretical and methodological frames? Federation and Nonalignment

In Senegal, in 2007 and 2008, I noticed that ­there ­were a surprising number of photo­graphs of Modibo Keïta, the first president of the Republic of Mali, in collections that I saw in both Saint-­Louis and Dakar. T ­ hese photo­graphs, and the deeply sentimental reactions they provoked, are part of what sparked my interest in po­liti­cal photo­graphs, particularly t­ hose commissioned by African

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

243

politicians and taken by African photog­raphers.10 The images of Keïta that I reproduce ­here are drawn from Ibrahima Faye’s collection in Dakar, where I had the occasion to discuss them briefly with Faye himself and ­later, ­after he had passed away, with members of his f­ amily, including his wife, Khady Ndoye Faye. As I noted in previous chapters, Faye served in high-­ranking po­liti­cal positions both before and ­after in­de­pen­dence, and he was a governor of four dif­fer­ent regions of Senegal. The fact that Faye amassed an impressive collection of photo­graphs, starting in the mid-1950s, which w ­ ere taken (often as commissions) by photog­raphers in all of the cities where he lived (Mbour, Kaolack, Ziguinchor, Saint-­Louis, and Dakar) is, I have already suggested, clear evidence of the relationship between photography and po­liti­cal imagination in Senegal in this period, and Faye’s collection is a vivid testament to the collaborations that took place between politicians and photog­raphers in the early post-­independence years. I also had the occasion to discuss several of ­these images with Sylla and members of the personnel of the Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal (crds) photothèque and library in Saint-­Louis, where I saw photo­graphs of Keïta both in the crds’s photography holdings and in the library’s serial holdings, where they had been reproduced in Le Soleil. In conversations with both American and Senegalese friends and colleagues, I found myself wondering what was so special about t­hese photo­ graphs of Keïta, many of which depicted him in the com­pany of his Senegalese counterpart, Léopold Senghor. At first I wondered w ­ hether ­these photo­graphs’ hold on us stemmed from some special quality of the images themselves, or perhaps from par­tic­u­lar personal qualities of ­these men. I have since concluded that their interest was connected less with any single historical event or visual datum that could be seen “in” the photo­graphs than with the ideas about African unity and friendship between African nations that the images evoked. ­These ideas w ­ ere already evoked by the Malian leader’s presence in Senegal at the time that t­ hese photo­graphs ­were taken, and I found that they could be conjured, years ­later, with renewed force. In an image that has come, for me, to be paradigmatic of this larger archive of photo­graphs of the Malian president in Senegal (figure 6.2), Keïta walks out in front of an entourage of well-­dressed men and ­women walking along what appear to be railroad tracks. The figures vis­i­ble in the photo­graph—­ there are at least a dozen—­are walking in concert with Keïta, with his left foot (in babouches, a type of slipper originating in North Africa and ubiquitous in the Sahel) and, by extension, their left feet forward. The length of his stride is amplified by the flowing line of his boubou, with this line accentuated still further by his choice of a fabric in a vertical stripe pattern. While most of his com-

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

6.2 (PREVIOUS PAGE) ​Modibo

Keïta in white suit, leaning out of a railroad car. Photo­graph: Lefèvre. Near Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

245

6.3 ​Modibo Keïta in

boubou, walking along railroad tracks on a state visit to Senegal. The reopening of the Dakar-­ Niger railway remains, ­today, closely associ­ ated with the renewal of diplomatic ties between Mali and Senegal. ­These ties had been cut with the foun­dering of the Mali Federation. Photo­graph: Lefèvre. Near ­Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

246

patriots appear to be looking straight ahead, or, alternatively, at their feet (to avoid, one imagines, tripping over the train tracks), Keïta himself looks boldly up and at a point just ­behind the camera, lending him an air of confidence and conveying, on a symbolic level, his clarity of vision as a leader. Underscoring this air of confidence still further, Keïta’s face is dramatically lit, the right half of his face in shadow and the left in the after­noon sun. The vertical line, dividing light from darkness and the Malian president’s face into perfect halves, echoes the rectilinear form of the train tracks, which we see ­running from left to right at a slight diagonal ­angle, in the bottom third of the frame. The vertical line also bisects, at right ­angles, the line of Keïta’s arm, held cocked at the elbow as he holds his hands clasped, causally yet seemingly deliberately, in front of his body. The image’s framing ensures Keïta’s dominant placement in the larger composition, hewing to the rule of thirds. A fuller discussion of the visual and iconographic ele­ments of ­these images of Keïta would have to devote time and attention to Keïta’s and Senghor’s

chaPter six

dif­fer­ent styles of public and photographic self-­presentation, and their divergent approaches to posing, bodily comportment, and styles of dress. Keïta was tall (particularly in comparison with Senghor), and the Malian president was frequently photographed striding, waving, and flashing a smile (figure 6.3), a detail that is all the more striking given that Senghor seems rarely to have smiled for the camera. In many of the photo­graphs of the two leaders that I saw in Senegal, Keïta appears at official state functions in “traditional” African dress (figure 6.3), whereas Senghor, ever the urbane agrégé, wears Eu­ro­pean dress (figure 6.5).11 Keïta’s long, flowing boubous would have embodied, then as now, ideals of African masculinity, beauty, and power. As such, they ­were the sartorial expression of a pro­cess of Africanization then ­going on in the po­ liti­cal arena. In the conversations that we had about them, I found that ­these photo­graphs often evoked an aesthetic response grounded, perhaps, in t­ hese iconographic ele­ments but also in affective experience. When, in Saint-­Louis in 2008, I asked Adama Sylla why t­ here ­were so many photo­graphs of Keïta in Senegalese collections, he explained that the Senegalese have always been fond of Keïta. Sylla went on to emphasize that Malians and Senegalese have always had warm relations, and, not infrequently, close f­amily ties spanning ethnic and language groups as well as colonial borders.12 Even in Dakar, where one feels farther from the border with Mali, the responses elicited by photo­graphs of Keïta ­were often intense, characterized by affection and, occasionally, ambivalence. While ­these and other aesthetic ­factors (a boubou, a smile, a sense of kinship or of fondness) undoubtedly had something to do with our collective response to ­these images, I wish to put a slightly dif­fer­ent spin on them h ­ ere. I would venture that ­these images ultimately derive their power from their repre­sen­ ta­tion of an impor­tant alternative to “in­de­pen­dence” that was envisioned by African leaders in the late 1950s: that of a u ­ nion or federation of African states. This was the alternative that was instantiated, precisely, in the creation of the Mali Federation. Against the backdrop of this richer and more complex history of the desire for African unity or federation, seemingly superficial aesthetic differences—­those, for example, that are vis­i­ble or legible in a style of dress or in the framing of an image—­can be seen to encode competing po­liti­cal visions and, ultimately, a deeper po­liti­cal rift. T ­ hese images have the power to remind us, ­today, of the per­sis­tence of that rift in con­temporary historical consciousness, precisely through their layering of multiple, and disparate, historical ele­ments and moments. The Mali Federation was created, on April 4, 1959, as a u ­ nion of what w ­ ere, at the time of its formation, still two colonial territories: French Soudan (Mali)

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

247

and Senegal. It was dissolved barely four months ­after its creation—­and approximately two months ­after the coming of in­de­pen­dence, in 1960, to the bulk of l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof), France’s colonial federation in west Africa. The ­union’s dissolution, which took place ­under threat of vio­ lence, in August 1960, marked the beginning of a period of deep estrangement between its two member-­states. Seen from one ­angle, the federation was ­little more than a federalist experiment that ended badly. Situated in the larger po­liti­cal zeitgeist, however, it was an attempt to realize a much more radical po­liti­cal vision. For the Mali Federation was founded on an under­lying conviction that France’s west African territories would emerge victorious from the strug­gle against colonialism if and only if they could work cooperatively and replace the system of colonial “de­pen­dency.” Starting with the 1944 Brazzaville conference, federalism in west Africa began to be framed as an alternative to de­pen­dency, and it came to be particularly closely associated with the Left, as both communists and socialists embraced the term. In contradistinction to the atomistic arrangement of autonomous states factually denoted by the term “in­de­pen­dence,” proponents of the Mali Federation hoped to establish an interterritorial system of po­liti­cal and economic collaboration within Africa. In other words, the Mali Federation was not just a federalist experiment but emblematic of a larger vision of decolonization, which stood at an oblique ­angle to in­de­pen­dence. At the same time, this vision was framed in explicit opposition to the idea of a competing concept of “federation,” which was being articulated ­under the banner of a single French Republic: one made up of African territories that would remain, in essence, part of France.13 ­There is ­little consensus as to the c­ auses of the Mali Federation’s failure, but it is widely accepted that, with this failure, both leaders got badly burned.14 Senghor, despite his deep investments in an ideological and cultural pan-­Africanism (whose poster child was Négritude), remained wary of collaboration with other African countries for the duration of his presidency.15 The federation’s dissolution left Keïta so embittered that Mali subsequently refused all diplomatic relations with Senegal ­until June 22, 1963. At the moment of dissolution in August 1960, Keïta was rather scandalously escorted to the Senegal-­Mali border from Dakar, where the official administrative apparatus of the federation had been located. Thus it was to the border that the two presidents returned to repair the rift and where, at the close of a thaw that lasted from 1963 to 1966, they announced the restoration of diplomatic ties. Based on my conversations with Sylla, as well as with Ibrahima Faye (the independence-­era governor), I strongly suspect that all of the photo­graphs that I saw of Keïta in Senegal (figures 6.2, 6.3, and 6.5) commemorate a single official visit that he made to Senegal in December 1966.16

248

chaPter six

Mr. Vyau de Lagarde, then the French ambassador to Senegal, described this visit, in a tele­gram, as being of “extraordinary psychological as well as po­liti­cal significance.”17 We may also note the significance of the Dakar-­Niger railway, whose tracks feature centrally in many of ­these photo­graphs of Keïta. The railway represented, symbolically, in this moment, the renewal of diplomatic relations, and this par­tic­u­lar subset of photo­graphs illustrates, through the railway, this renewal as it was staged as a photo opportunity at the border. The Dakar-­Niger railway was, for the first half of the twentieth c­ entury, the jewel in the crown of France’s plans to industrialize its colonial territories in Africa. A large-­scale and vital colonial infrastructure proj­ect consisting of about 1,287 kilo­meters (or approximately 800 miles) of rail line, the railway linked Dakar, a major port city, with Bamako, its inland counterpart.18 Although construction of the railway actually began in the nineteenth c­ entury, the final section of track did not open u ­ ntil 1924. ­After the foun­dering of the Mali Federation, when diplomatic relations between Mali and Senegal w ­ ere severed, trains did not cross the border between the two countries. Hence the identification of the railroad with the freezing, and thawing, of diplomatic relations. Indeed, so closely identified was the renewal of diplomatic relations between the two countries with the re-­opening of the railroad that, in Saint-­Louis in 2008, Sylla referred to this renewal as the “opening of the railroad.”

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

6.4 ​Senegalese citizens

gather to celebrate a state visit by Modibo Keïta. In addition to marking the occasion with traditional singing and dancing, the crowd holds aloft a sign reading “Non-­Alignement” and a photographic portrait of Keïta. Photographer unknown. Senegal, ca. 1966. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Repro­ duction: Leslie Rabine.

249

6.5 ​Modibo Keïta (left)

and Léopold Sédar Sen­ ghor (right) crossing the tracks of the Dakar-­Niger railway. Photo­graph: Lefèvre. Near Kaolack, Senegal, ca. 1966. Collection of Ibrahima Faye and Khady Ndoye, courtesy of Gnilane Ly Faye. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

250

Importantly, this was not the first time that, in the run-up to in­de­pen­ dence, west African po­liti­cal leaders sought to articulate a shared proj­ect of po­liti­cal and economic liberation that would not be directed from Paris. In this sense, the Mali Federation was already a kind of citation, and a strategic recuperation, of an ­earlier vision of interterritorial collaboration in west Africa, ­toward which local po­liti­cal leaders had worked energetically ­under the Fourth Republic. In more ways than one, then, Keïta’s and Senghor’s formation of the federation can be interpreted as a rejoinder to ­earlier French efforts to Balkanize African states on the eve of decolonization, perhaps most famously (and as a ­matter of explicit colonial policy), in the form of Charles de Gaulle’s infamous 1958 referendum on the “French Community.” The referendum, held in September 1958, completely dashed ­earlier visions of interterritorial collaboration in west Africa. The referendum’s “either/or” structure famously forced African po­liti­cal leaders to choose between membership in

chaPter six

the “French Community,” proffered as an alternative to the existing colonial system, and “in­de­pen­dence,” construed as autonomy. The hollowness of de Gaulle’s “invitation”—­issued amid the Fourth Republic’s foun­dering, which had been precipitated by the revolt of the French Army, in May 1958, in Algeria—­highlights the many contradictions inherent in the word and concept of “decolonization.” In his address of July 13, 1958, the “Message of Friendship and Hope,” de Gaulle announced the dissolution of the existing system of po­liti­cal organ­ization in ­favor of “A vast and f­ree Community.”19 This community would be known as the “French Community”: “a ­great po­liti­cal, economic, and cultural group established in the mode of federation.”20 In the speech, de Gaulle spoke explic­itly for the first time of décolonisation, the name that he would give to France’s neo­co­lo­nial policy.21 Doubtless, Senghor’s and Keïta’s visions had their limitations, at least as they sought to realize them practically. (For example, both accepted that postcolonial African states should take the form of sovereign nation-­states in the image of Eu­rope, and both leaders trafficked in nationalism.22) Yet their efforts to create the Mali Federation w ­ ere a bold move in response to this explicit French agenda of African Balkanization, promoted by de Gaulle’s referendum. And, in the end, by working together to create an African federation at the very moment that de Gaulle was attempting to eradicate the very possibility of interterritorial collaboration, the two leaders came together in a potent demonstration of anticolonial, pan-­African po­liti­cal ­will. It is a strange and slightly disconcerting moment when a colonial infrastructure proj­ect (the Dakar-­Niger railway) comes to stand for a visionary attempt at African u ­ nion, and when a railroad whose initial construction was associated with the brutality of forced ­labor and other abuses of ­labor in the colonial period, becomes, in the aftermath of in­de­pen­dence, a visual meta­phor for liberation.23 No doubt many of the contradictions inherent in this meta­ phor can be attributed to the internalization of colonial ideologies of modernization. Yet the more in­ter­est­ing contradictions in ­these images of Keïta in Senegal stem from the fact that they do not depict a single moment in west African history but rather the interplay of several dif­fer­ent moments. For they invoke the rapid succession of dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal proj­ects, each one connected with a dif­fer­ent vision of interterritorial collaboration, African federation, or pan-­African solidarity. To be precise, t­ here are at least three images of decolonization and African liberation in ­these photo­graphs. The first is an image of the Mali Federation’s creation in 1959, a visionary attempt at African u ­ nion flying in the face of Eu­ro­pean efforts at Balkanization. The second is an image of the federation’s foun­dering

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

251

and of the consolidation of Mali and Senegal as in­de­pen­dent nation-­states in the wake of in­de­pen­dence. The third is an image of the reconciliation of Senghor and Keïta, in 1966, a­ fter this consolidation was complete. Each image inherits an e­ arlier vision, and is written over an e­ arlier image, of liberation, or alternatively, each predicts and promises the o­ thers. A fuller understanding of this photo­graph requires that we see the image “from” 1966 as citing all of t­ hese other ­earlier images and moments. The shifting relationships between t­ hese dif­fer­ent moments are difficult to localize in space and time, yet the photo­graph helps us to grasp ­these multiple overlapping, and interlocking, temporalities, which are ­those of the federation’s history, and of history itself.

Keïta maintained his reputation as a popu­lar leader and as a committed socialist throughout his c­ areer. He is, still t­oday, widely remembered as the first leader, in French Soudan, of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (rda), a monumentally impor­tant interterritorial po­liti­cal party that explic­ itly articulated ambitions for African unity in the late colonial period.24 Despite the psychological devastation that ensued with the foun­dering of the federation, Keïta remained strongly identified with the populist and pan-­African politics of the rda, and he became an out­spoken proponent of the Non-­ Aligned Movement. Mali was an early member of the nonaligned states, and Keïta represented Mali at the second nonaligned conference, which was held in Belgrade in 1961 (Senegal became a member in 1964). Keïta also participated in drafting the first charter of the Organ­ization of African Unity in 1963. As a testament to Keïta’s close identification with nonalignment in the popu­lar po­liti­cal imagination, in one of the photo­graphs of Keïta that I saw in Senegal, a crowd of p ­ eople has gathered to greet the Malian leader by dancing and singing, as is the custom (figure 6.4). B ­ ehind the principal dancers, a member of the crowd holds a sign bearing the word, in French: “non-­alignement.”25 To the right of the sign, in the rear plane of the image, another member of the crowd holds aloft a framed photographic portrait of Keïta. The public display of a photo­graph in the streets during such an event is, on the one hand, unremarkable: it is a well-­known convention of public gatherings celebrating the arrival (or departure, as in the case of funeral pro­cessions) of prominent individuals. On the other hand, this photo­graph, in which a portrait of Keïta held aloft, is remarkable, for it explic­itly knits together “traditional” African methods of public commemoration and cele­bration, such as singing and dancing, with such decidedly “modern” methods as photography.

252

chaPter six

Visual Histories ­under Pressure

In Benin in 2009, while working in the National Archives in Ouando, I chanced upon a box of photo­graphs that made me think, yet again, about the layered temporalities and shifting histories that move through old photo­ graphs. ­These made me won­der, in turn, about the relationship between photographic archives and histories of liberation in west Africa. When I first came upon this par­tic­u­lar box of photo­graphs, I was told by Grégoire, the member of the archives staff who had been ­handling my materials requests, that the contents of the box had been deposited by President Mathieu Kérékou sometime during his first presidency, which began in 1972 (Benin was then the Republic of Dahomey).26 Already, it piqued my interest to think that the president of a newly in­de­pen­dent west African state would take an interest in collecting photo­graphs of any sort. My curiosity was fanned still further when, a­ fter I had spent a few hours rifling through the photo­graphs in this box, it was made to dis­appear. That is to say, it was removed from the reading room, where I had requested that it be held overnight for me, by some unidentified person, presumably a member of the National Archives staff. When I went looking for the box (no other materials had dis­appeared), Grégoire whispered that I “should not ask about ­those photo­graphs anymore.” The object of my research in the National Archives that trip had been the criminological photo­graphs in the police files of the sûreté, or colonial security ser­vice, of Dahomey, several of which I discussed in chapter 5. The contrast between the materials in the missing box and t­ hose that ­were the true object of my visit could not have been starker. It is difficult to imagine a more brutal and violent series of photo­graphs than ­these criminological photo­graphs that I saw in the files of the sûreté, most of which are the mug shots of men who had been arrested and then escaped during penal l­abor, a direct descendant of the colonial forced l­ abor requirement, or corvée. By contrast, the photo­graphs in the mysterious box seemed, to me, uncontroversial, calculated to cultivate patriotic or vaguely pan-­African sentiment, and susceptible only of edifying readings: monuments to martyrs decked with bouquets, evidence of coup plots put down by the regime then in power, the military exercises of other ­people’s revolutionary parties. Even when ­these ­were photo­graphs documenting military exercises or troops marching in formation, they w ­ ere not documents of vio­ lence. The fact that this par­tic­u­lar box of photo­graphs was made to dis­appear, its contents judged by someone to be potent enough to censor forty or even fifty years ­after they had been taken, only strengthens my conviction in a core idea of this book: that the histories conjured by photo­graphs from this period

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

253

6.6 ​Military exercises

related to the strug­gle for liberation of Western Sahara. A banner vis­i­ble at the right of the image, beyond the distant crowd, reads “Polisa­ rio es una realidad” (Polisario is a real­ity). Photographer unknown. In or near Western Sahara, ca. 1975–1976. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­Novo, Benin.

254

are vital enough, or vibrant enough, to be or to become a threat to something or someone, and to trou­ble official histories more than fifty years ­later. This is, at any rate, one pos­si­ble interpretation of ­these images. If they did not have the power to trou­ble something or someone, why take them away? And might not this threat of troubling official histories also constitute a promise? Before this box had gone missing, as we looked at and talked about ­these images together, Grégoire had ventured a second and even bolder hypothesis about their origin. Rather than suggesting simply that they had been collected by Kérékou, he suggested that they had actually been commissioned by him. He made this assertion when we ­were looking at a par­tic­u­lar series of photo­ graphs: ­those documenting military exercises or troops passing in review in Western Sahara (figures 6.1, 6.6, and 6.7).27 ­Because of this hypothesis, which intrigued me, I de­cided, on the spur of the moment, to reproduce a handful of ­these images. Why, I wondered in the moment, would the president of one postcolonial state commission photo­graphs of a revolution taking place in another? My own research suggests that it is, in fact, highly implausible that Kérékou sent a photographer to Western Sahara to photo­graph military exercises connected with a nascent revolution ­there. Two of the photog­raphers whom

chaPter six

I interviewed extensively for this book, Cosme Dossa and Félix DeMesse, worked closely with high-­ranking officials and politicians, and DeMesse was the head of the photographic section of the Ministry of Propaganda and Information directly u ­ nder Kérékou’s minister. Yet neither man was ever sent on assignment across national or territorial borders, and neither ever mentioned other photog­raphers being sent on international assignments in our interviews. My research, as well as that of other scholars and researchers, suggests that the majority of African photog­raphers of the in­de­pen­dence generation rarely traveled internationally on assignment, even in the post-­independence years, although they often had opportunities to travel domestically.28 Yet even the most open-­ended speculation about a pos­si­ble commission raises in­ter­est­ ing questions about ­these photo­graphs, and it illuminates the solidarities with which they shimmer. Given this broader context, I think it is likely that the photo­graphs from Western Sahara that I saw in Kérékou’s box w ­ ere taken by a photographer working locally in Western Sahara, perhaps for an international organ­ization, and only ­later circulated to Kérékou. One hypothesis is that they ­were taken in 1975, on the occasion of a visit by a United Nations envoy to inspect the legitimacy of the Polisario Front’s claims to represent the Sahrawi. A 1979 article by

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

6.7 ​Damaged tanks

photographed as evi­ dence of armed conflict in connection with the strug­gle for liberation of Western Sahara. Photog­ rapher unknown. In or near Western Sahara, ca. 1975–1976. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­Novo, Benin.

255

Michael M. Gunter describes this May 1975 visit, citing a UN General Assembly report of the “Visiting Mission [of the Special Committee on Decolonization] to Spanish Sahara.” The report emphasizes the preponderance of banners declaring in­de­pen­dence displayed for the occasion: “Everywhere the Mission saw signs displayed demanding total in­de­pen­dence of the Territory from Spain and rejecting integration with any neighboring country. Typical of the slogans carried on ­these signs, which ­were also repeatedly proclaimed orally to the Mission, ­were: ‘We demand absolute in­de­pen­dence,’ ‘No to Spanish colonialism, no to Morocco and no to Mauritania,’ and ‘Sahara for the Saharans.’ ”29 The report’s references to this display seem particularly appropriate to the second photo­graph in this series (figure 6.6): in the bottom right corner of the image, a banner reads “Polisario es una realidad” (Polisario is a real­ity). Both the banner and the flags arrayed to the right, just beyond the crowd in the same image suggest that this photo­graph might have been taken by a photographer during this un visit, or potentially the visit of some other international body, such as the Organ­ization of African Unity, the Arab League, or the organ­ization of nonaligned states.30 When we ­were still in the reading room, Grégoire told me that the flags vis­i­ble in the background are ­those of the nonaligned states. The Non-­Aligned Movement formally recognized the right of the Sahrawi ­people to seek self-­determination in 1973, a decision that undoubtedly raised the profile of their strug­gle internationally, and, historically, ­there has been significant overlap between the UN and the member-­states of the Non-­Aligned Movement. In 1975, the member-­states of both organ­izations would have been virtually identical. A slightly dif­fer­ent hypothesis holds that t­ hese photo­graphs document a chain of events that started a few months l­ater, in November or December 1975, when Morocco moved to occupy the north of Western Sahara, in direct contravention of a UN vote to form a plebiscite, co-­organized by Morocco, Spain, and Mauritania, to decide the territory’s ­future, even before the full withdrawal of the Spanish civil and military authorities.31 The period spanning late 1975 and early 1976 was one of escalating military tension in the region. Two other photo­graphs from the same series, depicting parading female troops and a damaged tank (figures 6.1 and 6.7), lend credence to this interpretation. In January 1976, t­ here had been a serious encounter between a Moroccan armored unit, which had ambushed an Algerian com­pany at Amgala in Western Sahara (Algeria was in ­favor of in­de­pen­dence for Western Sahara), and, a few days ­later, the Algerians had wiped out the Moroccan garrison, resulting in five hundred casualties.32 The war in Western Saharan had, at this point, already become a proxy war between the United States

256

chaPter six

and the Soviet Union: Morocco was supported, albeit largely indirectly, by the US and Algeria was allied with Moscow. The photo­graph of the parading female troops (figure 6.1) could be an Algerian battalion. Algeria’s troops w ­ ere freshly trained and armed to the hilt a­ fter the Algerian civil war, the envy of many an African nation. The tank vis­i­ble in the final photo­graph in the series (figure 6.7) could be an Algerian tank.33 ­Whether we ­favor the interpretation privileging the flags and the banner (suggesting that they w ­ ere taken during the May 1975 UN visit) or the interpretation privileging the damaged tank (suggesting that they w ­ ere taken ­after January 1976), it seems highly plausible that t­ hese photo­graphs ­were taken, collected, and circulated by parties wanting to make the case for the Polisario Front and for the legitimacy of the Sahrawi’s claims to self-­determination. And yet I continue to be intrigued by Grégoire’s version of events, and the hypothesis that Kérékou commissioned ­these photo­graphs. Such an act, commissioning a photo­graph of someone ­else’s revolution, exceeds many more familiar gestures of solidarity or of recognition: ­those made when one government recognizes another’s sovereignty, or when one state formalizes diplomatic relations with another (pace the photo­graphs documenting the renewal of diplomatic ties between Mali and Senegal that I discussed e­ arlier). ­Whether this commissioning actually took place (we ­will almost certainly never know, and Kérékou died in 2015), the story about this commissioning conveys the texture of this history as it came to be inflected by the lived experience of the in­de­pen­dence generation. To commission a photo­graph of someone ­else’s revolution is more than simply to acknowledge this ­people’s, polity’s, or community’s right to self-­determination, and it is more than to express solidarity with their liberation movement. It is also to document that right and to archive that solidarity. And, quite apart from Grégoire’s hypotheses about t­hese photo­ graphs, the fact that they ­were deposited, by Kérékou or some other agent of the government in the relative security of an archive belonging to a relatively stable state, I would emphasize this archival impulse above all. To archive such an event—­not just to photo­graph it, but to put photo­graphs of it in the archives of a sovereign state—­may or may not be to confer legitimacy upon this demand for liberation. (Again, the sovereignty of the territory of Western Sahara remains in dispute.) But it is definitely to give a ­future to this demand. Stirring It Up (Threats and Promises)

In the years since I started this proj­ect, many of the ­people I interviewed or whose collections I worked with in my research have died. Ibrahima Faye, the independence-­era governor from whose collections many of the images

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

257

6.8 ​Unidentified foreign

dignitaries from Upper Volta (present-­day Burkina Faso) visiting the Republic of Benin. The banner reads “La com­ munauté voltaïque au Bénin vous souhaite la bienvenue” (The Voltaic community of Benin wel­ comes you). Photogra­ pher unknown. In or near Cotonou, 1970s. Courtesy of the National Archives of Benin, Porto-­Novo, Benin.

258

in this book ­were drawn, was the first to leave us, in 2014. Next came Zinsou Cosme Dossa, in Benin, and Oumar Ly, in Senegal, two photog­raphers who ­were absolutely vital to my research, who passed away in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Both ­were generous with their images and with their time, and I spent many, very long hours with Dossa in Porto-­Novo ­toward the end of his life: this book could never have been written without him. Soon thereafter, Emmanuel Dossa (the son of Cosme Dossa, who became the custodian of his archive ­after the photographer’s death) and Khady Ndoye (the wife of Ibrahima Faye and the de facto custodian of their ­family’s photography collection) also passed away. In the past three or four years alone, other photog­raphers, all members of the in­de­pen­dence generation, whose work has been critical to con­temporary research on the history of photography in west Africa, have passed away: Philippe Koudjina (Niger) in 2014, J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere (Nigeria), also in 2014, and Malick Sidibé (Mali) in 2016. In 2017, Bouna Medoune Seye, the artist, photographer, and filmmaker who introduced me to the f­amily of Doudou Diop in Saint-­Louis (and without whom, therefore, I could not have written the first several chapters of this book), passed away. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bouna did more than almost anyone ­else in Senegal to support and spread the word about local photog­raphers and photography collections,

chaPter six

and I am hardly the only person to feel his loss acutely. As the inclusion of Bouna’s and Emmanuel Dossa’s names in the above list attests (Emmanuel was roughly my age), it is not only photog­raphers and other members of the in­de­ pen­dence generation who are leaving us but already the next generation, to whom older photog­raphers had entrusted their prints and negatives for safekeeping. When a photographer dies, the pressure on his ­family to sell off his archives is extraordinary, and it is often only through the intervention of a custodian from the younger generation that t­ hese sales can be prevented. The loss, in other words, has now been compounded across multiple generations, which only increases the chances that west African archives and collections ­will be exported to distant locations and amplifying threats to the transmission and safekeeping of local knowledge. This traffic has, more than anything, been externally motivated, by the global vogue for “African photography,” which started in the 1990s. The traffic appears to be continuing unabated, although it is fi­nally starting to be examined more critically by collectors and institutions, and even to move both ways, as scholars, critics, and curators have become more attuned to the effects on local collections and communities of the decisions that they make. ­These changes no doubt also reflect greater awareness of debates about stolen cultural heritage and its repatriation, as well as shifting power dynamics in t­ hose debates (even if the traffic in photo­graphs, unlike the traffic in “primitive” or “traditional” art, is not considered to be illicit by bodies such as unesco).34 In other cases, albeit still too rare, this surge of interest in mid-­twentieth-­century collections on the part of foreign scholars, critics, and curators has been channeled positively by local actors, and been a ­factor in opening up ­these collections to local communities and researchers, as well as a catalyst of renewed local interest and investment. And many of us in the so-­called international research community have begun to travel the reverse trajectory, to work on and with west African collections in situ—­rather than bringing the photo­graphs home with us. Throughout this book, I have done my best to give the reader a sense of the geopo­liti­cal conditions of con­temporary research. I would never have seen the photo­graphs by Keïta that launched this proj­ect—in Paris—­had I not already been participating in this traffic, nor would I have had access to most of the collections about which I have written in this book. Without wanting, therefore, to diminish my own participation in this traffic, and without attempting to play down the nefarious effects that it has often had and continues to have, I have done my best to underscore, where relevant, the multidirectional and multifaceted nature of t­ hese flows. As photo­graphs from west African

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

259

collections continue to make their way out of photog­raphers’ studio archives, ­family collections, and other private and community-­based collections, into museum exhibitions and collections, research-­driven and other publications, and digital archival spaces, this is also an opportunity for us to be attuned to, and to invent, new forms of collaboration. Thanks in part to ­these new collaborations, research on photography in west African archives and collections has begun to spark creative thinking about photographic preservation and preventive conservation, decolonial approaches to cultural heritage preservation, and related cultural policy initiatives. To be sure, the ambivalent role that we, as foreign researchers and scholars, play in ­these initiatives is not likely to change soon. Yet ­every risk that our research pre­sents for recolonization is, at the same time, a chance for decolonial work.

­ fter Oumar Ly passed away in Senegal in 2016, members of his ­family and A cultural heritage professionals have worked in tandem to relocate the photographer’s remaining negative archives to a central location and have begun to inventory and assess them in situ in Senegal. This initiative, while still in its early stages, is practically promising and symbolically impor­tant, given that Ly’s negatives ­were, at the time that I met him, largely in the hands of two dif­ fer­ent French curators. In fact, when I met Ly in 2008, a significant number of his negatives ­were then in France (in the hands of a curator who was developing an exhibition) and the ­others, although technically still in Senegal, ­were, quite literally, in the trunk of another French curator’s car—­a car that I at one point found myself chasing, along with another American researcher, down the highway that joins Saint-­Louis and Dakar. In 2008, the risk that all of Ly’s negatives would soon leave the country seemed very high. Yet this has not happened, thanks to the intervention of activist heritage professionals, the thoughtful cooperation of members of Ly’s ­family, and foreign as well as local investment in this vital local preservation initiative. Equally promising are creative interventions being made by a younger generation in Senegal. For example, Ibrahima Thiam, a young photographer and artist who is also a collector and custodian of Senegalese photography from ­earlier eras, has entered into several high-­profile collaborations with Senegalese and American museum partners. Vital to note ­here is that Thiam has successfully collaborated with foreign researchers without ceding local owner­ ship of vintage prints and negatives, and his proj­ects have been ­shaped by a

260

chaPter six

very high level of awareness of market pressures, as well as by his commitment to keeping vintage prints and negatives in country, thereby ensuring local access. Thanks to t­ hese and other similar efforts now taking place in Senegal, t­ here is now at least a fighting chance that more of t­ hese materials w ­ ill stay in the country. In Mali, Adama Bamba has been successful in getting photo­graphs that ­were taken by his ­father, the photographer Mory Bamba, to a massive public by including them in a blockbuster exhibition on west African print fashion—­once again, exhibiting a high level of savvy with regard to the workings of the market and a commitment to protecting his ­father’s intellectual property rights. In Côte d’Ivoire, the photographer and activist Ananías Léki Dago has undertaken a monumentally impor­tant photographic preservation proj­ect focused on the archive of the Ivorian photographer Paul Kodjo. In addition, this project has an oral history component, and Kodjo and Léki Dago are also making a documentary film.35 Collaborations between public institutions and custodians of private or community-­based archives have likewise become increasingly fertile ground for innovation. In Benin, ­after Cosme Dossa’s death, his studio archives ­were acquired by l’École du Patrimoine Africain (épa), a regional nonprofit cultural heritage organ­ization based in Porto-­Novo.36 At épa, Dossa’s archives have been made the basis of a major Beninese photographic preservation initiative, the Initiative Panafricaine pour la Sauvegarde des Archives Photographiques, spearheaded by Franck Ogou, a photography historian, curator, and cultural heritage professional with whom I have worked closely throughout my research. As a result of épa’s acquisition of Dossa’s archives, a significant number of the photographer’s portraits as well as his po­liti­cal photo­graphs have been pro­cessed and subject to basic preservation mea­sures (e.g., moved to a secure location, housed in acid-­free negative sleeves, and placed in climate-­ controlled conditions). They have also begun to be digitized.37 This initiative is distinctive for its largely foundation-­driven and ngo-­style structures, which have allowed for unusual types of financial support. ­These ngo-­style structures are particularly in­ter­est­ing in the case of Dossa’s work, given that he was employed in an official capacity by the first president of the Republic of Dahomey.38 This is not an endorsement of ngo-­style (or hybrid public/ private) structures over other types of structure, but rather simply an observation. I continue to find it in­ter­est­ing to work with archives in a range of dif­fer­ent institutional contexts, and to explore, theoretically as well as practically, the benefits, and drawbacks, of depositing images in dif­fer­ent types of archives, state-­sponsored or other.

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

261

In 2014, I worked with Ogou and his colleagues at épa to bring a team of international experts in photographic preservation and preventive conservation to teach a photographic preservation workshop, called the 3pa [Préservation du patrimoine photographique africain]: West African Image Lab, in Porto-­ Novo. The event was conceived and or­ga­nized by myself and Erin Haney ­under the umbrella of a nonprofit organ­ization that we founded, Resolution Photo, with the aim of supporting photography and photography collections in Africa, in collaboration with Ogou and his colleagues at épa, Fatima Fall, Nora Kennedy, Bertrand Lavedrine, Peter Mustardo, and Debra Hess Norris.39 The curriculum had a strong regional focus, yet it was open to custodians of photographic collections all over the continent. The 3pa: West African Image Lab workshop provided targeted training in photographic preservation and conservation to African museum and archives professionals and to custodians of other significant collections, including ­family and community-­based collections, in Africa. épa’s acquisition of Dossa’s archives was facilitated, in part, through the conversations that took place at the workshop, in which personnel from the National Archives of Benin also participated. The acquisition of Dossa’s archives by épa, where they have been worked on by, and facilitated training for, National Archives personnel, and which was catalyzed by the 3pa workshop, is a perfect example of the type of complex and multidirectional transaction that this new phase of research and collaboration has opened up. Also in Porto-­Novo, staff from the National Archives of Benin have invited the families of local photog­raphers (many of whom came together at the 3pa workshop for the first time) to deposit copies of their families’ materials in the National Archives, and to collaborate on preventive conservation initiatives. Setting another impor­tant pre­ce­dent, two photo­graphs by the Porto-­Novo photographer Joseph Moïse Agbodjélou (one of the families invited to this collaboration with the National Archives) w ­ ere, with his f­ amily’s permission, recently published in a “world art” textbook. A coauthor of that textbook, Everlyn Nicodemus, worked closely with the f­ amily to ensure that high-­quality digital copies of ­those images could be provided to the publisher in Eu­rope without the vintage prints ever having to leave Porto-­Novo. While this detail may seem so small as to be unremarkable, it is, in fact, extraordinarily significant. For it reverses the flow of prints, if precisely not of knowledge, ensuring that ­these photo­graphs could be published in a “world art” textbook while si­mul­ta­neously remaining accessible to local p ­ eople. In Porto-­ Novo, again, Alphonse Olibé has recently mounted several local exhibitions

262

chaPter six

of photo­graphs from the fascinating (and largely underresearched) collections of the Centre Béninois de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (cbrst).40 This list is hardly exhaustive, and ­there are many, many ­others who are working, ­today, with photo­graphs from African archives in ways that do not only enhance Western wealth and knowledge bases, and who are elaborating new proj­ects that are not oriented by one or another partner’s greater financial resources, or by the desires of Western collectors and museums. ­These proj­ects are not prescriptions, nor can they even offer, at this point, a list of “best practices” or exemplary protocols, but they do represent, I sincerely believe, a new phase of work. This phase is characterized by practical and theoretical approaches that deliberately and consciously differ from, and that seek thoughtfully to respond to, prior approaches, which led to the depletion of west African collections in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Taken collectively,

African ­Futures, Lost and Found

6.9 ​Stamp on the verso

of a po­liti­cal photo­graph associating it with the government of La Région du Fleuve in Senegal. Photog­raphers described in detail to me the work that they did for regional governments in this pe­ riod, yet, with the excep­ tion of ­those that I have come across in private collections, I have not been successful in locat­ ing ­these photo­graphs. Private collection, Dakar, Senegal. Reproduction: Leslie Rabine.

263

6.10 ​Work ­table during

interviews in the court­ yard of photographer Benoît Adjovi’s home in Cotonou, Benin.

264

t­ hese new approaches aim to ensure ­these photo­graphs’ ­future a ­little while longer—­ensuring, by extension, a ­future for the myriad imaginative acts and solidarities they engender. As such, they make new contributions to old debates about decolonization and self-­determination. They raise new questions about the relationship between photography and freedom. And they offer us all the continued chance of decolonial work.

chaPter six

NOTES

Note on Geography, Spelling, and Language

1 Ouédraogo, Arts photographiques en Afrique, 96. Preface

1 Georges Meurillon describes Keïta’s portraits as repre­sen­ta­tions of ­people “who are expressing a ­will to signify, represent, and authenticate this ‘transition’ from the status of a colonized subject to that, precisely, of a citizen, ­free or on the way to being ­free [qui expriment une volonté de signifier, représenter, authentifier ce ‘passage’ du statut de colonisé à celui là, de citoyen justement, et libre ou en voie de l’être].” Meurillon, “Seydou Keïta,” n.p. Introduction

1 Tanya Elder notes that Malian photog­raphers living in cities far from the Dakar-­ Niger rail line ­were the first to take advantage of French mail-­order labs, which did color-­film pro­cessing for west African photog­raphers even ­after in­de­pen­ dence. ­Those living nearer to the rail line sent their film by train to labs in Dakar. Elder, “Capturing Change,” 186–187. 2 I should also emphasize that Dossa was, as far as we know, the first photographer to be officially employed as a photographer by the French, as many local photog­ raphers held positions in the colonial administration not as photog­raphers but as customs officers or as accountants, such as Meïssa Gaye (a well-­known Senegalese photographer who worked as a customs officer across the aof) and Doudou Diop (who worked as an accountant in the French army, in Saint-­Louis, Senegal). An ­earlier generation of Africans worked taking photo­graphs for the colonial administration on a casual basis or as part of their military ser­vice. 3 Dossa passed away, as I was still writing this book, in August 2013. Since then, his studio archives have become the basis of an impor­tant photographic preservation proj­ect, or­ga­nized by Franck Ogou ­under the auspices of the École du Patrimoine Africain, in Porto-­Novo, Benin. 4 Haney, Photography and Africa, 13. For an ­earlier, if more schematic, treatment of this history, see Bensusan, Silver Images, 7–8.

5 See again Haney, Photography and Africa, 13; Bensusan, Silver Images, 7–8; and Perez, Focus East, 196. See also Oguibe, “Photography and the Substance of the Image.” Oguibe claims that for the Khedive Mehmet to use the daguerreotype machine was “to wrest from Vernet the power of the new technique” (231). 6 For an example of this now well-­known approach to African photography history, which privileges the camera’s relationship to colonial vio­lence, see Paul Landau’s introduction to Landau and Kaspin, Images and Empires. 7 Haney, Photography and Africa, 24–25. 8 For a more detailed history of early studio photog­raphers and their patrons in Gold Coast, see Haney, “If ­These Walls Could Talk!” 9 Haney has established through meticulous original research that local markets for photography and specifically for portraiture produced by local, African-­born photog­raphers ­were especially significant in urban west Africa (as distinct from many other parts of the continent) from the earliest days. Despite the per­sis­ tence of gaps, ­there is now a rich scholarly lit­er­a­ture on nineteenth and early twentieth-­century photography in west Africa. See, again, Bensusan, Silver Images; Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew”; David, Alex A. Acolatse; Gbadegesin, “Picturing the Modern Self ”; Haney, Photography and Africa; Hickling, “Early Photo­graphs of Edmond Fortier”; Killingray and Roberts, “Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940”; Monti, Africa Then; Shumard, Durable Memento; and Viditz-­ Ward, “Photography in Sierra Leone, 1850–1918.” In addition, several of the essays in Saint Leon et al., Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, discuss early photography histories in the region. 10 Diop’s studio is central to my discussion in chapter 1. 11 I strongly suspect that this revolving picture frame was not actually manufactured by Kodak. Yet André was clear in his conviction that his ­father was being rewarded for his loyalty to Kodak when he was gifted the frame by France Photo, his metropolitan supplier. Todd Gustavson, the technology curator at the George Eastman Museum, shares the view that the frame was not manufactured by Kodak. Todd Gustavson, personal communication with the author, February 2, 2018. 12 In a comparative framework, see Akram Zaatari’s photo­graphs of the studio of Hashem El Madani, in Saida, Lebanon. Zaatari’s images of the interior of El Madani’s studio meticulously document the display of the Kodak and Gevaert log­os on clocks, fans, and posters, suggesting that such displays of brand loyalty ­were hardly unique to west Africa. I saw Zaatari’s photo­graphs of El Madani’s studio (which, I gather, operated at roughly the same time as Diop’s) at the New Museum in New York, in the exhibition ­Here and Elsewhere, in September 2014. 13 Original research by Haney and Jürg Schneider underscores the importance of this regional and cross-­regional trade in cameras, films, papers, and other photographic supplies to early west African photography histories. See, again, Haney, Photography and Africa, 23–24; and Schneider, “Portrait Photography.” 14 See Tobias Wendl’s and Nancy du Plessis’s documentary film, ­Future Remembrance: Photography and Image Arts in Ghana, which features a sequence on the

266

notes to Introduction

artisanal production of wooden view cameras in Kumasi. A par­tic­u­lar camera that traveled from Ghana to Senegal plays a starring role in chapter 5. 15 Ouédraogo, Arts photographiques en Afrique, 96. See also Érika Nimis’s vitally impor­tant book, Photographes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, which traces the movement of Yoruba photog­raphers along regional and cross-­regional migratory and trade routes. 16 Haney argues for the primacy of ­these intra-­African cir­cuits in photography’s coastal histories from the medium’s earliest days, noting that, already in the nineteenth ­century, photog­raphers based in coastal cities rarely associated the medium with Eu­rope, and that photog­raphers and cameras as well as photo­ graphs often moved through cities in coastal west Africa without the intervention, or mention, of Eu­ro­pe­ans. Haney, Photography and Africa, 23–34. 17 Among the more (in)famous attempts to reconcile the promise of the new medium with Academic discourse about painting is Charles Baudelaire’s scathing condemnation of photography in the “Salon of 1859”—in the section titled, presciently, “The Modern Public and Photography.” Baudelaire, “Salon of 1859,” 153. 18 The Western preoccupation with photography as a subspecies of technical innovation in the arena of image production has continued, even in philosophies of photography that see themselves as having broken with Enlightenment thought. Vilém Flusser, for example, exemplifies this tradition, when he argues for an ontology of photography as a “technical” image. See Flusser, ­Towards a Philosophy of Photography. 19 See, in addition to the well-­known texts that I cite below by Walter Benjamin, texts advancing notions of the “optical unconscious,” by such avant-­garde thinkers as Laszlo Moholy-­Nagy and Man Ray. Moholy-­Nagy, “Photography”; Ray, “Age of Light.” 20 Julius Lips was among the first to argue that ­there was no portraiture in Africa: “A portrait in our sense, above all a portrait with as close a resemblance as pos­si­ ble to the original, is unknown to primitive ­peoples” (Lips, Savage Hits Back, 49). More recently, ­others have contested this argument, including, perhaps most helpfully, Jean M. Borgatti and Richard Brilliant, in two texts published in the exhibition cata­logue Likeness and Beyond. See also Ola Oloidi’s article on the Nigerian painter, Aina Onabolu, in which he effectively argues that painted portraiture began with Onabolu: Oloidi, “Defender of African Creativity.” I am grateful to Erin Haney for sharing this reference with me. 21 I am grateful to Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie for first calling the question of language to my attention, in a particularly memorable conversation that we had in Santa Barbara in 2007. Andrea Stultiens has also explored the question of language in her research on photography in Uganda, and she has observed that, in Luganda, a single word, kifaananyi, derived from the verb “to be similar to” (or “to be like”), is used to mean “image,” “likeness,” “picture,” “photo­graph,” and “painting” and that no distinction is therefore made between a two-­dimensional likeness produced in one or another of ­these media for Luganda speakers. See

notes to Introduction

267

22

23 24

25 26

27

28

29

30 31

32 33

34 35

268

Stultiens, Ebifananyi I, which contains a dictionary definition of kifaananyi on its last (unnumbered) page. The Mourides are a Sufi sect in Senegal and one of the three Muslim brotherhoods that dominate religious life in the country. Their presence has been particularly significant in urban contexts in Senegal, and they are known, ­today, for their participation in global trade—­hence their highly vis­i­ble presence in the Senegalese diaspora. Roberts et al., Saint in the City. On the photographic manipulation of devotional images in par­tic­u­lar, see Roberts and Roberts, “Flickering Images, Floating Signifiers”; and Roberts, “Tempering ‘the Tyranny of Already.’ ” “Flickering Images” treats a particularly fascinating example of resignification: a “winkie,” or lenticular, that incorporates a colonial-­ era image taken in Tunisia by the photographer Rudolf Lehnert—­a well-­known producer of colonial picture postcards, often featuring eroticized images of young North African men—­and reimagines it as a portrait of the prophet Mohammed. Abiodun, “Reconsideration of the Function of Ako, Second Burial Effigy in Owo.” Abiodun coins the term “ako-­graphy” to refer to this integration, and to the reciprocal interaction between photography and other objects, traditions, and pro­cesses. Sprague’s essay, “Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves,” was originally published in African Arts in 1978 and reprinted, more recently, in Pinney and Peterson, Photography’s Other Histories. In fact, Marilyn Houlberg was the first to write about the substitution of photo­ graphs for èrè ibeji (Houlberg, “Ibeji Images of the Yoruba,” 27), but Sprague was the first to undertake systematic study of the photo­graphs themselves. For a more recent treatment of doubles and twins in west African photography that also touches on Yoruba cosmology, see Micheli, “Double Portraits,” and “Doubles and Twins.” Micheli, “Doubles and Twins,” 72. Oguibe, “Photographic Experience,” 11. The Yoruba are a language and ethnic group largely identified with con­temporary Nigeria but that is also found in Benin and in the larger regional diaspora. Oguibe, “Photographic Experience,” 11. Haney also argues for the centrality of plasticity to early photography in Gold Coast, where her work has focused on the creative interventions made by audiences to early Gold Coast photo­graphs. See Haney, “Film, Charcoal, Time,” particularly 120, and “The Lutterodts.” In other words, ­these arguments have been remarkably consistent among scholars working on photography in west Africa across a range of dif­fer­ent (sometimes quite distant) geographic and cultural areas. Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa,” 264. The concept of indexicality was devised by the American phi­los­o­pher Charles Sanders Peirce as part of his well-­known theory of the linguistic sign. Although Peirce himself used the photo­graph to illustrate the concept of the indexical sign,

notes to Introduction

it was Roland Barthes who brought the concept of the index into con­temporary photography theory, in Camera Lucida, and Rosalind Krauss who shored up the relationship between photography and the index in con­temporary art historical scholarship, in her highly influential two-­part essay, “Notes on the Index.” 36 See Sekula, “Body and the Archive,” and “Traffic in Photo­graphs.” Benjamin’s texts on photography are anomalous in that they share many of the same Marxist/ materialist postulates that have led other thinkers to condemn photography while nonetheless arguing for photography’s power to overcome bourgeois consciousness. See Benjamin, “A Short History of Photography,” and “Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (Second Version).” 37 In addition to Sekula and Benjamin, see Tagg, Burden of Repre­sen­ta­tion, in which Tagg explores photography’s role within the institutions of industrial capital. 38 Sontag, On Photography. 39 For a compendium of recent work exemplifying the “affective turn” in photography theory, see Brown and Phu, Feeling Photography. 40 See, in par­tic­u­lar, Edwards, Raw Histories; and Pinney, Camera Indica. See also Edwards’s edited volume, Anthropology and Photography: 1860–1920. 41 See, in par­tic­u­lar, Edwards, Gosden, and Phillips, Sensible Objects. 42 See Campt, Image ­Matters. 43 Azoulay, Civil Contract of Photography, and Civil Imagination. 44 Azoulay is not alone in having theorized the relationship between photography, deterritorialization, and rights claims, and ­these intersections have given rise to several other power­ful interventions in the con­temporary theory. See, for example, Keenan, “Mobilizing Shame,” and Sliwinski, ­Human Rights in Camera. 45 In her critique of Azoulay’s work, Hayes points out that “debates about po­liti­cal and civil imagination may take very dif­fer­ent lines” in the so-­called Global South than they do in Israel, and she is particularly meticulous in demonstrating the ways in which Azoulay’s arguments, about not only citizenship but also photo­ graphy, are “implicitly lodged within a chain of Euro-­American debates about the development of technology in relation to society, culture, and philosophy” (Hayes, “Uneven Citizenry of Photography,” 175 and 183, respectively). Phu argues that Azoulay’s understanding of citizenship is too narrow to illuminate the par­tic­u­lar “linkages between civility and citizenship” that she herself wishes to explore. Phu, Picturing Model Citizens, 18–19. Étienne Balibar’s theory of transnational citizenship is also apropos ­here. See, in par­tic­u­lar, Balibar, We, the ­People of Eu­rope? 46 On the problematic legacies of civility in French colonial territories in Africa, see Conklin, Mission to Civilize, and Wilder, French Imperial Nation-­State. See also, again, Hayes, who notes that the tacit slippage from humanism to humanitarianism that takes place, largely ­under the aegis of “civil imagination,” in Azoulay’s work obfuscates the rise of new forms of imperialism that have been facilitated by photography in con­temporary Africa (Hayes, “Uneven Citizenry of Photo­ graphy,” 185). 47 The cahier de doléances was a list of grievances compiled by the provincial governments of France, to be brought before the meeting of the Estates General in

notes to Introduction

269

Versailles. On the submission of the Saint-­Louis cahier, see Brigaud and Vast, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal, 59–67. 48 See, again, on the imperial and colonial construction of French Republicanism, Conklin, Mission to Civilize, and Wilder, French Imperial Nation-­State. 49 Aïdara, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui, 10–11. G. Wesley Johnson, in The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal, observes that métis residents of Saint-­ Louis held po­liti­cal office prior to the 1789 revolution, noting that “In 1765 a ­free mulatto named Thévenot was apparently acting as both priest and mayor in Saint-­Louis during the British occupation” (22). 50 In fact, many west African poets, phi­los­o­phers, and intellectuals—­and at least some po­liti­cal leaders—­had hoped to invent an alternative to the state form in the context of anticolonial strug­gle, although, by 1960, this ­battle was basically lost. For a thought-­provoking recent treatment of alternatives to the state that ­were being ­imagined in French colonial space in this period, see Wilder, Freedom Time. 51 See, again, Hayes, who notes that distinctions between the civil, the po­liti­cal, and the national cannot be made outside of a par­tic­u­lar context, and that ­these distinctions are made with “uneven vocalities and temporalities” in dif­fer­ent parts of the world (Hayes, “Uneven Citizenry of Photography,” 188). 52 Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, 5. For an in-­depth discussion of the role of theories of po­liti­cal imagination in po­liti­cal theories of the African state, see the essays collected in Comaroff and Comaroff, Civil Society and the Po­liti­cal Imagination in Africa, including their introduction to the volume. 53 Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, 5. 54 Mignolo, “Delinking,” 450–451. Part I Introduction

1 Portriga was released in 1933. For a detailed history of Agfa, see Stenger, 100 Jahre, 39–40. I am grateful to Lydia Dockx of the FotoMuseum in Antwerp for her help with research on Agfa’s corporate history. 2 On the interruption of Eu­ro­pean consumer imports during the Second World War, see Niang Siga, Costume Saint-­Louisien sénégalais d’hier à aujourd’hui, 13–15. 3 Stenger, 100 Jahre, 39. Agfa started life as a German color-­dye manufacturer and then merged with the Belgian manufacturer of X-­ray films, Gevaert, in 1964. 4 Portriga-­Rapid remained exceedingly popu­lar ­until it was discontinued in 2002. 5 Other scholars have also used the term “democ­ratization” to refer to this pro­cess. See Peffer, “Introduction,” 17–18; Nimis, “Yoruba Studio Photog­raphers in Francophone West Africa,” 135; and Elder, “Capturing Change,” 121. 1. Ça bousculait!

1 Interestingly, Jean-­François Werner notes that photographer Cornélius Yao Augustt Azaglo, who opened his studio in Korhogo, Côte d’Ivoire, in 1958 also worked as an accountant while he was apprenticed to a photographer in Bobo-­Dioulasso in 1950–55 (Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa,” 252).

270

notes to Introduction

2 Tabaski is the name used in Senegal for the Eid al-­Ahda, or al-­Kabir, the feast of the sacrifice. 3 References to conversations with Ndèye Teinde Dieng are to interviews that took place, with André acting as translator, in their home in Saint-­Louis, Senegal, December 26–28, 2007. My conversations with André extend over a broader date range, and include a series of intensive interviews that took place on ­these same dates in 2007, an additional interview in Dakar in 2008, and subsequent email and telephone conversations. 4 ­These hours differed considerably from ­those kept by French photog­raphers working in Saint-­Louis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Research by Philippe David, for example, on advertisements published in the local colonial bulletin shows that, in 1898, Noal and Fortier opened their Saint-­Louis studio from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. daily. In 1912, Hostalier opened his Saint-­Louis studio from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. (cited in David, “Hostalier,” n.p.). 5 Chapuis, “Pioneers of Saint-­Louis,” 58. Chapuis suggests that the pieces of paper that Diop gave to his clients ­were receipts. I understood, from the story that André told me, that they ­were the numbers marking the client’s place in line. ­These two interpretations do not exclude one another, as the pieces of paper might easily have served both purposes. 6 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 7. The ultimate destination of many of ­these negatives was Geneva, where they entered Jean Pigozzi’s collection. 7 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 7. 8 Keïta repeatedly stressed the importance of the railroad to his practice in the published interviews, noting that his studio was located across the street from the railroad station in Bamako (Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 10). See also Diawara, “Talk of the Town,” 65. It is crucial to note, in discussing numbers of negatives, that Keïta took only one shot of each client who came to his studio to commission a portrait, as was standard practice in other studios and in other cities at the time. 9 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 10. 10 For an insightful history of the rapid growth of Bamako ­after the Second World War, see Meillassoux, Urbanization of an African Community. 11 Njami and Sidibé, “Movement of Life,” 94. 12 Elder notes that Keïta was one of only two African photog­raphers of his generation in Bamako who w ­ ere able to operate their studios full time (Elder, “Capturing Change,” 69). 13 Brigaud and Vast, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal, 56. 14 Compare this date with Bamako, where the first studio, believed to be that of the Frenchman Pierre Garnier, was established significantly ­later, in 1935 (Elder, “Capturing Change,” 63). 15 For a history of Washington’s extraordinary ­career, see Shumard, Durable Memento; for a detailed account of Washington’s time in Monrovia, see also Fairhead et al., African-­American Exploration in West Africa, 43.

notes to chapter one

271

16 Washington reportedly planned to use the revenues from his Hartford studio to finance his Dartmouth education, but he never finished his degree. See, again, Shumard, A Durable Memento and Fairhead et al., African-­American Exploration in West Africa, 43. 17 Several daguerreotypes from Washington’s Monrovia years can be found in the US Library of Congress, in the rec­ords of the American Colonization Society. For an example of an engraving based on a daguerreotype view of the port of Monrovia, see Fairhead et al., African-­American Exploration in West Africa, 43. 18 Nimis, Photographes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, 41–42. 19 See also Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew”: “During their sixty years in the mission of prohibiting the illegal slave trade, the squadron captured over 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves. Once the ships ­were seized, a large number of heterogeneous African groups ­were settled in the colony” (18). 20 See Haney, Photography and Africa; Schneider, “Portrait Photography”; and Viditz-­Ward, “Photography in Sierra Leone.” Sierra Leone appears to have been a particularly impor­tant center of early African photography history, and African and Creole photog­raphers ­were active in Freetown starting in the 1850s (Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew,” 18–19). 21 Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew,” 18, 27. 22 Haney, Photography and Africa, 23–34. 23 See, again, Haney, Photography and Africa; Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew”; Nimis, “Yoruba Studio Photog­raphers in Francophone West Africa”; Schneider, “Portrait Photography”; and Viditz-­Ward, “Photography in Sierra Leone.” 24 See, in par­tic­u­lar, Hickling, “Early Photo­graphs of Edmond Fortier”; and David, “Hostalier.” The French photog­raphers Fortier, Bonnevide, and Hostalier ­were all based in Saint-­Louis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Noal was based in Dakar. It has not been established when French photog­raphers first began working in professional practice in Senegal. Bonnevide began advertising his Saint-­Louis studio in the Journal Officiel du Sénégal starting in 1889 (David, “Hostalier”). 25 Chapuis, “Pioneers of Saint-­Louis,” 52. 26 Details of Gaye’s ­career have been drawn from a combination of published and oral sources, including Chapuis, “Pioneers of Saint-­Louis”; Pivin, Mama Casset; and vari­ous interviews conducted in Saint-­Louis and in Dakar, in 2007 and 2008, with Fatima Fall, Marius Gouané, Bocar Ly, Gnilane Faye Ly, Bouna Medoune Seye, and Adama Sylla. 27 This may be attributed to the loss of his studio archives ­under floodwaters in 1982 (Chapuis, “Pioneers of Saint-­Louis,” 49). Chapuis’s account differs from that published by Gaye’s ­daughter, Absa Gaye, who states that one of her ­brothers disposed of thousands of their ­father’s negatives by throwing them into the Senegal River (Pivin, Mama Casset, 69). It turns out that dumping negatives in the river was not uncommon, and it appears to have spiked ­after the arrival of color labs in the 1980s. For a longer discussion of disposing of negatives within the broader

272

notes to chapter one

context of archival loss in west Africa, see Bajorek, “Decolonizing the Archive.” The Senegalese photographer and collector Ibrahima Thiam has amassed an impor­tant collection of vintage prints by Gaye. Ibrahima Thiam, personal communication during the Préservation du Patrimoine Photographique Africain (3pa): West African Image Lab workshop, Porto-­Novo, Benin, April 22–25, 2014. 28 Sow Fall, “Vague Memory of a Confiscated Photo,” 64–65. 29 Chapuis, “Pioneers of Saint-­Louis.” 30 The dates that I was given by Bouna Medoune Seye in his account of Gaye’s ­career differ significantly from ­those published by Chapuis. See also Pivin, Mama Casset, 7–12. El Hadj Adama Sylla, in interviews that we did in Saint-­Louis in 2007 and 2008, also noted the introduction of significant dating errors in the captions to photo­graphs from his collection published by Revue Noire. Unfortunately, ­these errors have since passed into other publications and, more recently, along with the photo­graphs into the collections documentation of prominent museums. 31 Chapuis, “Pioneers of Saint-­Louis,” 54. 32 Crooks and Haney have both documented the importance of transportation networks, and opportunities to travel, to west African photog­raphers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, noting that photog­raphers ­either traveled from port to port on steamships or that they located their studios strategically in relation to neighborhoods near the port. See Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew,” 22; and Haney, Photography and Africa, 6. ­After the steamship came rail travel, to which, again, Keïta attributed such importance in his accounts of his Bamako studio (Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 10). 33 Many ­people in Senegal mentioned Caristan to me, including André Diop, Fatima Fall, Bouna Medoune Seye, and Adama Sylla. Some speculated that he was Lebanese; o­ thers thought that the name was spelled “Karestan.” I have since come to suspect that the Caristan who operated the Saint-­Louis studio was the ­father of Georges and Robert Caristan, two well-­known cinematographers and Saint-­ Louisians of Martinican or Guianese descent. Georges has been credited as director of photography for early films by Sembène. In 1957, Bingo ran a feature on Robert, in which his ­father is described as an “originaire des Antilles” (native of the Antilles) and a military man who opened a “commerce de photographie” (photography business) in Saint-­Louis ­after his retirement (Bingo no. 52 [May 1957]: 12–13). Caristan is also mentioned in a text based on research by Frédérique Chapuis and published in L’Afrique par elle-­même, in which he is identified as Martinican and is said to have run one of the two largest studios on the island of Saint-­Louis ­after 1945 (Bouttiaux et al., L’Afrique par elle-­même, 34). The other major studio on the island at that time was Meïssa Gaye’s. 34 On the emergence of “po­liti­cal photography” by African photog­raphers, see chapter 4. 35 Pivin, Mama Casset, 88. 36 On disposing of negatives in the river, see note 27.

notes to chapter one

273

37 On the practice of id-­card photography in the immediate post-­independence period, see chapter 5. 38 “cfa” francs ­were and are (as they are still in use ­today) a west African currency created by France in 1945. In interviews, prices ­were invariably given in cfa (Communauté financière africaine) francs, yet they ­were often wildly divergent, no doubt thanks to successive revaluations and redenominations of the currency. 39 Cosme Dossa, interview with the author, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 21, 2009. The cfa franc underwent a revaluation against the French franc in 1948; a second major change took place in 1960, when the French franc was redenominated without being revalued, and 100 francs in the old system became 1 franc in the new. 40 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 10. 41 In 2009, I met and interviewed Mèhomè’s ­daughter, Ida, who for many years ran a studio in a dif­fer­ent neighborhood of Porto-­Novo. The elder Mèhomè had twenty-­two ­children, four of whom became photog­raphers, and his negatives and prints are, ­today, scattered across several dif­fer­ent branches of the ­family. Note that the two sons I interviewed, Baudelaire and Ézéchiel, spell their surname “Mèhomè,” and differently from their ­sister, who spells it “Mèhomey.” 42 Ézéchiel Mèhomè, interview with the author, Cotonou, Benin, January 16, 2011. Édouard Mèhomè died in 2003. 43 Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Africa,” 256. 44 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 9. In the early days of his practice, Keïta did his printing in Dembélé’s darkroom. 45 Many of the studios that we see in the background in Sembène’s film appear to be operated by members of Dakar’s Lebanese community, who played an outsized role in that city’s photography history (Sembène, Mandabi). Bouna Medoune Seye emphasized that Lebanese photog­raphers dominated the studio district in Dakar’s Plateau, and he mentioned, by name, the renowned studio of Safiedin—­ vis­i­ble in this scene in Sembène’s film. Bouna Medoune Seye, interview with the author, December 24, 2007. In the novel The Money Order, on which the film is based, this scene actually begins with an encounter between Dieng and a Syrian ­woman in a photography studio (Sembène, Money Order, 105). 46 Baba Diop, a prominent figure in Senegalese film and a scholar of Senegalese film history, confirmed that it was indeed Salla Kassé (or Salla Casset) who played the photographer in the film, ­after having consulted Younous Seye, the first wife of the famous and truly beloved actor who played Dieng, Makhouradia Guèye. Baba Diop, personal communication, January 29, 2018. I am grateful to Ibrahima Thiam for facilitating my communication with Baba Diop, and to both Baba Diop and Younous Seye for sharing this information. 47 Lending credence to this hypothesis is the fact that in much of west Africa well into the 1950s it would have been highly unusual for a husband and a wife to pay a visit to the studio to be photographed as a ­couple. We might also consider Angelo Micheli’s impor­tant research on doubles and twins in west African studio

274

notes to chapter one

portraiture, which makes explicit the privilege granted to relationships characterized by friendship, age-­group affiliation, or kinship over conjugal relationships in the studio. See Micheli, “Doubles and Twins.” 48 Liam Buckley, public remarks made during the conference “Portraiture in African Worlds,” held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, February 2–3, 2006. 49 Werner, “Twilight of the Studios,” 96. 50 Werner, “Twilight of the Studios,” 97. 51 Thomas Mießgang, “Directors, flâneurs, bricoleurs,” 17. 52 Buckley, “Studio Photography and the Aesthetics of Postcolonialism,” 151. I am grateful to Liam Buckley for sharing this reference with me, and for his extraordinary generosity in exchanges over the years. 53 “The angled portrait was my invention” (Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 11). Keïta’s claim is also cited in Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That, 29. 54 Examples of angled portraits by both Diop and Casset have been reproduced in Pivin, Mama Casset; and in Bouttiaux et al., L’Afrique par elle-­même. An even larger se­lection of angled portraits by Casset can be found in Mama Casset: Maestro del retrato, n.p. 55 Pivin, Mama Casset, 10. 56 Saint Leon and Pivin note this in their postface to Mama Casset: Maestro del retrato, n.p. 57 Diakhaté, “Last Interview,” 22. 58 Firstenberg, “Postcoloniality, Per­for­mance, and Photographic Portraiture,” 176. 59 Firstenberg, “Postcoloniality, Per­for­mance, and Photographic Portraiture,” 176–177. 60 Keller, “Visual Griots: Identity, Aesthetics, and the Social Roles of Portrait Photog­raphers in Mali,” 380. 61 Enwezor, “New Positions in Con­temporary African Photography,” 26. 62 Enwezor, “New Positions in Con­temporary African Photography,” 26. 63 Pinney, “Introduction,” in Pinney and Peterson, Photography’s Other Histories, 13. Pinney develops ­these ideas elsewhere in the volume, stating that African photography exhibits a “disinterest in realist chronotopes” and a “refusal of Cartesian perspectivalism” (Pinney, “Notes from the Surface of the Image,” 216). It is impor­tant to note that he revises this position in ­later texts, and, in The Coming of Photography in India, he explic­itly cautions against the conflation of indexicality with realism (4–17). 64 Appadurai, “Colonial Backdrop,” 3. 65 Enwezor, “New Positions in Con­temporary African Photography,” 31. 66 See Bajorek, “(Dis)locating Freedom.” 67 Newell, Power to Name, 1. 68 This is Newell’s characterization of Gikandi’s argument in “Cultural Translation and the African Self: A (Post)colonial Case Study,” with which she is in dialogue. Newell, Power to Name, 1. On the dialectical relationship between colonial

notes to chapter one

275

institutions and anticolonial movements in par­tic­u­lar, see also Chakrabarty, “Legacies of Bandung”; and Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, xi. 69 Mamadou Diouf, remarks made during and ­after a panel discussion on Senegalese photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 19, 2014. 70 Diakhaté, “Last Interview,” 18. 71 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 277. See also Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That, 39. 72 Ly, Oumar Ly, n.p. I am grateful to Patricia Hickling for her insights into this par­tic­u­lar image, and into the history of early cinema in Senegal more generally, which had strong ties to local photog­raphers and studios. Patricia Hickling, personal communication, June 9–23, 2016. 73 L’ aof Économique no. 3 (January 29, 1938) carried a feature by Janine Clerval, titled “Chronique du cinéma” (Film chronicle), detailing movie news and star gossip about, for example, Charlie Chaplin and Clara Bow. Like all publications in the aof in this period, L’ aof Économique targeted a French readership, yet it would have reached at least some African readers. 74 An example of a Harcourt portrait featuring the pronounced diagonal ­angle can be found in a 1957 portrait of Jean-­Paul Belmondo, which has been published on the studio’s website: http://­www​.­studio​-­harcourt​.­eu​/­phototeque​.­html. 75 It exceeds the scope of this chapter to treat more fully the debates about hybridity, imitation, mimesis, and mimicry that have been central to several de­cades of postcolonial theory. For what is only one critical chapter in ­those debates, see Bhabha, Location of Culture. More relevant to the Francophone west African context is Mbembe, On the Postcolony; and Genova, Colonial Ambivalence. 76 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 4. 77 See also the portrait by Diop reproduced in Pivin, Mama Casset, 92–93. 78 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 78, 83. Nimis and Elder have both remarked on the vagaries of electrification in the region and its importance to darkroom work. See also Nimis, “Yoruba Studio Photog­raphers in Francophone West Africa,” 135. 79 While at first I had understood André to be describing a modern hypodermic needle (a syringe), I now strongly suspect that he was describing a stylus-­shaped vaccination tool that predated routine use of the hypodermic syringe. 80 See, again, Gikandi, “Cultural Translation and the African Self,” 358 (quoted in Newell, Power to Name, 1). 81 As I noted ­earlier, André told me that his ­father charged 50 francs for one portrait, with the client receiving two 13 × 18 cm prints for that price. 82 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 10–11. 83 Cosme Dossa, interview with the author, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 21, 2009. 84 Basic information about prices and wages in vari­ous cities and territories of the aof can be found in Becker et al., aof. Information about wages in Bamako at the time that Keïta was working can be found in Meillassoux, Urbanization of an African Community. 85 I sought data about prices in accounts of this period by African writers. Nafissatou Diallo’s autobiographical novel, De Tilène au Plateau: Une enfance dakaroise

276

notes to chapter one

(From Tilène to the Plateau: A Dakar childhood), gives us a rare glimpse into how cash figured in the life of a young girl growing up in Dakar in the 1950s. Not surprisingly, a pivotal episode of the novel is or­ga­nized around the story of a controversial photo­graph: a female cousin is married off ­after being surreptitiously photographed with an alleged boyfriend. The photo­graph, never seen by the narrator, is rumored to be kept hidden ­under the cousin’s bed. 86 See Sekula, “Body and the Archive” and “Traffic in Photo­graphs”; and Tagg, Burden of Repre­sen­ta­tion. 87 The transatlantic slave trade led to a massive depletion of the west African workforce. In colonial contexts, ­legal slavery was often superseded by brutal forced ­labor policies imposed by colonial governments, and long-­standing reliance on forced ­labor, in multiple forms, profoundly ­shaped the region’s economy. For scholarship addressing ­these and other aspects of the impact of the Atlantic trade on African socie­ties, see the excellent volume edited by Brown and Lovejoy, Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade. 88 For debates about the economic foundations of the postcolonial state in Africa, see Bayart, State in Africa; and Mbembe, On the Postcolony. 89 Jones, Métis of Senegal, 6. 90 Also impor­tant to note ­here are differences between dif­fer­ent aof cities and territories in the relative size of wage-­earning populations. Senegal, for example, was known for its comparatively large wage-­earning population throughout the colonial period, and it has been estimated that, in 1955, nearly 10 ­percent of Senegal’s urban population earned cash wages (Robinson, “Senegal,” 282). Senegal was not surpassed in terms of absolute numbers of wage earners ­until 1960, by Côte d’Ivoire. This number may seem small, but at the time it was the highest percentage of any aof territory. ­Labor historian George Martens reports that, in 1957, ­there ­were approximately 507,400 salaried workers in the aof and Togo, a figure representing 4.6 ­percent of the combined population (Martens, “Industrial Relations and Trade Unionism,” 22). 91 For a trenchant critique of the concepts of formal versus informal economy in Dakar, see Simone, For the City Yet to Come, particularly chapter 1, “The Informal” (21–62). 92 Ndèye Teinde Dieng, interview with the author, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, December 28, 2007. I refer to Ndèye Teinde Dieng by her full name as this was the way that she was invariably referred to by o­ thers, with the exception of André, in our conversations. Married w ­ omen do not typically take their husband’s surnames in west Africa. 93 Fatima Fall, interview with the author, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, July 18, 2008. 94 On Wolof gender roles, see Diop, La société Wolof; and Jones, Métis of Senegal. 95 For this influential critique of temporal othering, see Fabian, Time and the Other; for more recent writings about memory and forgetting in ethnographic work in Africa, see Fabian, Memory against Culture, particularly 65–76. Fabian’s ­later research, on memory and forgetting in ethnography, represents a particularly rich resource for research on photography.

notes to chapter one

277

96 Carol Magee and Joanna Grabski, introduction to in Grabski and Magee, African Art, Interviews, Narratives, 7. 97 I am grateful to Tim Mangin for facilitating contact with Lamine Fall in Dakar and with Marius Gouané in Saint-­Louis; to Koyo Kouoh for facilitating contact with Bouna Medoune Seye in Dakar; and to Okwui Enwezor for facilitating contact with Koyo Kouoh. 98 Renée Mussai, personal communication, July 25, 2016. 99 Bowles, “Dress Politics and Framing Self in Ghana,” 51. I am grateful to Leslie Rabine for sharing this reference with me. 100 Mme Agbokou was a freelance photojournalist and Mlle N’Kegbe worked for the Togolese Information Ser­vice. Mlle N’Kegbe is said to have started her ­career as a professional photographer in 1964, having completed an apprenticeship in Lagos before returning to work in Togo. The article includes a photo­graph of a third female photographer, Mlle Jacqueline Mathey, who worked for the Togolese state tele­vi­sion ser­vice, and a photo­graph of a group of unnamed female photo­g­raphers. Kokou, “La femme togolaise photographe.” 101 Ba, “Les reporters photographes professionels du Sénégal,” 10. 2. Wild Circulation

1 Tobias Wendl has also argued for an approach to photography as media in west Africa, in “Entangled Traditions.” Wendl’s main concern is to bridge art historical approaches to photography (as “image”) and anthropological approaches to photography (as “cultural phenomenon”), and he essentially suggests that approaching photography as media challenges this opposition. See Wendl, “Entangled Traditions,” 78–79. 2 Brigaud and Vast, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal, 41. Brigaud and Vast detail the significant architectural and infrastructural modifications made to Saint-­Louis by Faidherbe during his several terms as colonial governor (1854–1865), which included the paving of the city’s streets, the addition of sidewalks, the creation of a ring road, the construction of two bridges (including the Pont de Sor, which the Pont Faidherbe would eventually replace), and the construction of the quais (41). 3 Aïdara, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui, 64. 4 Tanya Elder notes that colonial infrastructure proj­ects ­were frequently documented in photo­graphs by the French colonial administration, and that when they ­were photographed, ­these proj­ects often brought Africans, who provided the (forced) ­labor for ­these proj­ects, into direct contact with the camera (Elder, “Capturing Change,” 57). 5 Aïdara, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui, 22. 6 Mamadou Diouf defines cosmopolitanism as both “an instrument and a modality of the incorporation of the local into the global” (Diouf, “Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora,” 681). Importantly, Diouf distinguishes between forms of cosmopolitanism inflected by French imperialism and forms of Islamic modernity associated with the quatre communes in Senegal and ­those inflected by Mouride

278

notes to chapter one

identity and culture. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a nuanced treatment of this distinction, which it is nonetheless vital to acknowledge. I ­will discuss Diouf ’s concept of a “vernacular cosmopolitanism,” which, he argues, in Senegal integrates ele­ments of Wolof and Mouride identities and cultures, ­later on. 7 Bouna Medoune Seye, interview with the author, Dakar, Senegal, December 24, 2007. 8 Guibril André Diop, interview with the author, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, December 27, 2007. 9 It is vital to note in this regard that, at the time that Diop opened his studio, the growth of working-­class suburbs on the mainland, such as Sor, radically outpaced urban growth on the island of Saint-­Louis. Brigaud and Vast note that, between 1954 and 1960, Sor’s population grew by more than 50 ­percent (Brigaud and Vast, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal, 56). 10 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 4–5, 81; Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, 161–179. 11 Algeria saw a massive settler presence; Egypt’s settlement by the French was elaborately planned but never fully realized. 12 The island of Saint-­Louis, located at the mouth of the Senegal River and separated from the Atlantic by a sandbar known as la Langue de Barbarie, is thought to have been uninhabited prior to the arrival of Eu­ro­pe­ans in the region, although both banks of the river ­were inhabited further inland. Portuguese traders began trading with inhabitants of the river region starting in 1490; the En­glish ­were the next Eu­ro­pe­ans to arrive. The first fort built on the island was built by a Frenchman from Dieppe, Thomas Lambert, in 1638 (it was destroyed shortly thereafter, when the ocean overcame the sandbar). The first permanent fort on the island was constructed, again, by the French in 1659, and it was named ­after Louis XIII (Brigaud and Vast, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal, 23). 13 “La population saint-­louisienne ne connaît pas de ségrégation raciale par quar­ tier” (The population of Saint-­Louis has never experienced racial segregation by neighborhood) (Aïdara, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui, 26). Implicit in Aïdara’s comment is a contrast between racial segregation by neighborhood and other forms of segregation. In one, particularly common arrangement, Eu­ro­pe­ ans and Africans might live together in a single, multistory building: Eu­ro­pean or métisse families occupied apartments on the ground floor while African families occupied t­ hose upstairs. As Aïdara and ­others note, however, such arrangements w ­ ere not based on racial hierarchies and appear to have expressed cultural preferences. Vitally, they allowed for—­and, in fact, actively fostered—­ the coexistence of dif­fer­ent lifestyles, domestic routines and routines of religious worship, and f­ amily structures in the same compound or ­house. For an account of a similar mode of vertical segregation in Algeria, see Bahloul, Architecture of Memory, in which she writes about her own Jewish f­ amily’s experience of cohabiting with Muslim families in a multistory complex, again, differentiated by floor.

notes to chapter two

279

14 Aïdara, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui, 21, 26. Hilary Jones, like Aïdara, emphasizes that, in urban west Africa, both Africans and Eu­ro­pe­ans “exhibited the linguistic dexterity, knowledge of Atlantic commerce, and the po­liti­cal acumen” that came from the mixing of African, Eu­ro­pean, and other cultures (Jones, Métis of Senegal, 4). 15 Aïdara, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui, 21. 16 Diouf, “Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora,” 683. 17 Diouf, “Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora,” 683. 18 See, again, Aïdara, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui, 26; and Jones, Métis of Senegal. 19 The city of Saint-­Louis famously authored its own cahier de doléances and sent it to the meeting of the Estates General at Versailles in 1789. The majority of the signatories ­were Frenchmen, but some ­were members of the city’s nascent métisse or Creole community, and the grievances ­were articulated in the name of “les habitants du Sénégal” (the inhabitants of Senegal). See, for a discussion of this episode and facsimile reproductions of the relevant documents, Brigaud and Vast, Saint-­Louis du Sénégal, 59–67. 20 Oludare Idowu argues that the deep commitments to Islam of urban elites living in the quatre communes of Senegal made them resistant to French assimilation. As evidence of ­these commitments, Idowu notes that the residents of Saint-­Louis petitioned for a Muslim tribunal in 1832. See Idowu, “Assimilation in 19th-­ Century Senegal,” particularly 198–199. 21 For a lucid and compelling treatment of analogous theoretical prob­lems in research on con­temporary African cities, see Simone, For the City Yet to Come. 22 See, again, Sekula, “Body and the Archive”; and Tagg, Burden of Repre­sen­ta­tion. 23 Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew,” 18. 24 Diouf, “Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora,” 680. 25 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 2. 26 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 2. Larkin’s observations anticipate a subsequent de­cade of theories of affect and of embodiment in relation to technological media. For the turn to “affect theory” in photography, see Brown and Phu, Feeling Photography. 27 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 2. 28 Adama Sylla, interview with the author, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, July 18, 2008. My conversations with Sylla are featured in chapter 4. 29 Carolyn Brown, undated personal communication. 30 For a history of French military recruitment in the aof, see Catherine Akpo, “L’armée d’aof et la Deuxième Guerre mondiale,” 171–172. Mandatory military ser­vice for all men aged twenty was made a requirement in the aof in 1912. Mandatory ser­vice was consistent with the French national army model, yet the brutality of forced recruitment had devastating effects in west Africa, particularly in rural regions, where it decimated the able-­bodied male population and turned hundreds of thousands of Africans against the French. For a sustained

280

notes to chapter two

analy­sis of the interaction of colonial military recruitment policies with other French colonial policies, see Conklin, Mission to Civilize, 143–151. 31 Mann, Native Sons, 18. 32 Mann, Native Sons, 21. 33 According to Mann, “African soldiers in Indochina ­were quite well paid”; he goes on to note the higher levels of professionalization that distinguished west Africans who served in the postwar period from ­earlier generations, enabling them to acquire the advanced technical skills that allowed them “to serve as mechanics, ­drivers, and photog­raphers” (Mann, Native Sons, 21). 34 Mann, Native Sons, 178. 35 Bingo no. 4 (May 1953). The photo­graphs in this feature ­were credited to the colonial information bureau. According to Mann, the French had become particularly anxious about the susceptibility of west Africans stationed in Indochina to anticolonial “propaganda.” Mann, Native Sons, 22. 36 See my discussion of Harcourt in chapter 1. 37 The concept of “informality” has been used in very par­tic­u­lar ways in po­liti­cal and economic theories of the state in Africa, some of which also traffic in the discourse of failed states. For a critique of ­these discourses about the “failure” of the postcolonial state in Africa, see Bayart, State in Africa; and Mbembe, On the Postcolony. For an analy­sis of similar phenomena articulated within an urban sociology framework, see Simone, For the City Yet to Come. 38 Christian Papinot makes this point with reference to street photography in Madagascar in “Profession,” 28. I am grateful to Érika Nimis for calling this article to my attention. 39 For a textbook definition of the term in media studies, see Jensen, “Intermediality.” 40 Pinther, “Textiles and Photography in West Africa,” 113; Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That, 36. 41 Pinther, “Textiles and Photography in West Africa,” 113. 42 Michelle Lamunière points out that hairstyles ­were also frequently documented, citing as evidence her interviews with the well-­known Malian photographer Malick Sidibé, who told her that many clients came to have a new portrait taken each time they got a new hairstyle. Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That, 36. 43 Pinther, “Textiles and Photography in West Africa,” 113. 44 Picton, “Colonial Pretense and African Re­sis­tance”; Pinther, “Photography and Textile Production in West Africa,” 113–115. 45 Mustafa, “Portraits of Modernity”; Rabine, “Fash­ion­able Photography in Mid-­ Twentieth-­Century Senegal.” 46 Rabine, “Fash­ion­able Photography in Mid-­Twentieth-­Century Senegal,” 306. 47 Lacroix and Mbaye, “Le vote des femmes au Sénégal,” n.p. 48 Lacroix and Mbaye, “Le vote des femmes au Sénégal,” n.p. 49 Cited in Lacroix and Mbaye, “Le vote des femmes au Sénégal,” n.p. 50 See Niang Siga, Costume Saint-­Louisien sénégalais d’hier à aujourd’hui.

notes to chapter two

281

51 Rabine, “Fash­ion­able Photography in Mid-­Twentieth-­Century Senegal,” 311–317. 52 Liam Buckley, personal communication, Johannesburg, South Africa, February 19, 2015. 53 Seydou Keïta was apprenticed to a furniture maker before becoming a photo­ grapher (Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 9). For a depiction of the artisanal production of cameras by local carpenters in Kumasi, see the documentary film by Tobias Wendl and Nancy du Plessis, ­Future Remembrance: Photography and Image Arts in Ghana. 54 I am referring to the debates, mentioned in the introduction, about the existence (or nonexistence) of portraiture prior to photography in west Africa. See, again, Lips, Savage Hits Back; Borgatti and Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond; and Oloidi, “Defender of African Creativity.” 55 Diouf, “Islam,” 30–31; Paoletti, “Competing Technologies.” According to Diouf, sous verre painting is descended from Shiite lithography, which was imported to Senegal by the country’s sizable Lebanese population. 56 “Les premiers ‘fixés’—­tableaux sous verre—­sont donc la reproduction de ces images interdites” (The first “fixed images”—­sous verre paintings—­are thus the reproduction of ­these forbidden images) (Diouf, “Islam,” 31). 57 For a fuller discussion of the (generally failed) efforts of colonial authorities to censor photography in west Africa, see chapter 4. 58 Enwezor, “New Positions in Con­temporary African Photography,” 28. 59 Appadurai, “Colonial Backdrop,” 5. Although Appadurai’s essay focuses on portrait photography from South Asia, it has been widely cited in the lit­er­a­ture about portrait photography from west Africa. 60 Lauri Firstenberg lists the following props in her interpretation of Keïta’s portraits: “radio, clock, car, watch, pendant, pipe, hat, glasses” (Firstenberg, “Postcoloniality, Per­for­mance, and Photographic Portraiture,” 176–177). Wendl lists ­these props in photography studios in southern Ghana: “watches, radios, newspapers, books, flowers, handbags, telephones and at times tele­vi­sion sets” (Wendl, “Entangled Traditions,” 90). 61 Bigham, “Issues of Authorship in the Portrait Photo­graphs of Seydou Keïta,” 59. 62 Wendl, “Entangled Traditions,” 90. For a treatment of props and backdrops in ­Kenyan studio photography, see also Behrend, “Love à la Hollywood and Bombay.” 63 Ilboudo, “Les étapes d’implantation de la radio en Afrique noire,” 1. 64 The official history published on the website of the Senegalese Radio and Tele­vi­ sion Ser­vice notes that, when Dakar’s radio transmitter was built in 1939, Senegal became the fourth territory in sub-­Saharan Africa to have broadcast radio, but it was actually the first French territory in sub-­Saharan Africa. “Brève histoire de la rts,” n.p. 65 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 49. It is impor­tant to note that, in French, the word “diffusion” means “broadcast” (so, precisely the opposite of the technology described by Larkin ­here).

282

notes to chapter two

66 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 48. 67 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 49. 68 That is, in 1960 ­there ­were forty-­seven radios per ­every one thousand inhabitants in Senegal (Perret, Le temps des journalists, 30). 69 Ilboudo, “Les étapes d’implantation de la radio en Afrique noire,” 11. 70 Ilboudo, “Les étapes d’implantation de la radio en Afrique noire,” 11–12. 71 Keller, “Visual Griots: Social, Po­liti­cal, and Cultural Histories in Mali through the Photographer’s Lens,” 1. 72 Appadurai, “Colonial Backdrop.” 73 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 3. 74 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 14. 75 Benoît Adjovi, interview with the author, Cotonou, Benin, January 11, 2013. Adjovi’s studio remained in continuous operation ­until 1987. Among Cotonou’s other well-­known studio photog­raphers was Franck Kidjo, the ­father of the musician Angélique Kidjo. Several of his portraits are reproduced in Kidjo, Spirit Rising. 76 Érika Nimis suggests that backdrops in Francophone west Africa retained a Eu­ ro­pean influence for much longer than in studios in Ghana and Nigeria, which, she claims, tended to privilege urban environments, the “Western-­style megalopolis with skyscrapers, highways, and airports” (Nimis, Photographes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, 107–111). In my experience in Benin, however, both types of backdrop ­were frequently represented in the archives of a single studio, and ­those featuring more “Eu­ro­pean” ele­ments (gardens with trellises and porticoes, curtained win­ dows, classical ruins, ­etc.) and urban ele­ments (the megalopolis) seem often to have been popu­lar at the same time. 77 Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain reproductions of any photo­graphs featuring ­these wooden ­horse props. However, one can be seen in a portrait by Adjovi of “four priestesses of Hébièsso,” which has been included by Alex Van Gelder in the Life and Afterlife in Benin exhibition cata­logue. 78 Benoît Adjovi, interview with the author, Cotonou, Benin, July 25, 2009. 79 Benoît Adjovi, interview with the author, Cotonou, Benin, January 5, 2013. 80 I discuss this type of itinerant practice at greater length in chapter 5. 81 Enwezor, “New Positions in Con­temporary African Photography,” 28. 82 Senegal is a majority Muslim country, with most estimates putting the population at 99 ­percent Muslim; Benin also has a large Muslim population, roughly equal to the Christian population. Most Beninese, including ­those who identify as Muslim or Christian, also openly practice indigenous religion or vaudoun, which is highly vis­i­ble in public life and even has, ­today, state support. 83 See, again, Van Gelder, Life and Afterlife in Benin, which reproduces communion photo­graphs taken by two of the photog­raphers whose archives I worked with, Benoît Adjovi and Édouard Mèhomè. 84 Similar heart-­shaped booths and foregrounds can be seen in photo­graphs from west African studios located in other parts of the aof, including, for example,

notes to chapter two

283

t­ hose taken by El Haj Tidjan Shitou and Abderramane Sakaly in Bamako and Hamadou Bocoum in Mopti. See the examples published by Elder in “Capturing Change” (first illustrated signature, n.p.), and in Sokkelund and Elder, Hamadou Bocoum, 13. 85 I strongly suspect that no such letter, enclosing a blueprint, ­will be found among Ly’s studio archives. He was not literate and could not have corresponded with other photog­raphers. 86 ­After I met and interviewed Ly in Senegal in 2008, his work was exhibited in Bamako, as part of the Rencontres de Bamako, and then again in Eu­rope, and his photo­graphs ­were subsequently published in an exhibition cata­logue in which photo­graphs featuring the jet backdrop are vis­i­ble. See Ly, Oumar Ly. ­After his death in February 2016, several obituaries published in French and American newspapers mentioned this backdrop, identifying the airplane as a Boeing 747. 3. Decolonizing Print Culture

1 Bingo no. 4 (May 1953): inside back cover. 2 This blurring of the line between ethnographic and popu­lar genres of photography can be dated to the invention, in the late nineteenth ­century, of colonial picture postcards, which circulated widely in Africa. For a discussion of the circulation of colonial picture postcards in and out of ­family ­albums, see Haney, Photography and Africa, 31–32, 59–64. For a more general treatment of colonial picture postcards in Africa, see Geary and Webb, Delivering Views. On the production and circulation of colonial picture postcards in Senegal in par­tic­u­lar (which dominated postcard production in the aof), see Hickling, “Early Photo­graphs of Edmond Fortier.” Fi­nally, on the convergence of ethnographic and fashion photography in Senegal, see Rabine, “Fash­ion­able Photography in Mid-­Twentieth-­ Century Senegal”; and Killingray and Roberts, “Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940.” Killingray and Roberts trace the convergence of ethnographic photography and the snapshot to the interwar period (203). 3 The magazine also counted among its readers ­those living in the Maghreb, l’Afrique Équatoriale Française (the aef), and diasporic contexts in the Ca­rib­ bean and in France. I ­will discuss the transnational and transcolonial nature of its circulation ­later on. 4 “Bingo est le reflet de la vie Africaine. Son but est de fixer par l’image l’activité actuelle de l’Afrique noire et sa beauté de tous les temps. Lisez-­le; faites-le connaître. Écrivez-­nous pour nous dire ce que vous en pensez, ce que vous désirez y trouver. Participez à sa vie en nous envoyant des photos” (Bingo no. 1 [February 1953]: inside back cover). 5 “Merci à nos lecteurs qui nous ont envoyé des photographies. Parmi celles-ci, nous avons dû trier celles qui se prêtaient le mieux à la reproduction. Beaucoup de photos d’amateurs sont trop floues et c’est dommage, car toutes présentent de l’intérêt” (Bingo no. 4 [May 1953]: inside back cover). 6 “D’autres nous sont parvenues sans légendes ou sans noms d’auteurs” (Bingo no. 4 [May 1953]: inside back cover).

284

notes to chapter two

7 “Cette photographie n’est d’ailleurs pas une photo personnelle” (This photo­graph is, moreover, not a personal photo­graph). 8 The distinction between “amateur” and “professional” photog­raphers is highly unstable, perhaps particularly in the west African context where, as I noted in chapter 1, all but a handful of African photog­raphers who worked in professional practice ­were only able to do so part-­time and often held other jobs. Also impor­ tant to note in this context is the multidimensional nature of most photog­ raphers’ practice in west Africa in this period: a photographer might, in a given week, take mug shots for the police, cover an event for a government official, and take id-­card photo­graphs for schoolchildren, before returning to make portraits for clients in his studio. On the multidimensional nature of this practice, which the photog­raphers I spoke to referred to as “polyvalence,” see Bajorek, “Photography and National Memory.” 9 “Ce magazine est la première publication entièrement illustrée éditée par un Africain de l’Afrique Occidentale Française pour les Africains” (Bingo no. 1 [February 1953]: 26). 10 Newell, Power to Name, 350. 11 According to biographical information published on Wikipedia, in 1953, Charles de Breteuil was also one of the original financial backers of L’Express. “Charles Le Tonnelier, comte de Breteuil,” https://­fr​.­wikipedia​.­org ​/­wiki​/­Charles​_­de​ _­Breteuil. 12 Perret, Le temps des journalistes, 21. 13 Based on published sources as well as my interview with Michel de Breteuil, the elder de Breteuil owned at least thirteen publications, of which nine ­were edited for specific, territorially defined audiences in Africa: Paris-­Dakar (Senegal), Paris-­Bénin (Benin), Abidjan-­Matin (Côte d’Ivoire), Paris-­Congo (Congo-­Brazzaville), Paris-­Tana (Madagascar), La presse de Guinée (Guinea-­Conakry), La presse du Cameroun (Cameroon), La dépêche marocaine (Morocco), Dakar-­Jeunes (Senegal); two ­were pan-­aof publications, Bingo and Afrique-­Matin; and two ­were publications dedicated to colonial affairs for a metropolitan audience in France, Annales coloniales and La revue France-­Outre-­Mer. 14 Rufisque was one of the original quatre communes of Senegal that has, ­today, basically been absorbed into Dakar’s suburbs. 15 Michel de Breteuil, interview with the author, Paris, France, May 20, 2011. All ­future references to my conversation with Michel de Breteuil ­will be to this conversation. 16 See, for example, Jaji, Africa in Stereo, which pre­sents a comparative reading of both magazines. Comparisons between Drum and Bingo have also been drawn, informally, in many conversations that I have had with other scholars, at conferences and in other public pre­sen­ta­tions of my research. 17 Drum was founded at a time when the white South African regime was radically curtailing the rights of black South Africans and attempting to control their movements; Bingo was founded, by contrast, at the very moment that po­liti­cal institutions ­were being Africanized across west Africa, and the aof was moving

notes to chapter three

285

rapidly ­toward decolonization. Michel underscored that, in founding Drum, Bailey had the protection of the apartheid government. He also stated explic­itly that the only reason the white power structures condoned the magazine was that they understood that its coverage of black and colored communities would be an invaluable mechanism for spying on ­those communities. 18 The first printing press in French colonial territories in Africa was established, as part of l’Imprimerie de la Colonie du Sénégal, in Saint-­Louis in 1856. Prior to that date, the official colonial publication (Le Bulletin administratif des actes du Gouvernement) had been published in Paris and imported, along with French newspapers, via sea routes to coastal cities. With the creation of the aof in 1895, ­there ­were two main presses that printed periodicals, l’Imprimerie du Gouvernement Général in Saint-­Louis and la Grande Imprimerie Africaine (g.i.a.) in Dakar (Euvrard, “La presse en Afrique Occidentale Française,” 11–12). 19 Perret confirms that all of de Breteuil’s newspapers followed this formula. Perret, Le temps des journalistes, 60. 20 Anderson, ­Imagined Communities, 62. 21 Specifically, Michel said, “Au départ le journal faisait 4 pages, dont une page qui venait de Paris, dont trois pages qui étaient faites localement” (In the beginning, the newspaper consisted of four pages, one of which came from Paris and the other three of which ­were produced locally). 22 It is, I think, more likely to have been the first daily newspaper in France’s sub-­Saharan African territories, given the significantly ­earlier development of a local press in British-­controlled territories, which I discuss at greater length below. 23 See, in addition to Perret, Le temps des journalistes, Euvrard, “La presse en Afrique Occidentale Française,” and Ainslie, Press in Africa. 24 Newell notes that impor­tant exceptions ­were made to this rule in Togo and Cameroon, where considerable energy was put into publishing in African languages (Newell, Power to Name, 6). 25 Ainslie, Press in Africa, 131. 26 I am grateful to Abdou Khadre Sarr, a librarian at the Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal, who elaborated for me the long-­standing ties between Saint-­Louis and the celebrated Arabic-­language library cultures of Chinguetti, Mauritania, a center of Islamic scholarship, in conversations that we had in Saint-­ Louis in 2007 and 2008. Sarr was, at the time, developing a social history and documentation proj­ect, in which he hoped to compile and duplicate documents in the libraries at Chinguetti, many of which are connected with Saint-­Louis and Saint-­Louisians. 27 For the purposes of this chapter, I define a local print culture as one rooted in the production (editing and/or printing) and circulation of newspapers, magazines, and other printed ­matter targeting a local, African audience. I do not include the production and circulation of official colonial documents and publications by and for the French colonial administration in this definition.

286

notes to chapter three

28 Euvrard, “La presse en Afrique Occidentale Française,” 15–16. 29 Newell, Power to Name, 2. 30 Newell, Power to Name, 6. Newell adds that, in French-­controlled territories, “the first locally managed newspapers ­were not established ­until the 1940s and 1950s.” 31 Ainslie, Press in Africa, 130. 32 Ainslie, Press in Africa, 130. 33 Barber’s work on African audiences has been particularly influential in shifting the dominant paradigms for thinking about literacy and print culture. More recently, she has produced a compelling body of research on what she calls “tin-­trunk literacy” and “diy modes” of editing and publishing in west Africa, demonstrating the existence and proliferation of west African print cultures that ­were not confined to highly educated elites. See Barber, “Introduction,” in Africa’s Hidden Histories. Barber’s research is, however, confined to Anglophone African space, and she herself takes care to differentiate ­these histories from ­those unfolding in Francophone west Africa. See also Stephanie Newell’s and Onookome Okome’s excellent edited volume, Popu­lar Culture in Africa; and Jaji, Africa in Stereo, to which I return in my discussion of Bingo, below. 34 Leslie Rabine, personal communication with the author, August 29, 2011. Such medals appear to have been quite common and are vis­i­ble as ornamentation worn by ­women in other photographic portraits that ­were taken in Senegal in this period. 35 Bingo no. 11 (December 1953): 3. 36 I have not been able to identify this photographer, and I can therefore only speculate about his or her identity. The name Yitka Kilian appears on photo­ graphs for sale on the secondary market that I have found on the internet, all of which appear to have been taken in France. 37 While, ­today, participation in colonial government may seem like a dubious distinction to ­those interested in theorizing African liberation, this appointment earned him ­great re­spect among ­those living in both African and Ca­rib­bean territories at the time. His ­daughter, Ginette Éboué, was Léopold Senghor’s first wife. 38 Frederick Cooper and George Martens have both written convincingly about the importance of ­labor organ­izing to decolonization in west Africa. See Cooper, “From ­Free ­Labor to ­Family Allowances,” “Our Strike,” and “Senegalese General Strike of 1946.” A general treatment of ­these same questions is presented in Cooper, Decolonization and African Society; and Martens, “Industrial Relations and Trade Unionism in French-­Speaking West Africa,” particularly 30–31. 39 Bingo no. 3 (June 1953): 3. The French phrase “montrer sous son vrai visage,” might also be translated as “to show the true face of ” something. 40 For an exposition of this concept, see Hall, “The Work of Repre­sen­ta­tion,” in Repre­sen­ta­tion, 15–16. 41 Bingo no. 1 (February 1953): 26. 42 Bingo no. 2 (March 1953): 3. 43 Bingo no. 2 (March 1953): 3.

notes to chapter three

287

44 This was an impor­tant if short-­lived po­liti­cal party and one of the parties that merged, in 1957, to form the Bloc Populaire Sénégalais ­under Senghor’s leadership. 45 Perret, Le temps des journalistes, 11. 46 Perret, Le temps des journalistes, 70. 47 Michel told me that Bingo’s circulation figures ­were never recorded, but that they could be estimated on the basis of the magazine’s print run, which had, by the late 1960s, surpassed 100,000. Perret describes the magazine as “widely distributed in Francophone Africa” (Perret, Le temps des journalistes, 70). 48 Anderson, “Nationalism, Identity, and the World-­in-­Motion.” 49 Anderson, ­Imagined Communities, 34. 50 Anderson, ­Imagined Communities, 36. 51 Anderson, ­Imagined Communities, 39. 52 Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 53 Negt and Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience; Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere” and “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere.” 54 On the inextricability of concepts of the civil and civility from the “civilizing mission” of French colonialism, see Conklin, Mission to Civilize; and Wilder, French Imperial Nation-­State. On the larger prob­lem of “civil society” in colonial and postcolonial Africa, see the excellent edited volume by Jean and John L. Comaroff, Civil Society and the Po­liti­cal Imagination in Africa, as well as their introduction to the same. 55 Newell, Power to Name, 45. 56 Newell, Power to Name, 39. Fraser, one of Habermas’s most famous critics, basically targets ­these same blind spots in her critique; see, again, Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere,” 10. 57 Newell, Power to Name, 29–30. 58 Newell, Power to Name, 39. 59 Bhattacharya, “Notes ­towards a Conception of the Colonial Public.” 60 Bhattacharya, “Notes ­towards a Conception of the Colonial Public.” 61 Bhattacharya, “Notes ­towards a Conception of the Colonial Public,” 140. 62 Bhattacharya, “Notes ­towards a Conception of the Colonial Public,” 139. 63 Other theories of the public, such as Michael Warner’s, and other critiques of both the public sphere and the nation, such as Partha Chatterjee’s, would also offer impor­tant insights ­here. Warner’s definition of the public as at once discontinuous and a social totality, self-­organized yet implicated in an address, has much in common with Bhattacharya’s (Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 67). Chatterjee’s appraisal of the limitations of Anderson’s work for thinking politics in postcolonial space is deeply resonant with my own. I find Chatterjee particularly illuminating where he takes on Anderson’s responses to ­earlier critiques. See Chatterjee, Politics of the Governed, and “Anderson’s Utopias.” As noted in the introduction, I do not use Ariella Azoulay’s concepts of “the civil contract” or of “civil imagination,” in part ­because I believe that the colonial legacies of civility render ­these concepts unhelpful ­here.

288

notes to chapter three

64 See the changes in colonial marriage policy that I discuss, vis-­à-­vis marriages that took place “by photo,” in chapter 2. Bhattacharya claims that “questions of marriage custom” went from being internal community ­matters to “issues to be publicly debated” in colonial India. Bhattacharya, “Notes ­towards a Conception of the Colonial Public,” 140. 65 This is consistent with what was clearly a disproportionately male readership and disparities in access to education that, somewhat ironically in this instance, would have ­limited the magazine’s female readership in this period. 66 “Pourquoi allons-­nous au Cinéma?,” Bingo no. 91 (August 1960): 35. 67 Joachim was also Agouda, a distinctive ethnic group of mixed African and Afro-­ Brazilian (as well as, often, Eu­ro­pean) heritage in Benin. The Agouda are the descendants of Africans who ­were enslaved and trafficked to Brazil in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries, when the area was ­under Portuguese control. In the late nineteenth ­century, the Brazilian-­born descendants of ­these slaves “returned” to west Africa, and, in large numbers, to cities in Dahomey such as Porto-­Novo. The term often has class connotations that are too complex to elaborate ­here. Joachim passed away, before I could interview him for this proj­ect, in 2012. 68 Perret, Le temps des journalistes, 69–70. 69 On the par­tic­u­lar appeal of Modibo Keïta, see chapter 6. 70 Interestingly, the photo­graph of Malcolm X, although familiar, is unattributed and was likely taken by a upi staff photographer. We know that it was taken at a rally in Harlem on May 14, 1963, in support of desegregation in Birmingham, Alabama. According to the Library of Congress rec­ord, it was published in the New York World-­Telegram and Sun. I am grateful to Mia Karnofsky, Rachel Beckwith, and Robin Potter Nolasco for their help in researching this photo­graph. 71 Bingo no. 186 (July 1968): 4. 72 See my discussion of photography’s embeddedness in larger urban media systems in chapter 2. 73 Jaji, Africa in Stereo, 115. 74 Jaji, Africa in Stereo, 115. 75 Jaji, Africa in Stereo, 111–112. 76 Jaji, Africa in Stereo, 117. 77 Jaji, Africa in Stereo, 112. 78 Bingo no. 97 (February 1961): 63. 79 Bingo no. 97 (February 1961): 19. 80 Bingo no. 211 (August 1970): 57; Bingo no. 215 (December 1970): 89. 81 Lending credence to the hypothesis that this advertisement was originally intended for a North African market, the footer ­running along the bottom of this page references the address of the “Special Bingo Press” in Tangiers, indicating that this issue (no. 112) was printed in Morocco. Michel de Breteuil told me that Bingo was printed in Tangiers for several years, ­until its circulation outgrew the production capacities ­there. 82 Bingo no. 182 (March 1968): 16–17.

notes to chapter three

289

Part II Introduction

1 Ibrahima Faye died in November 2012, at the age of ninety-­five, as I was still writing this book. I am deeply indebted to him; to his wife, Khady Ndoye Faye; and to his ­daughter, Gnilane Ly, for opening their homes, and their extraordinary photography collections, to me, and for many long hours spent in conversation about their photo­graphs. I am equally indebted to Leslie Rabine, who not only introduced me to the Faye-­Ly ­family but also brought me into that ­family. I am grateful to her for her ongoing collaboration and for her boundless generosity of spirit. 2 In addition to Ariella Azoulay’s well-­known work on concepts of civility and citizenship in relation to photography, Karen Strassler, Lorena Rizzo, and Liam Buckley have all made significant contributions to scholarship on photography, visuality, and colonial and postcolonial citizenship. I quote their work at length in chapter 5. Also impor­tant to mention in this context is Thy Phu’s Picturing Model Citizens, which treats the relationship(s) between photography and citizenship in Vietnam. 4. Africanizing Po­liti­cal Photography

1 Both Sylla, in Saint-­Louis, and Benoît Adjovi, in Cotonou, used this phrase in conversations with me, in 2007 and 2008 (Sylla) and 2009 (Adjovi). 2 For a fuller discussion of Sylla’s freelance po­liti­cal practice, see Bajorek, “Photography and National Memory.” For a more general discussion of the relationship between photography, state formation, and civil society in Senegal, see Bajorek, “Of Jumbled Valises and Civil Society.” 3 Other sources of information about African photog­raphers’ participation in this type of work include informal conversations that I had with the descendants of Salla Casset in Dakar in 2007, and more extensive conversations with the politician Ibrahima Faye and his ­family, also in Dakar. 4 Adama Sylla, interview with the author, Saint-­Louis, Senegal, July 18, 2008. 5 Keller, “Visual Griots: Social, Po­liti­cal and Cultural Histories in Mali through the Photographer’s Lens,” 76–77. 6 For the views of historians writing about the coming of in­de­pen­dence from a vantage point that was, strictly speaking, con­temporary, see the essays collected in Mackenzie and Robinson, Five Elections in Africa. For the views of historians writing a half ­century ­later, see the essays collected in Ageron and Michel, L’Afrique noire française. For an account placing par­tic­u­lar emphasis on the importance of the west African ­labor movement, see Cooper, Decolonization and African Society. 7 On the social and po­liti­cal status of west Africans who served in the military, see Mann, Native Sons. 8 Restrictions on public assembly had historically been part of the colonial ­legal code known as l’indigénat, which was abolished definitively in 1946. Before the

290

notes to Part II Introduction

9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

19

abolition of the indigénat, the right of association in French colonial territories was ­limited to gatherings of not more than twenty-­four men (Morgenthau, Po­liti­ cal Parties in French-­Speaking West Africa, 5–6). Martens, “Industrial Relations and Trade Unionism,” 30–31. Although ­today it is not widely known or discussed, the debt of ­later international ­labor movements to ­labor strug­gles in colonial Africa is profound. See, again, Martens, “Industrial Relations and Trade Unionism,” 30–31; and also Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 304. See, again, Cooper, Decolonization and African Society; and also Martens, “Industrial Relations and Trade Unionism.” Michel de Breteuil, interview with the author, Paris, France, May 20, 2011. For a longer discussion of Bingo, see chapter 3. Zinsou Cosme Dossa, interview with the author, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 21, 2009. Keller, “Visual Griots: Social, Po­liti­cal and Cultural Histories in Mali through the Photographer’s Lens,” 97. Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain permission to reproduce this photo­graph, which was in the collection of one of the railroad workers’ ­daughters. See Keller, “Visual Griots: Social, Po­liti­cal and Cultural Histories in Mali through the Photographer’s Lens.” Keller underscores that restrictions ­were in place at the time that both Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé ­were working, noting that the 1934 passage of the Décret Laval “came on the heels of the system of censorship and scrutiny” that had been in place two years prior, which required individuals living in French Soudan to seek authorization from colonial authorities before they could possess a radio or camera (74–75). See also Érika Nimis, who comments on the extent of French licensing restrictions in a comparative context: “French and British colonial policies influenced the dissemination of photography differently. On the French side the medium was kept ­under heavy surveillance and studios ­were owned by French nationals. On the British side the field was freer and from very early on the colonial administration called on the ser­vices of African-­born photog­raphers” (Nimis, “Yoruba Studio Photog­raphers in Francophone West Africa,” 135). Lydie Diakhaté, “Seydou Keïta: The Last Interview, 1921–2001,” 21. Zinsou Cosme Dossa, interview with the author, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 21, 2009. Kérékou was thrice president of Benin, from 1972 (when he seized power from Justin Ahomagdébé in a coup) to 1991, and then again from 1996 to 2006. His ­later terms in office ­were generally more stable and ­were the result of demo­ cratic elections. Benoît Adjovi, interview with the author, Cotonou, Benin, July 25, 2009. It is impor­tant to stress, again, the very high levels of po­liti­cal instability that ­were experienced by Benin in its early years: Kérékou was the fifth person to hold the office of president in the history of Benin, and he was the fifteenth person to lead the government in the twelve years between 1960 and 1972.

notes to chapter four

291

20 Nimis has suggested that ­these ­union structures likely stem from the Yoruba influence, noting that the Yoruba diaspora has often been closely associated with the organ­ization and leadership of professional networks across west Africa (Nimis, “Yoruba Studio Photog­raphers in Francophone West Africa,” 112). 21 Benoît Adjovi, interview with the author, Cotonou, Benin, July 25, 2009: “Pourtant lorsque je suis monté dans une voiture, j’ai pris plein, plein de photos de lieux publiques” (Nonetheless, when I went in a car, I was able to take lots and lots of photos of public places). 22 The full name of the decree is “Décret portant organisation en Afrique occidentale française du contrôle des films cinématographiques et des disques phonographiques, du contrôle des prises de vues cinématographiques et des enregistrements sonores” (Decree organ­izing the regulation of motion picture films, phonograph rec­ords, film stills, and sound recordings in the aof), Journal Officiel de la République Française, November 3, 1934, p. 2541. I am grateful to Érika Nimis for providing me with the exact reference to the legislation in a personal email. See also Nimis, “Bamako,” note 12. 23 Diawara, African Cinema, 22. Diawara develops points that ­were first raised in a pioneering essay by Paulin Vieyra, “Propos sur le cinéma africain,” which he cites at length. 24 Diawara, African Cinema, 22–24. The fact that the first film known to have been censored ­under the Décret Laval was a documentary film lends credence to this interpretation. 25 Diawara, African Cinema, 22. 26 Diawara, African Cinema, 22. 27 I ­will return to the capriciousness of ­these decrees and their enforcement in chapter 5, when I discuss regulations concerning identity documentation. 28 Nimis, Photographes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, 120–121, and personal communication, October 27, 2011. 29 Érika Nimis, personal communication, October 27, 2011. 30 Pivin, Mama Casset, 10. 31 Monti, Africa Then, 8. 32 Killingray and Roberts, “Outline History of Photography in Africa,” 201. 33 Haney, Photography and Africa, 32, 132. 34 Killingray and Roberts, “Outline History of Photography in Africa,” 201. 35 Crooks, “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew,” 21. 36 See especially Keller: “Due in part to . . . ​strategic practices designed to ensure the commercial mono­poly of French photog­raphers, the training of African apprentices was confined to one or two (but not all) aspects of photographic pro­cesses” (Keller, “Visual Griots: Social, Po­liti­cal and Cultural Histories in Mali through the Photographer’s Lens,” 75). 37 On Garnier’s encouragement of Keïta, see Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That, 45–46. 38 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 71.

292

notes to chapter four

39 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 72. See also Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That, 24. 40 See Nimis, “Bamako.” 41 Comparable dates cannot be given with any certainty for Benin. I myself have personally seen studio portraits in private collections in Benin that ­were likely to have been taken in the 1890s, but we do not know ­whether they ­were taken in Dahomey or in other nearby territories, with (as far as we know) longer histories of photography, such as Nigeria. 42 Ouédraogo, Arts photographiques en Afrique, 96. 43 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 63. Ouédraogo gives a similar chronology for Burkina Faso, noting that local photography studios ­were not established in Upper Volta ­until the 1930s (Ouédraogo, Arts photographiques en Afrique, 94). 44 The words that Sylla used that I translate ­here into En­glish as “private individual” ­were sometimes un particulier and une personne privée. 45 Benoît Adjovi, interview with the author, Cotonou, Benin, July 13, 2009. 46 Sylla is also younger than most of the other photog­raphers whose collections I worked with for this book: Sylla was born in 1934; Doudou Diop in 1920. At one point during our interviews, Sylla told me that he remembered visiting Diop’s studio as a boy. 47 For an extended discussion of Sylla’s ­career, see Bajorek, “Photography and National Memory.” 48 Dakar-­Matin was the independence-­era successor to Paris-­Dakar, which then became Le Soleil in 1970. 49 Diakhaté, “Last Interview,” 22. 50 See “Malick Sidibé,” interview by Michelle Lamunière, in Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That, 53. 51 For a general overview of archival loss and related theoretical prob­lems in west Africa, see Bajorek, “Decolonizing the Archive.” 52 Buckley, “Objects of Love and Decay”; Mbembe, “Power of the Archive and Its Limits.” 53 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 89. 54 Le Soleil no. 231 (February 11, 1971): front page. 55 Le Soleil no. 234 (February 15, 1971): 4. 56 ­There are, inevitably, some impor­tant exceptions to this rule, some of which I discuss in chapter 6. 57 Adama Sylla, interview with the author, Saint-­Louis, July 15, 2008. 58 Keller and Elder have reached similar conclusions in their research. See, again, Keller, “Visual Griots: Social, Po­liti­cal and Cultural Histories in Mali through the Photographer’s Lens,” 76–77; and Elder, “Capturing Change,” 89. 59 I was ­later given an alternative identification: that the portrait is of Sokhna Kiné. ­Because I was initially told that the photo­graph was of Konaré by several dif­fer­ ent interlocutors, I have chosen to use this identification, while remaining aware that ­there are competing interpretations of this image.

notes to chapter four

293

60 The distinction between “anti-­French” and “anticolonial” is in this context connected with Saint-­Louisians’ slight but unmistakable antipathy ­toward Senghor, whose po­liti­cal legacy ultimately eclipsed that of Guèye. Senghor is commonly thought to have been “too” French, and his politics ­were indeed often more explic­itly pro-­French than that of other Senegalese po­liti­cal leaders. 61 I am grateful to Everlyn Nicodemus for pointing this out, and for her willingness to share her keen eye and deep knowledge of both African history and African art history with me at the very early stages of this research. 62 See also Lacroix and Mbaye, “Le vote des femmes au Sénégal,” which details Konaré’s participation (alongside Guèye) in efforts to obtain ­women’s suffrage. 63 Coquéry-­Vidrovitch, Africa, 280. 64 This pose has long been considered typical of west African studio portraiture. ­There is some reason to believe it is derived from distinctively Yoruba aesthetic concerns, emphasizing princi­ples of symmetry, balance, and uprightness. On the invocation of ­these princi­ples in Yoruba portraiture, see Sprague, “Yoruba Photography,” 250. 65 Among the most well-­known trophy photo­graphs from the region are ­those of Samory Touré, Cheikh Amadou Bamba, and King Béhanzin, the “last king” of Abomey. Although ­these images are sometimes invoked as symbols of African re­sis­tance, they are often the only known photo­graphs of ­these figures and so are also used for other purposes. On trophy photo­graphs, see also Haney, Photography and Africa, 76. 66 I am grateful to Leslie Rabine for highlighting the significance of this fact in this context. 67 See, again, Bajorek, “Decolonizing the Archive.” 68 Some scholars have used the term “surrogate archive” to designate an archive that replaces or stands in for an official or state-­sponsored archive. I first heard this term used by Ferdinand de Jong in the context of a symposium that he or­ga­ nized as part of the Utopian Archives Research Network at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, ­England, May 16–17, 2013. 69 Zinsou Félix DeMesse, personal interview, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 8, 2009. 70 Zinsou Félix DeMesse, personal interview, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 8, 2009. 71 Zinsou Félix DeMesse, personal interview, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 8, 2009. 72 See, again, Bajorek, “Decolonizing the Archive.” Happily, a small but impor­tant collection of po­liti­cal photo­graphs is now being pro­cessed and made available to researchers in the National Archives of Benin. 73 Siaka Lawani, personal interview, Cotonou, Benin, July 6, 2009. In another example of destruction that was not undertaken for explic­itly po­liti­cal reasons, Elder tells a story about the destruction of a state-­sponsored archive connected with a state-­run photography studio in Segou, Mali. See Elder, “Capturing Change,” 88. In this case, the archive was reportedly inadvertently destroyed during student protests. 74 For a brief account of Lawani’s ­career, see Ogou, “Zoom sur l’histoire de la photographie et les photographes au Bénin.”

294

notes to chapter four

75 For a treatment of key prob­lems in the study of African history, including the problematic nature of arguments about a “lack” of historical documents (and associated “­people without writing” arguments), see Parker and Rathbone, African History; for a more general treatment of methodological and theoretical prob­lems in postcolonial historiography, see Chakrabarty, Provincializing Eu­rope. 76 Morgenthau, Po­liti­cal Parties in French-­Speaking West Africa, xviii. 77 Morgenthau, Po­liti­cal Parties in French-­Speaking West Africa, xviii. On the shaping of postcolonial archives by colonial legacies, see also, again, Buckley, “Objects of Love and Decay”; and Mbembe, “Power of the Archive and Its Limits.” 78 Benin is in the tsetse zone, meaning that ­horses are a rare sight ­there, as I noted in my discussion, in chapter 2, of the wooden ­horse (faux cheval) prop. Interestingly, Bénédicte Brunet-­La Ruche notes that Senegal had a mounted colonial gendarmerie from a very early date, whereas Dahomey did not (Brunet-­La Ruche, “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales,’ ” n.p.). 79 Despite their obvious interest and significance, po­liti­cal photo­graphs have been largely excluded from the recent spate of exhibitions and cata­logues devoted to “African photography.” An impor­tant exception is The Short ­Century: In­de­pen­ dence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, curated by Okwui Enwezor. International exhibitions are not a solution to the prob­lem of access for African publics, and the opening of new publics for ­these photo­graphs off the continent often aggravates the threat of export, in the absence of robust local institutions for photography. This is one reason why investment in preservation and preventive conservation initiatives in African collections has become so urgent, a topic to which I return in chapter 6. 5. The Pleasures of State-­Sponsored Photography

1 Augustt ran a well-­known and well-­trafficked studio in the city of Korhogo, a city in the north of Côte d’Ivoire and the capital of the Senufo-­speaking region, starting in the late 1950s and continuing for several de­cades. Like many other studio photog­raphers working in this period, he also took id-­card photo­graphs in itinerant practice outside the city, and a se­lection of ­these id-­card photo­graphs ­were exhibited as part of the 1996 In/sight exhibition at the Guggenheim. For the cata­logue, see Bell, Enwezor, and Zaya, In/sight. For details of Augustt’s life and ­career, see Werner, “Twilight of the Studios,” and Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa.” 2 Other scholars, as well as the In/sight exhibition’s lead curator, Enwezor, have ventured the hypothesis that Augustt’s subjects in ­these photo­graphs are not Ivoirian but rather mi­grant laborers from Burkina Faso who had their photo­ graphs taken for identity documentation while in transit through the north of Côte d’Ivoire on their way to work on cocoa and coffee plantations in the south. Tom Bassett, personal communication, Berkeley, California, 2006; Okwui Enwezor, personal communication during the “Itinerant Languages of Photography” conference at Prince­ton University, December 4, 2010. Augustt himself was Ewe, born in Togo and raised in Ghana. For a detailed account of Augustt’s

notes to chapter five

295

itinerant practice, see, again, Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa.” 3 A vast lit­er­a­ture ties the evolution of state-­sponsored bureaucratic photography to other technologies for the policing and surveillance of civilian populations, including ­those directly inspired by the nineteenth-­century “sciences” of race, criminal anthropology, and eugenics. For the now-­canonical references, see, again, Sekula, “Body and the Archive,” and Tagg, Burden of Repre­sen­ta­tion. For a more con­temporary treatment of bureaucratic photography, framing it in the context of post-9/11 digital surveillance technologies, see also Finn, Capturing the Criminal Image, especially 1–30. Finn, like myself, continually cites Sekula and Tagg, yet he makes a helpful distinction between their approaches, noting that Sekula deemphasizes arguments about the state and is more interested in analyzing photography’s integration into the archive as a broader “bureaucratic-­ clerical-­statistical” system (Finn, Capturing the Criminal Image, xii). What unites Sekula and Tagg is their interest in criminological and forensic dimensions of bureaucratic photography, and in the establishment of the photo­graph as a document with forensic status. 4 In addition, Werner mentions that identités ­were needed for driver’s licenses and bank loan applications (Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­ temporary Africa,” 252). The rules concerning photo­graphs on driver’s licenses seem to have been a topic of much administrative debate, judging from decrees published in the Journal Officiel du Sénégal. I discuss a 1921 decree pertaining to driver’s licenses below. 5 Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa,” 252. My own conclusions differ from Werner’s on this count, and he describes the villa­ gers photographed by Augustt as “reluctant” to be photographed (257). See also my discussion of Marc Garanger’s id-­card photo­graphs of Algerian ­women below. 6 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 177. 7 For scholarship on bureaucratic photography privileging its ties to disciplinary paradigms, see, again, Sekula, “Body and the Archive,” and Tagg, Burden of Repre­ sen­ta­tion. For theories of photography and citizenship, see Azoulay, Civil Contract of Photography and Civil Imagination. As I noted in the introduction, I am sympathetic to Azoulay’s work, yet I believe that the concept of civility on which her theories rely radically circumscribes their relevance to west Africa. 8 Oumar Ly, personal interview, Dakar, Senegal, July 22, 2008. 9 The exception was Zinsou Félix DeMesse in Porto-­Novo. DeMesse’s professional trajectory was often very dif­fer­ent from that of other Beninese photog­raphers, in part ­because he trained professionally as a photographer in Paris before returning to Benin (then the Republic of Dahomey) to work for the postcolonial government. For details of DeMesse’s ­career, see the second methodological reflection, at the end of chapter 4. 10 Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 11. Keïta also mentions his id-­card work in the interview he gave to Lydie Diakhaté. Diakhaté, “Last Interview,” 21.

296

notes to chapter five

11 According to Werner, Augustt charged 250 francs cfa for four prints, and that, when working in itinerant practice, he would have paid a 10 ­percent “tax” to the state on each image that he produced. This tax likely reduced his profit per image as compared with id-­card photo­graphs taken in his Korhogo studio. Yet, if the photographer could photo­graph (as Werner reports) more than eighty ­people per day when ­doing id-­card work, this would almost certainly have represented an increase in the volume of his business and would likely have compensated for the tax. Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­ temporary Africa,” 256. 12 Oumar Ly, personal interview, Dakar, Senegal, July 22, 2008. Ly passed away in early 2016, before I had obtained permission from him to reproduce any of his photo­graphs. The French curator Frédérique Chapuis or­ga­nized an exhibition of Ly’s work for the Rencontres de Bamako photography biennial, in Bamako, Mali, in 2009, which I was lucky enough to see. This exhibition was accompanied by a cata­logue, Oumar Ly: Portraits de Brousse. Rather than reproducing images by Ly that have already been reproduced in this cata­logue, I have chosen to illustrate this chapter with photo­graphs by other photog­raphers who took id-­card photo­ graphs in similar contexts. 13 See also Keïta: “­Because ­there ­wasn’t any electricity, I put together a contraption that I could take with me and use to make my photos anywhere” (Magnin, Seydou Keïta, 11). 14 This figure is noticeably higher than the figure of eighty ­people per day cited by Werner in his research on Augustt (Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa,” 256). Note that Buckley cites an even higher figure in his research on Njie in The Gambia, which I discuss below. 15 I had the opportunity to interview three of Mèhomè’s twenty-two ­children in the course of my research, and two out of the four who are photog­raphers: Ida Mèhomey and Baudelaire Mèhomè (photog­raphers) and Ézéchiel Mèhomè (a visual artist). Ida and her ­brothers have dif­fer­ent ­mothers; they also insist on dif­ fer­ent spellings of their surname. 16 In French, one typically distinguishes between l’identité judiciaire (identity documentation produced by or for the police) and l’identité civile (that produced in all other contexts). For purposes of my discussion of the genres in this book, I attempted to translate the former into a register more native to En­glish, as “criminological photography,” and the latter as “id-­card photography,” or civil identity documentation. 17 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 64–68. Gambia, Senegal’s neighbor to the south, achieved in­de­pen­dence from the British in 1965, five years ­later than Senegal and most of the other ex-­aof territories. 18 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 65. Buckley speculates that the discrepancy between the figure that he cites for Njie (one thousand ­people per day) and the more modest figures given to me by Ly (one hundred) and to Werner by Augustt (eighty) can be accounted for by the fact that Njie always shot in groups of five.

notes to chapter five

297

(In order to shoot one thousand ­people per day, he would need to shoot two hundred photo­graphs with five ­people in each one.) Liam Buckley, personal communication, January 18, 2017. 19 Yet this dismemberment of the image arguably applies to ­every id-­card photo­ graph, including ­those taken of single individuals. Italian photojournalist Martina Bacigalupo exploited this unsettled feeling in the images composing the Gulu Real Art Studio exhibition, which I saw at the Walther Collection Proj­ect Space in New York in November 2013. Bacigalupo exhibited the remnants of photographer Obal Denis’s prints, taken in his studio in Gulu, Uganda, from which the subjects’ heads have been cut out to make id-­card photo­graphs. 20 See Borgatti, “African Portraits,” and Brilliant, “Portraits,” in Borgatti and Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond. For an overview of debates about portraiture in Africa, see the introduction. 21 Brilliant privileges the centrality of abstraction to African portraiture, whereas Borgatti privileges the centrality of “conceptual” (rather than repre­sen­ta­tional) constructions of identity. See Brilliant, “Portraits,” in Borgatti and Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond, 13; and Borgatti, “African Portraits,” in Borgatti and Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond, 29. 22 Strassler, Refracted Visions, 148–156. 23 For a fuller discussion of the par­tic­u­lar contribution made by Ghanaian photog­ raphers to id-­card production in ex-­aof territories in the post-­independence period and particularly in the 1970s (when the cfa franc offered a financial incentive), see Elder, “Capturing Change,” 135–152. 24 In the djoni djoni, the chamber in which the film is exposed also doubles as a darkroom, allowing the photographer to develop and print while the client waits. 25 As Elder notes, this type of pinhole camera became particularly closely associated with id-­card photography in the region in the late colonial and early post-­ independence era (Elder, “Capturing Change,” 152). 26 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 62–64. A larger aim of Buckley’s essay is to call attention to embodied and sensory dimensions of photographic experience that, insofar as they are associated with the experience of sitting for a photo­graph, cannot be reduced to the sphere of visual perception alone. 27 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 60–65. 28 Ouédraogo, Arts photographiques en Afrique, 96. 29 Ly, Oumar Ly: Portraits de Brousse, n.p. I do not know ­whether or not Ly ever traveled with a generator. I think it is unlikely that he did. It is pos­si­ble that some of the nightlife scenes featured in the Portraits de Brousse cata­logue ­were taken in Podor. 30 See, again, the authoritative references, Sekula, “Body and the Archive,” and Tagg, Burden of Repre­sen­ta­tion. 31 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 66. Buckley is drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of photography as a “festive technology,” elaborated in Photography: A Middle-­Brow Art, in order to combat a more Foucauldian line of thought.

298

notes to chapter five

32 33 34 35

Werner, “Twilight of the Studios,” 95. Elder, “Capturing Change,” 46. Elder, “Capturing Change,” 46. In Senegal, Tabaski could also impact the rhythms of urban studios, as I noted in chapter 1. 36 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 66. 37 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 60–64. 38 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 64. 39 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 64. 40 Ouidah itself has (or had) a very rich photography history, as did several other cities associated with this period of Benin’s history, including Abomey and Grand-­Popo. According to Franck Ogou, who has carried out extensive research with Beninese photog­raphers, the vast majority of studio archives in Ouidah, Abomey, and Grand-­Popo have been dispersed or lost. Franck Ogou, personal communication, Porto-­Novo, Benin, 2009. 41 Benoît Adjovi, personal interview, Cotonou, Benin, January 5, 2013. 42 Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa,” 256–257. 43 Buckley, “Studio Photography,” 64. 44 See, again, Brilliant, “Portraits,” in Borgatti and Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond, 18. 45 See also Ly, Oumar Ly: Portraits de Brousse, n.p. 46 Cosme Dossa, personal interview, Porto-­Novo, Benin, July 21, 2009. 47 Baudelaire and Ézéchiel Méhomé, personal interview, Porto-­Novo, Benin, January 7, 2013. 48 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 172. 49 I cite the film rather than the novel ­here, as Mandabi was famously the first of Sembène’s films shot in Wolof and among his most widely known films in Senegal for many years. 50 Baba Diop, a luminous figure in the Senegalese film industry and a scholar of Senegalese film history, confirms that it was indeed Salla Casset (Kassé) who played the photographer in the film. He verified this information in consultation with Younous Seye, the first wife of Makhouradia Guèye, the celebrated actor who played Dieng. Baba Diop, personal communication, January 29, 2018. I am grateful to Ibrahima Thiam in Dakar for facilitating my communication with Baba Diop, and to both Baba Diop and Younous Seye for sharing this information. 51 “He would have liked to go to Salla Casset, who had the best reputation, but the price put him off ” (Sembène, Money Order, 105). 52 Gary Wilder makes a convincing case for an unrealized trajectory, envisioned by black African and Ca­rib­bean leaders in this period, oriented by alternatives to the state form. See Wilder, Freedom Time. I touch on some of ­these alternatives, including ideas about African ­union and federation, in chapter 6. 53 Garanger, Femmes Algériennes 1960. I am grateful to Gilles Peress for calling ­these photo­graphs to my attention.

notes to chapter five

299

54 Garanger said publicly, in 2012 (the fiftieth anniversary of Algerian in­de­pen­ dence) in a press release issued by his gallerist, that he wanted to exhibit the images out of a desire to make the vio­lence that he felt was associated with ­these images known: “I felt from a spitting distance a violent, if mute, re­sis­tance. And I wanted to bear witness to that in my photo­graphs” (Garanger, “Marc Garanger photo résistant”). 55 “When he went back to Algeria in 2004 to meet ­those he had photographed, he found that the pictures he had taken ­were often the only ones that the ­women ever had of themselves, and they welcomed his return” (Naggar, “­Women Unveiled,” n.p.). 56 Chapuis also reports that villa­gers strug­gled to find the cash they needed to pay for their photo­graphs, and Ly sometimes felt that his clients ­were “forced and constrained,” due, in part, to this financial burden (Oumar Ly: Portraits de Brousse, n.p.). In Côte d’Ivoire, Werner notes that the price that Augustt charged for an id card, 250 francs cfa, was “an amount of money far from unimportant” for his subjects (Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa,” 256). 57 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 172. 58 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 172. 59 I am grateful to Anooradha Siddiqi for encouraging me to make this point more explic­itly, and to ­others, including Sandrine Colard-­De Bock, Tabetha Ewing, Tom Keenan, Brian Larkin, Gregory Mann, Emmanuelle Saada, and Drew Thompson, who engaged with an ­earlier version of this chapter in the context of the “Beyond France” seminar at Columbia University in the spring of 2018. 60 For Algeria, see Garanger, Femmes Algériennes 1960. For Tunisia and Indochina as well as Algeria, see Brunet-­La Ruche, “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales,’ ” note 79, n.p. For Madagascar, see Papinot, “Profession,” 28. 61 Nimis notes that Africans who served in the military in the aof ­were among the first ever to receive formal training as photog­raphers; Gregory Mann notes, in his study of west African veterans, that many ­were trained as photog­raphers (Mann, Native Sons, 21). Among the Senegalese photog­raphers whose ­careers ­were directly tied to military ser­vice ­were Mama Casset (who took aerial photo­graphs for the French Air Force during the Second World War) and Caristan, who had a ­career in the military before opening a photography studio in Saint-­Louis. Doudou Diop was trained as a photographer during his ser­vice in the French army. 62 In Benin, Zinsou Félix DeMesse told me that the first African ever to open a commercial studio in Porto-­Novo had been trained as a photographer in the context of his military ser­vice. Zinsou Félix DeMesse, personal interview, Porto-­ Novo, Benin, July 8, 2009. 63 Elder, “Capturing Change,” 54. 64 Journal Officiel du Sénégal, 580. On driver’s licenses, see also Werner, “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa,” 252. 65 Journal Officiel du Sénégal, 580.

300

notes to chapter five

66 Journal Officiel du Sénégal, 580. 67 On the long-­standing relationship between fingerprinting and photographic identification, see Sekula, “Body and the Archive,” and Finn, Capturing the Criminal Image. 68 Bulletin Officiel du Ministère des Colonies de France, 1281. 69 “Dans toutes les colonies où il y aura possibilité, la pièce d’identité et la fiche signalétique recevront la photographie de l’indigène” (Bulletin Officiel du Ministère des Colonies de France, 1281). 70 Bulletin Officiel du Ministère des Colonies de France, 1281–1282. 71 Brunet-­La Ruche, “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales,’ ” note 79, n.p. 72 I have not been able to find out comparable dates for Senegal, nor have I had a chance to do deep research on this topic ­there. Senegalese scholar Chérif Daha Ba, who has studied the history of policing and incarceration in Senegal, confirms that French colonial authorities produced mug shots in Senegal, and he himself has come across files of ­these images, but I have not had a chance to follow up on ­either the dates or institutional locations of ­these images. Chérif Daha Ba, personal communication, July 13, 2016. 73 Brunet-­La Ruche, “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales,’ ” n.p. 74 Brunet-­La Ruche, “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales,’ ” n.p. Brunet-­La Ruche explic­ itly states that, in Senegal, the evolution of policing was completely dif­fer­ent from in Dahomey. 75 ­These ­were the garde civile indigène (1889), gardes de cercle et agents (1901), gendarmerie indigène (1907), garde indigène, which was supplemented by the tirailleurs réguliers (1911), and which culminated in les forces de police (1910), who ­were principally charged with maintaining order in the cities (Brunet-­La Ruche, “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales,’ ” n.p.). 76 ­These dates are consistent with ­those cited by Brunet-­La Ruche. 77 Brunet-­La Ruche notes that Porto-­Novo created its own municipal police force, with jurisdiction exclusive to that city’s limits, in 1894, and that this police force was similar to the municipal police forces that had also been created for the quatre communes in Senegal; Cotonou, by contrast, did not have a police force ­until 1913. Brunet-­La Ruche, “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales,’ ” n.p. 78 The scrupulous attention paid to the financial resources of ­these foreign nationals appears to have been linked to concerns about repatriation. Excerpts from an untitled document that I found accompanying some of ­these passports (it appears to be an internal aof communication and was dated 1936) note, in the section titled “Regime of Immigration and Emigration,” that, as of 1932, all Eu­ro­pean foreign nationals entering the territory of Dahomey ­will have to deposit a fixed sum of money with the police, and that this sum must be sufficient to cover the costs of their repatriation. 79 One notable exception, in which criminological photography and popu­lar memory converged, ­were the “vernacular” criminological photo­graphs that I occasionally saw in studio photog­raphers’ negative archives in Benin. Among the most in­ter­est­ing examples of ­these that I saw, in Cosme Dossa’s negative archives

notes to chapter five

301

in Porto-­Novo, ­were postcards that combined a commemorative portrait of a murder victim with the mug shot of the alleged murderer. ­These postcards had been, Dossa told me, commissioned by the victim’s ­family to be distributed at his funeral. I have not yet had the opportunity to explore this class of image further. 80 Rizzo, “Visual Aperture,” 265–266. 81 Rizzo, “Visual Aperture,” 265–266. 82 Rizzo, “Visual Aperture,” 265–266. 83 Rizzo, “Visual Aperture,” 267. 84 Strassler, Refracted Visions, 145. 85 Strassler, Refracted Visions, 145. 86 Strassler, Refracted Visions, 149–154. 87 Strassler, Refracted Visions, 158. 88 Strassler, Refracted Visions, 150. 89 Adjovi underscored that this had not been a particularly successful montage, and that he usually took more care to mask the suture lines between the two images. Benoît Adjovi, personal interview, Cotonou, Benin, July 25, 2009. 90 I was lucky enough to see a se­lection of airbrushed composite images created from passbook photo­graphs, including several “wedding portraits,” from the Ruth Sack Collection in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2015. They ­were part of a photography exhibition curated by Paul Weinberg, The Other Camera, at the University of the Witwatersrand. John Peffer has researched and written about ­these composite “wedding portraits.” See Peffer, “Réflexions sur la photographie sud-­africaine et l’extra-­photographique.” 6. African ­Futures, Lost and Found

1 Eshun, “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,” 288. 2 Bayart, State in Africa, 25–26; and Mbembe, On the Postcolony. See also Billy Dudley’s ­earlier, and extremely lucid, analy­sis of ­these questions, in “Decolonization and the Prob­lems of In­de­pen­dence.” 3 For helpful analyses of some of ­these pro­cesses, see Ferguson, Global Shadows; and Piot, Nostalgia for the ­Future. 4 Eshun has also pointed this out, in an interview that he gave to Christoph Cox. Eshun and Cox, “Afrofuturism, Afro-­Pessimism, and the Politics of Abstraction” (unpublished). I am grateful to Christoph Cox for sharing this unpublished interview with me. For an analy­sis of colonial nostalgia as a response to neoliberalism, see Werbner, Memory and the Postcolony; and Bissell, “Engaging Colonial Nostalgia.” For an analy­sis of colonial nostalgia specifically in the context of postapartheid South Africa, see Dlamini, Native Nostalgia. 5 See, again, Bayart, State in Africa, 25–26. 6 Diawara, In Search of Africa, 46. 7 In November 1958, four of the eight territories in the aof, Dahomey (present-­day Benin), French Soudan (present-­day Mali), Senegal, and Upper Volta (present-­ day Burkina Faso), declared their intention to join the new “French Community”

302

notes to chapter five

that had been proposed by French president Charles de Gaulle in the form of a federation. Dahomey and Upper Volta ultimately withdrew from the plan, and the Mali Federation was formed on April 4, 1959, as a ­union of what are ­today Mali and Senegal. 8 The Non-­Aligned Movement emerged from the 1955 Bandung conference, hosted by President Sukharno of Indonesia, which brought together the heads of Asian and African states who did not wish to be aligned with ­either the rising powers of the Soviet Union and the United States or the former colonial powers in Eu­rope. Western Sahara is a territory that was never actually part of the aof and that was claimed alternatively by Spain, Morocco, and ultimately Mauritania in the years following in­de­pen­dence in the region. The claims of the Polisario Front, about which more below, have often been viewed sympathetically by key figures in the Non-­Aligned Movement. 9 See my discussion of Sylla’s desires for the archive in chapter 4. 10 Most of the po­liti­cal photo­graphs that I saw in west African collections ­were taken by African photog­raphers, but several of the photo­graphs of Keïta and Senghor that I saw in Faye’s collection appear to have been taken by a French photographer, Lefèvre. See figures 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4. 11 Leslie Rabine has explored the complex connections between Senghor’s self-­ presentation in po­liti­cal photography and the ideas expressed in his poetry. See Rabine, “Photography, Poetry, and the Dressed Bodies of Léopold Sédar Senghor.” 12 Interestingly, Sylla’s account contradicts ­those of Western scholars, who have argued that a lack of friendship between Malians and Senegalese was one of the reasons for the Mali Federation’s failure. See, in par­tic­u­lar, Foltz, From French West Africa to the Mali Federation, 149. 13 Foltz, From French West Africa to the Mali Federation, 63. 14 Economic considerations appear to have been a major ­factor in the Mali Federation’s failure, and, in fact, one of the practical premises of the federation was that Mali and Senegal had complementary economies, with Mali (then French Soudan) having the raw materials necessary to industrial production and a greater potential market to be realized in the ­future and Senegal having the existing industrial capacity, including not only manufacturing infrastructure but a deepwater port. Foltz suggests that it proved impossible to realize the benefits of this complementarity without a plan for a federal economy. Foltz, From French West Africa to the Mali Federation, 154–156. 15 Early factionalization within Senghor’s own party has also been attributed to internal conflicts created by the Mali Federation’s break-up, as epitomized by the 1962 coup attempt by Mamadou Dia. 16 Faye served in high-­ranking positions both before and ­after in­de­pen­dence, including as the governor of four dif­fer­ent regions of Senegal. The fact that he amassed an impressive collection of photo­graphs taken in each of the cities where he lived, starting in the mid-1950s (Mbour, Kaolack, Ziguinchor, Saint-­Louis, and

notes to chapter six

303

17

18

19 20 21

22

23

24

25

26

27

304

Dakar are all represented), is already an index of the importance of photography to Senegalese po­liti­cal life. Télégrammes nos. 1035–1040, du 12 décembre 1966, de M. Vyau de Lagarde, Ambassadeur de France à Dakar, à M. Couve de Murville, Ministre des affaires étrangers, Documents diplomatiques français, 1966, vol. 2: “Le Président de la République du Mali, accompagné d’une nombreuse suite, a effectué une visite officielle au Sénégal du 1er au 7 décembre 1966. La véritable signification de cette visite est d’ordre psychologique et politique” (981). The name “Niger” in the Dakar-­Niger railway refers not to the modern nation-­ state of Niger but rather to the Niger River, which runs through Mali and through Bamako. Charles-­Robert Ageron, “Les États africains de la Communauté et la guerre d’Algérie (1958–1960),” in Ageron and Michel, L’Afrique noire française, 271. Ageron, “Les États africains,” 271. See Paul Isoart, “Rapport général” and “Le conseil exécutif de la Communauté,” in Ageron and Michel, L’Afrique noire française, 221–235 and 237–267, respectively. See also, again, Ageron, “Les États africains,” in the same volume. The multiple discourses of postcolonial nationalism are more complex than I can do justice to ­here, and many African poets, phi­los­o­phers, intellectuals, and politicians had hoped, prior to in­de­pen­dence, to find more radical alternatives to the state form. For a thought-­provoking recent treatment of some of ­these alternatives, including some that ­were being thought by Senghor, see Wilder, Freedom Time. The Dakar-­Niger railway was from an early date associated with the brutality of forced ­labor and with protracted and difficult ­labor strikes. The most famous depictions of the railway strikes are ­those found in the 1960 novel by Ousmane Sembène, Les bouts de bois de dieu. Senghor was also a socialist, but one whose socialist commitments ­were eclipsed by his own, highly peculiar brand of nationalism and his reputation for Realpolitik. Senghor, too, was a proponent of nonalignment. Yet the fact that the non-­ alignement signs and banners appear to have been brought out to celebrate Keïta’s visit only highlights the strength of his personal association with the movement. Mathieu Kérékou was thrice president of Benin. He first came to power in a coup d’état in 1972, in what was then the Republic of Dahomey, and stayed in power ­until 1991; he then ceded power in a demo­cratic election before being reelected in 1996 and 2006. Grégoire is not the member of staff ’s real name, due to the apparently controversial nature of the material we discussed. The Sahrawi are also called the “­people of the Western Sahara.” Their strug­gle is identified with that of the revolutionary group known as the Polisario Front (or, in Spanish, Frente Polisario), which was founded on May 10, 1973. The full name of the group is Frente Popu­lar de Liberación de Saguía el-­Hamra and Río de Oro, and it is generally considered to be a successor of the ­earlier Movimiento para la

notes to chapter six

Liberación del Sahara, an anticolonial movement that fought Spanish colonization in Western Sahara in the 1950s and 1960s. 28 The one head of state who, I was told by Sylla in Saint-­Louis, routinely traveled with his photographer in the 1960s was Mobutu Sese Seko. This comes as no surprise, given that his careful attention to his image is legendary. 29 Gunter, “Self-­Determination or Territorial Integrity,” 205. 30 I am grateful to Christopher Lee for his generosity in discussing aspects of this photo­graph in light of his deep knowledge of the 1955 Bandung conference, the Non-­Aligned Movement, and African-­Asian relations. I am particularly grateful to him for his suggestion regarding a pos­si­ble oau or Arab League visit. Personal communication with the author, September 18, 2015. I have also benefited from consulting Lee’s truly excellent edited volume of essays on the 1955 Bandung conference, Making a World ­after Empire. 31 Howe, “African Atlantic Chess.” 32 This was the combined tally on both sides. See Howe, “African Atlantic Chess,” 13. 33 Howe reports that, at the time of the invasion in 1976, the Algerian army had four hundred heavy and medium tanks and four hundred light tanks. Morocco, by contrast, which was not as well armed, had only a smattering of American tanks, which had been supplied, in connection with the conflict, by Saudi Arabia. Howe, “African Atlantic Chess,” 13. 34 See unesco, “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Owner­ship of Cultural Property 1970.” On the need to rethink notions of cultural heritage and patrimony from a specifically African perspective, see Ogbechie, “Who Owns African Cultural Patrimony?” 35 See, for a more thoroughgoing discussion of con­temporary approaches to the archive and other institutions for photography in west Africa, Haney and Bajorek, “Vital Signs.” 36 Financial support for a preliminary inventory of Dossa’s studio archives was provided by the permissions fees that I paid to his ­family ­after his death in connection with the production of this book. 37 A digital cata­logue of Dossa’s studio archives has since been authored by Ogou and his colleagues at épa and can be found ­here: http://­www​.­photoafricaine​.­org​/­. 38 Po­liti­cal photo­graphs taken by Dossa in his official capacity as a government photographer can be found in the Beninese National Archives, yet, I would underscore, once again, that ­these are not the portion of the photographer’s archive that has been pro­cessed or digitized, and that ­these images remain comparatively inaccessible to local publics. 39 An archive of the activities of the 3pa: West African Image Lab workshop, held in Porto-­Novo in April 2014, can be found on Resolution’s website, ­here: https://­ www​.­resolutionphoto​.­org​/­. 40 The cbrst is a library, archive, and research center in Porto-­Novo. It is technically a postcolonial institution (it was created in 1986), but the bulk of its photo­ graphs are “scientific” and ethnographic photo­graphs that ­were commissioned

notes to chapter six

305

by the French colonial administration in the late colonial period, and the core of its collections ­were inherited from the former Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (ifan)-­Dahomey. ifan-­Dahomey’s collections ­were constituted on the princi­ple of the French “dépôt légal,” which required all members of the scientific missions of ifan working in or traveling through Dahomey to deposit copies of documents and photo­graphs pertaining to their research in the collection. According to an inventory of the cbrst’s photography collections carried out in 1986, its pro­cessed holdings numbered 2,933 photo­graphs, amassed mainly by “dépôt légal.”

306

notes to chapter six

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abiodun, Rowland. “A Reconsideration of the Function of Ako, Second Burial Effigy in Owo.” Africa 46, no. 1 (1976): 4–20. Ageron, Charles-­Robert, and Marc Michel, eds. L’Afrique noire française: L’heure des indépendances. Paris: cnrs Éditions, 2010 [1992]. Aïdara, Abdoul Hadir. Saint-­Louis du Sénégal d’hier à aujourd’hui. Brinon-­sur-­Sauldre, France: Grandvaux, 2005. Ainslie, Rosalynde. The Press in Africa: Communications Past and Pre­sent. New York: Walker and Com­pany, 1966. Akpo, Catherine. “L’armée d’aof et la Deuxième Guerre mondiale: Esquisse d’intégration africaine?” In aof: Réalités et héritages. Sociétés ouest-­africaines et ordre colonial, 1895–1960, edited by Charles Becker, Saliou Mbaye, and Ibrahima Thioub, 170–179. Dakar: Direction des Archives du Sénégal, 1997. Anderson, Benedict. ­Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso, 2006 [1983]. Anderson, Benedict. “Nationalism, Identity, and the World-­In-­Motion: The Logics of Seriality.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, edited by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 117–133. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Appadurai, Arjun. “The Colonial Backdrop.” Afterimage 24, no. 5 (March/April 1997): 4–9. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography. Cambridge, MA: mit Press/Zone, 2008. Azoulay, Ariella. Civil Imagination: A Po­liti­cal Ontology of Photography. London: Verso, 2012. Ba, Amadou. “Les reporters photographes professionels du Sénégal: Une corporation sous-­valorisée.” MA diss., Université de Cheikh Anta Diop, 2011. Bahloul, Joëlle. The Architecture of Memory: A Jewish-­Muslim House­hold in Colonial Algeria, 1937–1962. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Bajorek, Jennifer. “Decolonizing the Archive: The View from West Africa.” Aperture 210 (Spring 2013): 66–69.

Bajorek, Jennifer. “(Dis)locating Freedom: The Photographic Portraiture of Seydou Keïta.” Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art and Visual Culture 2, nos. 3/4 (Spring 2009): 89–103. Bajorek, Jennifer. “Of Jumbled Valises and Civil Society: Photography and Po­liti­cal Imagination in Senegal.” History and Anthropology 21, no. 4 (2010): 435–456. Bajorek, Jennifer. “Photography and National Memory: Senegal about 1960.” History of Photography 34, no. 2 (2010): 160–171. Balibar, Étienne. We, the ­People of Eu­rope? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Translated by James Swenson. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2004. Barber, Karin, ed. Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Baudelaire, Charles. “Salon of 1859.” In Art in Paris: 1845–1862, translated by Jonathan Mayne, 144–216. Oxford: Phaidon, 1965. Bayart, Jean-­François. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. 2nd ed. Translated by Mary Harper, Christopher Harrison, and Elizabeth Harrison. London: Polity, 2009. Becker, Charles, Saliou Mbaye, and Ibrahima Thioub, eds. aof: Réalités et héritages. Sociétés ouest-­africaines et ordre colonial, 1895–1960. Dakar: Direction des Archives du Sénégal, 1997. Behrend, Heike. “Love à la Hollywood and Bombay: Studio Photography in ­Kenya.” Paideuma 44 (1998): 139–153. Bell, Clare, Okwui Enwezor, and Octavio Zaya. In/sight: African Photog­raphers 1940 to the Pre­sent. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. Benjamin, Walter. “A Short History of Photography.” In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 199–216. New Haven, CT: Leete’s Island Books, 1980. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (Second Version).” In Selected Writings, Vol. 3 (1935–1938), edited by Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings, 101–133. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. Bensusan, A. D. Silver Images. Cape Town: H. Timmins, 1966. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Bhattacharya, Neeladri. “Notes ­towards a Conception of the Colonial Public.” In Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship: Dialogues and Perceptions, edited by Rajeev Bhargava and Helmut Reifeld, 130–156. New Delhi: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. Bigham, Elizabeth. “Issues of Authorship in the Portrait Photo­graphs of Seydou Keïta.” African Arts 32, no. 1 (1999): 56–67. Bingo. Nos. 1–215 (1953–1978). Bissell, William Cunningham. “Engaging Colonial Nostalgia.” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 2 (2005): 215–248. Borgatti, Jean M., and Richard Brilliant. Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World. New York: Center for African Art, 1990.

308

Bibliography

Bourdieu, Pierre. Photography: A Middle-­Brow Art. Translated by Shaun Whiteside. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Bouttiaux, Anne-­Marie et al., eds. L’Afrique par elle-­même: Un siècle de photographie africaine. Tervuren, Belgium/Paris, France: Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale/Éditions Revue Noire, 2003. Bowles, Laurian R. “Dress Politics and Framing Self in Ghana: The Studio Photo­ graphs of Felicia Abban.” African Arts 49, no. 4 (2016): 48–57. “Brève histoire de la rts.” http://­www​.­archipo​.­net​/­dossier​_­archipo​.­php​?­id​=­rts. Brigaud, Félix, and Jean Vast. Saint-­Louis du Sénégal: Ville aux Mille Visages. Dakar: Éditions Clairafrique, 1987. Brown, Carolyn A., and Paul Lovejoy, eds. Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2011. Brown, Elspeth H., and Thy Phu. Feeling Photography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Brunet-­La Ruche, Bénédicte. “ ‘Discipliner les villes coloniales’: La police et l’ordre urbain au Dahomey pendant l’entre-­deux-­guerres.” In Criminocorpus, revue hypermédia (online), Thematic Dossier (“Histoire de la police”), no. 4 (2012). No pages. http://­ criminocorpus​.­revues​.­org​/­1678. Buckley, Liam. “Objects of Love and Decay: Colonial Photo­graphs in a Postcolonial Archive.” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 2 (2008): 249–270. Buckley, Liam. “Studio Photography and the Aesthetics of Citizenship in The Gambia.” In Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums, and Material Culture, edited by Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden, and Ruth B. Phillips, 61–85. Oxford: Berg, 2006. Bulletin Officiel du Ministère des Colonies de France. “Circulaire No. 323 relative à l’embarquement des indigènes sur les navires ayant leur port d’attache dans la métropole” [Circular No. 323 regarding the embarkation of indigenous ­people on ships with their home ports in the metropole]. Tome 28, vol. 2, no. 6 (June 19, 1914): 1280–1282. Campt, Tina M. Image ­Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Eu­rope. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Legacies of Bandung: Decolonization and the Politics of Culture.” In Making a World ­after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Po­liti­cal Afterlives, edited by Christopher J. Lee, 45–68. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Eu­rope: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2000. Chapuis, Frédérique. “The Pioneers of Saint-­Louis.” In Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, edited by Pascal Martin Saint Leon, Jean Loup Pivin, and Simon Njami, 48–63. Paris: Revue Noire, 1998. Chatterjee, Partha. “Anderson’s Utopia.” Diacritics 9, no. 4 (1999): 128–134. Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popu­lar Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Clerval, Janine. “Chronique du cinéma.” L’aof Économique no. 3 (January 29, 1938). Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff, eds. Civil Society and the Po­liti­cal Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Bibliography

309

Conklin, L. Alice. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Cooper, Frederick. Decolonization and African Society: The ­Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Cooper, Frederick. “From ­Free ­Labor to ­Family Allowances: ­Labor and African Society in Colonial Discourse.” American Ethnologist 16 (1989): 745–765. Cooper, Frederick. “Our Strike: Equality, Anticolonial Politics and the 1947–48 Railway Strike in French West Africa.” Journal of African History 37, no. 1 (1996): 81–118. Cooper, Frederick. “The Senegalese General Strike of 1946 and the L ­ abor Question in Post-­War French Africa.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 24, no. 2 (1990): 165–215. Coquéry-­Vidrovitch, Catherine. Africa: Endurance and Change South of the Sahara. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Crooks, Julie. “Alphonso Lisk-­Carew: Imaging Sierra Leone through His Lens.” African Arts 48, no. 3 (2015): 18–27. David, Philippe. Alex A. Acolatse: Hommage à l’un des premiers photographes togolais. Lomé, Togo: Éditions Haho/Goethe Institut, 1992. David, Philippe. “Hostalier—­Noal: Un duel de photographes au Journal Officiel du Sénégal il y a cent ans.” Association Images et Mémoires, Lettre de Liaison no. 14 (November 2006). Diakhaté, Lydie. “The Last Interview: Seydou Keïta 1921–2001.” Translated by Emoretta Yang. Nka: Journal of Con­temporary African Art 16, no. 1 (2002): 18–23. Diallo, Nafissatou. De Tilène au Plateau: Une enfance dakaroise. Dakar: Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, 1997 [1975]. Diawara, Manthia. African Cinema: Politics and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Diawara, Manthia. In Search of Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Diawara, Manthia. “Talk of the Town.” Artforum International 36, no. 6 (February 1998): 64–72. Diop, Abdoulaye-­Bara. La société Wolof: Tradition et changement: Systèmes d’inégalité et de domination. Paris: Karthala, 1981. Diouf, Mamadou. “Islam: peinture sous verre et idéologie populaire.” In Art pictoral zaïrois, edited by Bogumil Jewsiewicki, 29–40. Québec: Éditions du Septentrion, 1992. Diouf, Mamadou. “The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.” Translated by Steven Rendall. Public Culture 12, no. 3 (2000): 697–702. Dlamini, Jacob. Native Nostalgia. Auckland Park, South Africa: Jacana Media, 2008. Documents diplomatiques français. “Télégrammes nos. 1035–1040, du 12 décembre 1966, de M. Vyau de Lagarde, Ambassadeur de France à Dakar, à M. Couve de Murville, Ministre des affaires étrangères.” 1966, Vol. II. 981. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006.

310

Bibliography

Dudley, Billy. “Decolonization and the Prob­lems of In­de­pen­dence.” In The Cambridge History of Africa, edited by Michael Crowder, 52–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Edwards, Elizabeth, ed. Anthropology and Photography: 1860–1920. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. Edwards, Elizabeth. Raw Histories: Photography, Anthropology, Museums. London: Bloomsbury, 2001. Edwards, Elizabeth, Chris Gosden, and Ruth B. Phillips, eds. Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums, and Material Culture. Oxford: Berg, 2006. Elder, Tanya. “Capturing Change: The Practice of Malian Photography 1930s–1990s.” PhD diss., Tema Institute, Linköping University, Sweden, 1997. Enwezor, Okwui. “New Positions in Con­temporary African Photography.” Introduction to Snap Judgments: New Positions in Con­temporary African Photography, edited by Okwui Enwezor, 10–45. New York: Steidl/International Center of Photography, 2006. Enwezor, Okwui. The Short ­Century: In­de­pen­dence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994. München: Prestel, 2001. Eshun, Kodwo. “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism.” New Centennial Review 3, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 287–302. Euvrard, Gil-­François. “La presse en Afrique Occidentale Française des origines aux indépendances et conservée à la Bibliothèque Nationale.” Mémoire, École Nationale des Bibliothèques, France, 1982. Fabian, Johannes. Memory against Culture: Arguments and Reminders. Rotterdam: Post Editions, 2010. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Fairhead, James, Tim Geysbeek, Svend E. Holsoe, and Melissa Leach, eds. African-­ American Exploration in West Africa: Four Nineteenth-­Century Diaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2004 [1964]. Ferguson, James. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Finn, Jonathan. Capturing the Criminal Image: From Mug Shot to Surveillance Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Firstenberg, Lauri. “Postcoloniality, Per­for­mance, and Photographic Portraiture.” In The Short ­Century, In­de­pen­dence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, edited by Okwui Enwezor, 175–179. Munich: Prestel, 2001. Flusser, Vilém. ­Towards a Philosophy of Photography. Translated by Anthony Mathews. London: Reaktion, 2000. Foltz, William J. From French West Africa to the Mali Federation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965. Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80.

Bibliography

311

Fraser, Nancy. “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-­Westphalian World.” Theory, Culture and Society 24, no. 4 (2007): 7–30. Garanger, Marc. Femmes Algériennes 1960. Paris: Atlantica, 2002. Garanger, Marc. “Marc Garanger photo résistant.” Dossier de presse: Galerie Binôme. 2012. https://­www​.­google​.­com​/­search​?­q​=­dossier+de+presse+gallerie+binome+gara nger&ie​=­utf​-­8&oe​=u ­ tf​-­8. Gbadegesin, Olubukola A. “Picturing the Modern Self: Politics, Identity, and Self Fashioning in Lagos, 1861–1934.” PhD diss., Emory University, 2010. Geary, Christraud M., and Virginia-­Lee Webb. Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1998. Genova, James E. Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity, and the Limitations of Mimicry in French-­Ruled West Africa 1914–1956. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Gikandi, Simon. “Cultural Translation and the African Self: A (Post)colonial Case Study.” Interventions: A Journal of Postcolonial Culture 3, no. 3 (2001): 355–375. Grabski, Joanna, and Carol Magee, eds. African Art, Interviews, Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Gunter, Michael M. “Self-­Determination or Territorial Integrity: The United Nations in Confusion.” World Affairs (Winter 1979): 203–216. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1991. Hall, Stuart, ed. Repre­sen­ta­tion: Cultural Repre­sen­ta­tions and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, 1997. Haney, Erin. “Film, Charcoal, Time: Contemporaneities in Gold Coast Photo­graphs.” History of Photography 34, no. 2 (May 2010): 119–133. Haney, Erin. “If ­These Walls Could Talk! Photo­graphs, Photog­raphers and Their Patrons in Accra and Cape Coast, Ghana, 1840–1940.” PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2004. Haney, Erin. “The Lutterodts: The Changing Face of Early Photo­graphs in the Gold Coast.” In Portraiture in African Worlds, edited by Elisabeth Cameron and John Peffer, 67–101. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Haney, Erin. Photography and Africa. London: Reaktion, 2010. Haney, Erin, and Jennifer Bajorek. “Vital Signs: 21st-­Century Institutions for Photography in Africa.” In The African Photographic Archive: Research and Curatorial Strategies, edited by Christopher Morton and Darren Newbury, 215–229. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Hayes, Patricia. “The Uneven Citizenry of Photography: Reading the ‘Po­liti­cal Ontology’ of Photography from Southern Africa.” Cultural Critique 89 (Winter 2015): 173–193. Hickling, Patricia. “The Early Photo­graphs of Edmond Fortier: Documenting Postcards from Senegal.” African Research and Documentation no. 102 (2007): 37–53. Hoeven, Hans van der, and Joan van Albada. Lost Memory: Libraries and Archives Destroyed in the Twentieth ­Century. International Federation of Library Associations; International Council on Archives; unesco. March 1996.

312

Bibliography

Houlberg, Marilyn H. “Ibeji Images of the Yoruba.” African Arts 7 (1973): 20–27. Howe, Russell Warren. “African Atlantic Chess.” New Republic 174, no. 10 (March 6, 1976): 12–14. Idowu, H. Oludare. “Assimilation in 19th-­Century Senegal.” Cahiers d’études africaines 9, no. 34 (1969): 194–218. Ilboudo, Jean-­Pierre. “Les étapes d’implantation de la radio en Afrique noire.” Paper presented at the “World Radio Day” symposium, Dakar, Senegal. February 13, 2014. Published by the unesco, Dakar Office (Regional Office for Education in Africa). Jaji, Tsitsi. Africa in Stereo: Modernism, ­Music, and Pan-­African Solidarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Jensen, Klaus Bruhn. “Intermediality.” In The International Encyclopedia of Communication, edited by Wolfgang Donsbach, 2385–2387. London: Blackwell, 2008. Johnson, G. Wesley. The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Strug­gle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971. Jones, Hilary. The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Journal Officiel de la République Française. “Décret portant organisation en Afrique occidentale française du contrôle des films cinématographiques et des disques phono­ graphiques, du contrôle des prises de vues cinématographiques et des enregistrements sonores” [Decree organ­izing the regulation of motion picture films, phono­graph rec­ords, film stills, and sound recordings in the aof]. March 11, 1934, 2541. Journal Officiel du Sénégal. “Avis aux conducteurs des voitures automobiles” [Notice to automobile ­drivers]. Vol. 66 (1921): 580. Keenan, Thomas. “Mobilizing Shame.” South Atlantic Quarterly 103, nos. 2/3 (Spring/ Summer 2004): 435–449. Keller, Candace. “Visual Griots: Identity, Aesthetics, and the Social Roles of Portrait Photog­raphers in Mali.” In Portrait Photography in African Worlds, edited by John Peffer and Elisabeth L. Cameron, 363–406. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Keller, Candace. “Visual Griots: Social, Po­liti­cal and Cultural Histories in Mali through the Photographer’s Lens.” PhD diss., Indiana University, 2008. Kidjo, Angélique. Spirit Rising: My Life, My ­Music. New York: Harper Design, 2014. Killingray, David, and Andrew Roberts. “An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940.” History of Africa: A Journal of Method 16, no. 1 (1989): 197–208. Kokou. “La femme togolaise photographe: Une réalité vivante.” Amina no. 28 (October 1974): 32–35. Krauss, Rosalind. “Notes on the Index (Part 1): Seventies Art in Amer­i­ca.” October 3 (Spring 1977): 68–81. Krauss, Rosalind. “Notes on the Index (Part 2): Seventies Art in Amer­i­ca.” October 4 (Autumn 1977): 58–67. Lacroix, Jean-Bernard, and Saliou Mbaye. “Le vote des femmes au Sénégal.” In Éthiopiques: Revue socialiste de culture négro-­africaine 6 (1976): n.p. Lamunière, Michelle. You Look Beautiful Like That: The Portrait Photo­graphs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2001.

Bibliography

313

Landau, Paul S., and Deborah Kaspin, eds. Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Larkin, Brian. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Lee, Christopher J., ed. Making a World ­after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Po­liti­cal Afterlives. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010. Lips, Julius. The Savage Hits Back. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937. Ly, Oumar. Oumar Ly: Portraits de Brousse. Trézélan: Filigranes Éditions, 2009. Mackenzie, W. J. M., and Kenneth Robinson, eds. Five Elections in Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960. Magnin, André, ed. Seydou Keïta. Zu­rich/Berlin/New York: Scalo + caac/Pigozzi, 1997. Mama Casset: Maestro del retrato. Madrid: La Fabrica/Photo Bolsillo, 2011. Mann, Gregory. Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth C ­ entury. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Martens, George R. “Industrial Relations and Trade Unionism in French-­Speaking West Africa.” In Industrial Relations in Africa, edited by Ukandi Godwin Damachi, Hans Dieter Seibel, and Lester Trachtman, 16–72. London: Macmillan/International Institute for ­Labor Studies, 1979. Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Mbembe, Achille. “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits.” In Refiguring the Archive, edited by Carolyn Hamilton et al., 19–26. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2002. Meillassoux, Claude. Urbanization of an African Community: Voluntary Associations in Bamako. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968. Meurillon, Georges. “Seydou Keïta: Un photographe de studio à la mode.” Bulletin Images et Mémoires no. 6 (Spring–­Summer 1998): no pages. Micheli, Angelo. “Double Portraits: Images of Twinness in West African Studio Photography.” In Twins in African and Diaspora Cultures, edited by Philip M. Peek, 137–160. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Micheli, Angelo. “Doubles and Twins: A New Approach to Con­temporary Studio Portraiture in West Africa.” African Arts 41, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 66–85. Mießgang, Thomas. “Directors, Flâneurs, Bricoleurs: Studio Photog­raphers in West Africa.” In Flash Afrique! Photography from West Africa, edited by Thomas Mießgang and B. Schröder, 16–23. Vienna/Göttingen, Germany: Kunsthalle Wien/Steidl, 2001. Mignolo, Walter. “Delinking: The Rhe­toric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality, and the Grammar of Decoloniality.” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2 (March 2007): 449–514. Mitchell, Timothy. Colonizing Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Moholy-­Nagy, Laszlo. “Photography.” In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 165–166. New Haven, CT: Leete’s Island Books, 1980. Monti, Nicolas. Africa Then: Photo­graphs 1840–1918. New York: Knopf, 1987. Morgenthau, Ruth Schachter. Po­liti­cal Parties in French-­Speaking West Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

314

Bibliography

Mustafa, Hudita Nura. “Portraits of Modernity: Fashioning Selves in Dakarois Popu­ lar Photography.” In Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, edited by Deborah Kaspin and Paul S. Landau, 168–188. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Naggar, Carole. “­Women Unveiled: Marc Garanger’s Contested Portraits of 1960s Algeria.” Time. April 23, 2013. Negt, Oskar, and Alexander Kluge. Public Sphere and Experience: ­Toward an Analy­sis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere. Translated by Peter Labanyi et al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Newell, Stephanie. The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013. Newell, Stephanie, and Onookome Okome. Popu­lar Culture in Africa: The Episteme of the Everyday. London: Routledge, 2013. Niang Siga, Fatou. Costume Saint-­Louisien sénégalais d’hier à aujourd’hui. Saint Louis: [publisher unknown], 2006. Nimis, Érika. “Bamako: Photo de Famille Franco-­Malienne.” Africultures 1, no. 83 (2010): 7–8. Nimis, Érika. Photographes de l’Afrique de l’Ouest: L’expérience Yoruba. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Nimis, Érika. “Yoruba Studio Photog­raphers in Francophone West Africa.” In Portrait Photography in African Worlds, edited by John Peffer and Elisabeth Cameron, 102–140. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Njami, Simon. C’était Senghor. Paris: Fayard, 2007. Njami, Simon, and Malick Sidibé. “The Movement of Life.” In Flash Afrique! Photography from West Africa, edited by Thomas Mießgang and B. Schröder, 92–104. Vienna/ Göttingen, Germany: Kunsthalle Wien/Steidl, 2001. Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu. “Who Owns African Cultural Patrimony?” Culture in Development. January 19, 2011. http://­www​.­cultureindevelopment​.­nl​/­News​/­Heritage​ _­Africa​/­702​/­Who​_­owns​_­African​_­cultural​_­patrimony%3F. Ogou, Franck. “Zoom sur l’histoire de la photographie et les photographes au Bénin.” Bulletin Images et Mémoires no. 30 (Fall 2011): 22–24. Oguibe, Olu. “The Photographic Experience: ­Toward an Understanding of Photography in Africa.” In Flash Afrique! Photography from West Africa, edited by Thomas Mießgang and B. Schröder, 9–15. Vienna/Göttingen, Germany: Kunsthalle Wien/ Steidl, 2001. Oguibe, Olu. “Photography and the Substance of the Image.” In In/sight: African Photog­raphers 1940 to the Pre­sent, edited by Clare Bell, Okwui Enwezor, and Octavio Zaya, 231–250. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. Oloidi, Ola. “Defender of African Creativity: Aina Onabolu, Pioneer of Western Art in West Africa.” Africana Research Bulletin (Fouray Bay, Sierra Leone) 27, no. 2 (January 1991): 21–49. Ouédraogo, Jean-­Bernard. Arts photographiques en Afrique. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002. Paoletti, Giulia. “Competing Technologies: Glass Painting and Photography in 20th-­ Century Senegal.” Paper presented at the Arts Council of the African Studies

Bibliography

315

Association (acasa), 16th Triennial Symposium on African Art, at the Brooklyn Museum. March 22, 2014. Papinot, Christian. “Profession: Photographe de rue à Tananarive (Madagascar).” Sociétés 15 (1987): 28–30. Parker, John, and Richard Rathbone. African History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Peffer, John. “Introduction.” In Portrait Photography in African Worlds, edited by John Peffer and Elisabeth Cameron, 1–32. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Peffer, John. “Réflexions sur la photographie sud-­africaine et l’extra-­photographique.” Africultures 88 (2012): 210–226. Perez, Nissan N. Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East, 1839–1885. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988. Perret, Thierry. Le temps des journalistes: L’invention de la presse en Afrique francophone. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Phu, Thy. Picturing Model Citizens. Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 2012. Picton, John. “Colonial Pretense and African Re­sis­tance, or Subversion Subverted: Commemorative Textiles in Sub-­Saharan Africa.” In The Short ­Century: In­de­pen­dence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994, edited by Okwui Enwezor, 159–162. Munich: Prestel, 2001. Pinney, Christopher. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photo­graphs. London: Reaktion, 1997. Pinney, Christopher. The Coming of Photography in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pinney, Christopher. “Notes from the Surface of the Image.” In Photography’s Other Histories, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson. 202–220. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Pinney, Christopher, and Nicolas Peterson, eds. Photography’s Other Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Pinther, Kerstin. “Textiles and Photography in West Africa.” Critical Interventions 1, no. 1 (2007): 106–118. Piot, Charles. Nostalgia for the ­Future: West Africa ­after the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pivin, Jean Loup, ed. Mama Casset et les précurseurs de la photographie au Sénégal. Paris: Éditions Revue Noire, 1994. Rabine, Leslie W. “Fash­ion­able Photography in Mid-­Twentieth-­Century Senegal.” Fashion Theory 14, no. 3 (2010): 305–330. Rabine, Leslie W. “Photography, Poetry, and the Dressed Bodies of Léopold Sédar Senghor.” In African Dress: Fashion, Agency, Per­for­mance, edited by Karen Tranberg Hansen and D. Soyini Madison, 171–185. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Ray, Man. “The Age of Light.” In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 167–168. New Haven, CT: Leete’s Island Books, 1980. Rizzo, Lorena. “Visual Aperture: Bureaucratic Systems of Identification, Photography, and Personhood in Colonial South Africa.” History of Photography 37, no. 3 (2013): 263–282.

316

Bibliography

Roberts, Allen F. “Tempering ‘the Tyranny of Already’: Resignification and the Migration of Images.” In Religion and Material Culture, edited by David Morgan, 115–134. London: Routledge, 2009. Roberts, Allen F., and Mary Nooter Roberts. “Flickering Images, Floating Signifiers.” Material Religion 4, no. 1 (2008): 4–38. Roberts, Allen F., Mary Nooter Roberts, Gassia Armenian, and Ousmane Gueye. A Saint in the City: Sufi Image Arts in Urban Senegal. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Robinson, Kenneth E. “Senegal: The Elections to the Territorial Assembly, March 1957.” In Five Elections in Africa, edited by W. J. M. Mackenzie and Kenneth E. Robinson, 281–390. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960. Saint Leon, Pascal Martin, Jean Loup Pivin, and Simon Njami, eds. Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography. Paris: Revue Noire, 1998. Schneider, Jürg. “Portrait Photography: A Visual Currency in the Atlantic Visualscape.” In Portrait Photography in African Worlds, edited by John Peffer and Elisabeth Cameron, 35–65. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Sekula, Allan. “The Body and the Archive.” October 39 (1986): 3–64. Sekula, Allan. “The Traffic in Photo­graphs.” In Only Skin Deep, edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis, 79–109. New York: International Center of Photography and Harry Abrams, 2003. Sembène, Ousmane. Les bouts de bois de dieu [God’s bits of wood]. Paris: Poche Roman Afrique, 1982 [1960]. Sembène, Ousmane. Mandabi [The money order]. dvd. Comptoir Français du Film Production, 1968. Sembène, Ousmane. The Money Order. Translated by Clive Wake and John O. Reed. London: Heinemann, 1972. Shumard, Ann. A Durable Memento, Portraits by Augustus Washington. Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian, 1999. Simone, AbdouMaliq. For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Sliwinski, Sharon. ­Human Rights in Camera. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Sokkelund, Svend Erik, and Tanya Elder. Hamadou Bocoum. Copenhagen: Fotografisk Center, 1996. Le Soleil. Nos. 231–234. February 11, 1971–­February 15, 1971. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador, 1977. Sow Fall, Aminata. “Vague Memory of a Confiscated Photo.” In Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, edited by Pascal Martin Saint Leon, Jean Loup Pivin, and Simon Njami, 64–65. Paris: Revue Noire, 1998. Sprague, Stephen. “Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves.” In Photography’s Other Histories, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson, 240–260. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Stenger, Erich. 100 Jahre: Photographie und die Agfa, 1839–1939. Munich: Knorr and Hirth, 1939.

Bibliography

317

Strassler, Karen. Refracted Visions: Popu­lar Photography and National Modernity in Java. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Stultiens, Andrea. Ebifananyi I: The Photographer Deo Kyakulagira. Utrecht: Ydoc and History in Pro­gress Uganda, 2014. Tagg, John. The Burden of Repre­sen­ta­tion: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Amherst: University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Press, 1988. unesco. “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Owner­ship of Cultural Property 1970.” http://­www​ .­unesco​.­org​/­new​/­en​/­culture​/­themes​/­illicit​-­trafficking​-­of​-­cultural​-­property​/­1970​ -­convention​/­text​-­of​-­the​-­convention​/­. Van Gelder, Alex, ed. Life and Afterlife in Benin. London: Phaidon, 2005. Viditz-­Ward, Vera. “Photography in Sierra Leone, 1850–1918.” Africa 57, no. 4 (1987): 510–517. Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2002. Wendl, Tobias. “Entangled Traditions: Photography and the History of Media in Southern Ghana.” res: Anthropology and Aesthetics no. 39 (2001): 78–101. Wendl, Tobias, and Nancy du Plessis. ­Future Remembrance: Photography and Image Arts in Ghana. dvd. iwf Wissen and Medien Göttingen, 1998. Werbner, Richard P. Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power. London: Zed Books, 1998. Werner, Jean-­François. “Photography and Individualization in Con­temporary Africa: An Ivoirian Case Study.” Visual Anthropology 14, no. 3 (2001): 251–268. Werner, Jean-­François. “Twilight of the Studios.” In Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, edited by Pascal Martin Saint Leon, Jean Loup Pivin, and Simon Njami, 92–97. Paris: Revue Noire, 1998. Wilder, Gary. Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the ­Future of the World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Wilder, Gary. The French Imperial Nation-­State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the World Wars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

318

Bibliography

INDEX

The following place-­names have not been indexed due to the frequency of their occurrence: l’Afrique Occidentale Française (the aof), Benin, Cotonou, Dahomey, Dakar, France, Porto-­Novo, Saint-­Louis, and Senegal. Other cities and countries in west Africa have been indexed, as have the names of par­tic­u­lar neighborhoods in the cities listed above. References to illustrations appear in italics.

Abban, Felicia, 81 Abiodun, Rowland, 21, 31, 268n26 Adjovi, Benoît, 108, 114–16, 237; censorship and, 168–71; id-­card photography, participation in, 207, 219, 221; influence of vaudoun in photo­graphs by, 110–14, 111, 112, 221; itinerant practice, 110–14, 214–15; po­liti­cal photography, participation in, 175, 177, 187, 200–202 affective turn, 26 African-­made cameras, 211, 266n14. See also djoni djoni African trade routes: movement of cameras along, 12, 14, 71, 212, 266n13, 267nn15–16 African unity, 147–49, 161; as alternative to in­de­pen­dence, 241–43; Mali Federation and, 244–52; Western Sahara and, 253–57. See also nonalignment; pan-­Africanism Afrique Équatoriale Française (aef), 94, 284n3 Afrique 50: censorship of, 171 Agbodjélou, Joseph Moïse, 262; id-­card photography, participation in, 207–8

Agbokou, Mme, 81 Agfa, 12, 14; advertisements, 129, 144, 147, 153–54; merger with Gevaert, 11, 270n3; Portriga-­Rapid paper, 35, 36, 270n1 Aïdara, Abdoul Hadir, 84, 86, 90, 279n13 Ainslie, Rosalynde, 123–25 Algeria: colonial identity documentation in, 225, 231–32; colonial urban planning in, 88–91; revolt of French Army in, 251; war in Western Sahara and, 240, 256–57, 305n33; west African soldiers in, 136 Ali, Muhammad, 145 Amina (magazine), 81, 145 Anderson, Benedict, 123, 138–40; Partha Chatterjee critique of, 288n63 angled bust portrait. See diagonal ­angle anthropological turn, 26–27, 278n1. See also ethnographic methods anticolonial newspapers, 124–25, 192–93 Apithy, Sourou-­Migan, 164, 196 Appadurai, Arjun, 61–64, 103–8, 282n59 Arab League, 252, 305n30 Armstrong, Neil, 116 Augustt Azaglo, Cornélius Yao: id-­card photography, participation in, 54,

Augustt Azaglo (continued) 215–16, 295n2; photo­graphs exhibited at Guggenheim, 204, 295n1; pricing and numbers of prints, 297n11, 297n14, 300n56 Azoulay, Ariella, 27, 29, 269n45–46 backdrops, 5, 108–16, 283n76; prayer mats as, 93; theory of the colonial backdrop, 61–64, 103–8, 282n59; wall calendars as influence on, 115. See also Islam: influence on photography; props Bailey, Jim, 122. See also Drum (magazine) Bamako. See Mali Bamba, Cheikh Amadou, 20, 294n65 Bamba, Mory, 261 Barber, Karin, 62–63, 126, 149, 287n33 Bayart, Jean-­François, 240–42 Béhanzin, 294n65 Benjamin, Walter, 25, 69, 269n36. See also Marxist approaches to photography Berthiot Bloc Métal, 7, 130 Bhattacharya, Neeladri, 140–41 Biafran War, 145 Bigham, Elizabeth, 103 Bingo (magazine), 39, 64, 83, 96–98, 117–24, 126–50, 154, 174; circulation figures, 288n47; id-­card photo­graphs published in, 146–47, 219, 221; po­liti­ cal photo­graphs as puzzle games in, 151–53, 152 Black studies: approaches to photography, 27, 31 Bloc Démocratique Sénégalais (bds), 102, 124 Bobo-­Dioulasso. See Burkina Faso Borgatti, Jean, 209, 298n21 Bowles, Laurian, 81 Brilliant, Richard, 209, 298n21 Brown, Carolyn, 94 Buckley, Liam, 57, 102, 183, 208–15 bureaucratic photography. See colonial identity documentation; cri minological photography; id-­card photography

320

Index

Burkina Faso, xiv, 12, 174, 212, 258, 302n7; first studios in, 293n43; id-­card photo­graphs of mi­grant laborers from, 295n2 Campt, Tina, 27 Caristan (no first name), 50, 273n33, 300n61 Caristan, Robert, 148, 153 carpenters: ties to photog­raphers, 102, 211, 282n53 Casablanca. See Morocco Casset, Mama, 42, 50–51, 57, 132, 133, 172, 300n61. See also diagonal ­angle Casset, Salla, 51, 55–56, 167, 224; in role of Ambrose in Mandabi, 274nn46 censorship: colonial vs. postcolonial, 167–70; Décret Laval, 171, 291n16, 292n22; po­liti­cal photography and, 159–60, 165; protectionism and, 171–75, 292n36 Centre Béninois de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (cbrst), 262–63, 305n40 Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal (crds), 75, 178; library holdings, 185, 191–93, 200, 246; Mobutu, 1971 visit to, 184–85; photographic collections, xiv, 179–80, 195, 198, 246; photographic preservation initiatives, participation in, 262 Chapuis, Frédérique, 43–44, 49–50, 200n56, 297n12 Chatterjee, Partha, 29; critique of Benedict Anderson, 288n63 citizenship: colonial and imperial formations of, 28, 90–91, 125; in con­ temporary theories of photography, 27, 269n45, 290n2 (Intro); id-­card photography and, 160–61, 206–14, 235; Loi de Lamine Guèye and, 166, 190 civility: colonial legacies of, 28, 91, 269n46, 288n54, 288n63; in con­ temporary theories of photography,

206, 269n45, 290n2; in theories of bourgeois public sphere, 139–40 civilizing mission. See civility: colonial legacies of civil servants: spread of photography and, xiv, 50, 136, 174 Cold War. See nonalignment; Western Sahara colonial administration: African photog­ raphers employed by, 6, 8, 50, 166–67, 172–73, 229, 265n2, 300n61. See also civil servants colonial backdrop, theory of. See backdrops colonial identity documentation: in l’Afrique Occidentale Française, 225–33; in Algeria, 231–32; in Benin (Dahomey), 229, 231, 231–33, 234, 253, 301n78; in British, Dutch, and German territories in Africa, 233–35; in Indochina, 227, 231–32; in Senegal, 301n72. See also criminological photography; id-­card photography colonial nostalgia, 240–42, 302n4 colonial picture postcards, 268n24, 284n2 colonial policing, 301n72, 301nn74–75, 301n77. See also colonial identity documentation; criminological photography colorization: with gouache, 221, 222; with vaccination ­needles, 32, 65–66, 276n79 color photography: African photog­ raphers, impact on, 6, 51, 197, 272n27; color film advertisements, 129. See also destruction of negatives commemorative textiles, 100–101. See also fashion: ties to photography communion photo­graphs, 114, 283n83 Confédération Générale des Travailleurs Africains (cgta), 143 Cooper, Frederick, 166, 287n38 Côte d’Ivoire, 22, 57, 171, 213, 261, 270n1; id-­card photography in, 204, 215, 219,

295nn1–2, 296nn4–5, 297n11; massacre at Dimbokro, 171; photographic preservation initiatives in, 261; wage-­ earning population in, 277n90 creolization, 28, 48, 90–91, 279n13, 280n19 criminological photography: African photog­raphers’ participation in, 208, 233; distinction from id-­card photography, 297n16; vernacular, 301n79; Western theories of, 234, 296n3, 296n7 Crooks, Julie, 48, 91, 173, 273n32 da Costa, George S. A., 172 Dakar-­Matin (newspaper), 180, 293n 48 Dakar-­Niger railway, 249, 250, 251 Dawn, Marpessa, 145 de Breteuil, Charles, 120–24 de Breteuil, Michel, 121–24, 134–35, 145, 285n17 decolonial imagination: photographic preservation initiatives and, 260–63; photography and, 11, 25, 31, 102, 194, 240–43; transcolonial visual publics and, 120, 135–43. See also African unity; po­liti­cal imagination; po­liti­cal photography Décret Laval, 171, 291n16, 292n22. See also censorship de Gaulle, Charles: referendum on French Community, 250–51 Dembélé, Mountaga, 54, 274n44 DeMesse, Zinsou Félix: Beninese ministry of information archives, destruction of, 196–97; id-­card photography, knowledge of, 219; po­liti­cal photography, participation in, 164, 195–96, 255 Demo­cratic Republic of Congo, 183–85. See also Mobutu Sese Seko destruction of negatives, 41, 194, 197, 294n73; in Beninese ministry of information archives, 196–97; in Senegal River, 51, 272n27. See also endangered archives

Index

321

diagonal ­angle, 2, 32, 35, 37, 57–62, 58–60, 275n54; Harcourt as influence on, 63–64; reversed diagonal ­angle, 46, 59, 61; role of enlargers in, 65 Diakhaté, Lydie, 61, 63, 180 Diallo, Nafissatou Niang, 276n85 Diawara, Manthia, 171, 242, 292n23 Diop, Caroline, 31, 164 Diop, Guibril André, 41, 43, 65–75, 93, 96, 271n3. See also Diop, Mouhamadou Diop, Mouhamadou (Doudou), 38–45, 46, 64–72, 83–88, 85, 89, 98, 168, 213; Agfa, relationship to, 12, 14, 36–37; colorization techniques, 32, 65–66, 276n79; employment by French army, 41, 265n2, 300n61; Kodak, relationship to, 11, 266n11; pricing and numbers of prints, 51, 66–68, 276n81; self-­portraits, 35, 73; sync sound experiments, 87. See also diagonal ­angle; Diop, Guibril André; Teinde Dieng, Ndèye Diouf, Abdou, 184, 188 Diouf, Mamadou, 63–64, 79–80, 103; concept of vernacular cosmopolitanism, 90–91, 278n6 djoni djoni, 212, 298n24 documentary photography. See po­liti­cal photography Dossa, Zinsou Cosme, 6, 15, 56; censorship and, 168–72; employment by colonial administration, 6, 8, 166–67, 265n2; id-­card photography, participation in, 207, 219; influence of Islam in photo­graphs by, 93; po­liti­cal photography, participation in, 164–67, 255; posthumous relocation of archive, 258–62, 305nn36–38; pricing and numbers of prints, 51–54, 68 Drum (magazine), 122, 285nn16–17 Duchemin, Gérard, 102 École du Patrimoine Africain (épa), 261 Ebony (magazine), 122

322

Index

Éboué, Charles, 131, 134 Éboué, Félix, 131, 287n37 Edwards, Elizabeth (anthropologist), 26 Egypt: colonial urban planning in, 88–91; early photography in, 9 Elder, Tanya, 65, 173–74; on id-­card photography in French Soudan and Mali, 184, 204–5, 213, 223, 229, 298n23, 298n25 electricity: itinerant practice and, 212–13, 297n13; in studios, 65, 68 embroiderers: as studio assistants, 102 endangered archives, 74, 182, 193–200, 259–60, 263. See also destruction of negatives; photographic preservation initiatives Enwezor, Okwui, 61–62, 103, 114, 204 èrè ibeji. See twins Eshun, Kodwo, 240 ethnographic methods, 5, 14–18, 74–80, 277n95. See also anthropological turn ethnographic photography: fashion photography, convergence with, 102; in postcolonial archives, 198, 305n40; snapshot photography, convergence with, 117, 284n2 Euvrard, Gil-­François, 123–25 Fabian, Johannes, 77, 277n95 Fall, Fatima, xiv, 75–76, 262 Fall, Karim, 191 Fanon, Frantz, 88–91 fashion: photography and, 83, 107, 145, 261, 284n2; in po­liti­cal campaigns, 101–2 fashion photography: convergence with ethnographic photography, 102 Faye, Ibrahima: ­career as regional governor, 245, 303n16; passing of, 257; photog­raphers, collaboration with, 158, 160, 178–83, 245; po­liti­cal photography from the collection of, 157–64, 176–88, 195, 245–50; portrait of, 199 female photog­raphers: Felicia Abban, 81; Mme Agbokou, 81; Jacqueline Mathey,

278n100; Mlle N’Kegbe, 81; Awa Tounkara, 82. See also Teinde Dieng, Ndèye Firstenberg, Lauri, 61 Fouta Toro. See la Région du Fleuve France Photo, 11, 266 Fraser, Nancy, 288n56 Freetown. See Sierra Leone French Section of the Workers’ International (sfio), 124. See also Bloc Démocratique Sénégalais French Soudan. See Mali The Gambia, 57, 102, 208–15 Garanger, Marc, 255, 300n54 Garnier, Pierre, 173 Gaye, Meïssa, 50, 265n2, 272nn26–27 Gbaguidi, Julien, 110 Gbeyongbe, Alexandre, 172 Gevaert. See Agfa Ghana, 99, 105, 298n23; cameras from, 12, 211–12, 266n14, 282n53; early photography in, 9, 11–12, 173; female photog­ raphers in, 81 Gold Coast. See Ghana Grabski, Joanna, 77 Guèye, Lamine: Harcourt portrait of, 64; as protégé of Soukeyna Konaré, 188–90 Guèye, Mix, 51, 132–33 Guèye Fall, Pape, 101 Guggenheim Museum, 204 Guinea-­Conakry, 50, 131; photo­graph of the falls at Koutoumé, 117; Williams Sassine on disappointments of in­de­ pen­dence in, 242; Sekou Touré, 143 Habermas, Jürgen, 139, 141, 288n56. See also public sphere Haney, Erin, 9, 11, 48, 262, 267n16, 273n32 Harcourt, 63–64, 276n74 Hayes, Patricia, 28, 269nn45–46, 270n51 heterotopia, 48, 91. See also creolization Holm, J. A. C., 173

Holm, N. Walwin, 173 horses: novelty in Cotonou, 201, 295n78; wooden ­horses as props, 108, 110–11, 283n77 id-­card photography, 160–61, 204–26, 239, 295nn1–2; in Bingo, 146–47, 219, 221; Indonesia, parallels with, 236–37; pricing and numbers of prints, 54, 225–26, 297n11, 297n14, 297n18, 300n56; relationship to portraiture, 204, 209–10, 213–16, 234–35, 238–39, 302n90; South Africa, parallels with, 238–39. See also colonial identity documentation; colonial policing; criminological photography identités. See id-­card photography indexicality, 22, 268n35; as colonial strategy, 61–62; conflation with realism, 275n63. See also plasticity Indochina: colonial identity documentation in, 227, 231–32; west African soldiers in, 93–94, 96, 136, 281n33, 281n35 Indonesia: id-­card photography in, 236–37 informality, 38, 84, 98–99, 277n91; postcolonial state and, 281nn37–38 Initiative Panafricaine pour la Sauvegarde des Archives Photographiques, 261 Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (ifan), 178, 198, 305n40. See also Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal (crds) Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (ifan). See Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire intermediality, 38, 84; backdrops and, 108–16; radios and, 104–8; sous verre painting and, 102–3; tailoring and, 98–102. See also movies interwar period, 5, 171, 174, 227, 232, 284n2 Islam: influence on photography, 113–14; prayer mats as backdrops, 93. See also Tabaski

Index

323

itinerant practice, 110–14, 207, 212–16, 296n10, 297n13. See also id-­card photography Jaji, Tsitsi, 147, 148–50 Jericho (Cotonou), 108, 114, 116, 214 Joachim, Paulin: Agouda (Afro-­Brazilian) heritage, 289n67; as editor of Bingo, 143–45 Johnson, John H., 122 Kano. See Nigeria Keïta, Modibo, 143, 243–52, 244, 246, 250. See also Mali Federation Keïta, Seydou, 44–45, 180, 259, 271n12, 273n32, 274n44, 276n84, 282n53, 292n37; censorship and, 167, 173, 291n16; diagonal ­angle and, 57, 61, 63, 275n53; influence of Islam in photo­ graphs by, 114; participation in id-­card photography, 207, 296n10, 297n13; pricing and numbers of prints, 54, 68; studio proximity to railroad, 44, 271n8; Western interpretations of, xvii, 61, 105, 265n1, 282n60 Keller, Candace, 61, 107–8, 165, 167, 173 Kérékou, Mathieu, 291nn18–19, 304n26; ban on public photography, 169–70; Beninese ministry of information archives, destruction of, 196–97; National Archives, deposit of photo­ graphs in, 253–57 Kidjo, Franck, 197, 283n75 Kilian, Yitka, 127, 130, 287n36 Killingray, David, 172–73 Kodak, 11, 266nn11–12; advertisements, 150–51, 153–54 Kodjo, Paul, 261 Konaré, Soukeyna, 188–93, 189, 293n59 ­labor organ­izing: decolonization and, 1, 131, 166, 287n38, 291n10, 304n23 Lacroix, Jean-­Bernard, 101 Lagos. See Nigeria

324

Index

Lamunière, Michelle, 99, 182 Larkin, Brian, 91–93, 106–7 Latécoère, 122 Lawani, Siaka, 12, 197, 212, 294n74 Lebanese: photog­raphers in west Africa, 50, 65, 131, 274n45; sous verre painting, influence on, 282n55 Léki Dago, Ananías, 261 Liberia: early photography in, 45, 47–48. See also Washington, Augustus licensing restrictions: colonial vs. postcolonial, 165–70; protectionism and, 171–75, 292n36. See also censorship Lips, Julius, 267n21 Lisk-­Carew, Alphonso, 173 Loi de Lamine Guèye, 166, 190. See also Guèye, Lamine Lopez, Julien, 47, 51, 195 Lumumba, Patrice, 143–44 Ly, Oumar, 5, 114–15, 188, 258, 284n86; camera from Ghana, 211–12, 298n24; id-­card photography, participation in, 206–7, 213, 300n56; photo­graphs exhibited at Bamako Biennale, 297n12; posthumous relocation of archive, 260 Maga, Hubert, 6, 169, 169 Magee, Carol, 77 Magnin, André, 44 mail-­order labs, 6, 265n1 (Intro) Malcolm X, 143–44, 148 Mali: censorship and licensing restrictions in, 165–69, 173–75; first studios in, 12; French troops in during fieldwork, 168; id-­card photography in, 204–5, 207, 213, 223, 226, 229, 298n23, 298n25; Mopti, 65, 107, 283n84; po­liti­ cal photography in, 165, 167, 184. See also Mali Federation; Keïta, Modibo Mali Federation, 161, 242–52, 302n7; reasons for failure, 248, 303n12, 303n14. See also African unity Mandabi (film): Salla Casset in role of Ambrose, 274nn46, 299n50; Lebanese-­

owned studios depicted in, 274n45; photography and postcolonial bureaucracy depicted in, 55–56, 223–26 Mann, Gregory, 94, 281n33, 281n35, 300n61 marriages “by photo,” 83, 93–96 Martens, George, 166, 277n90, 287n38 Marxist approaches to photography, 25–27, 69–70, 91, 269nn36–37 Maurel et Prom, 5, 115 Mauritania, 256, 286n26, 303n8 Mbaye, Saliou, 101 Mbembe, Achille, 183, 240 Medina (Dakar), 51, 63, 132, 133 Mecca. See Islam Mehmet of Alexandria, 9, 266n5 Mèhomè, Baudelaire and Ézéchiel, 54, 208. See also Mèhomè, Édouard Mèhomè, Édouard, 56, 63; criminological photography, participation in, 208; id-­card photography, participation in, 54, 208, 219–23 Mèhomey, Ida, 208, 274n41. See also Mèhomè, Édouard Mermoz, Jean, 122 métissage. See creolization Metropolitan Museum of Art, 79–80 Meurillon, Georges, 265n1 (Preface) Micheli, Angelo, 22, 268n29, 274n47 Mießgang, Thomas, 57 Mignolo, Walter, 29–30 Mitchell, Timothy, 88–91 Mobutu Sese Seko, 183–85, 184, 201, 305n28 Monrovia. See Liberia Monti, Nicolas, 172 Mopti. See Mali Morgenthau, Ruth Schachter, 200 Morocco, 6–­7, 11, 130, 285n13, 289n81; war in Western Sahara and, 256–57, 303n8, 305n33; west African soldiers in, 96, 136 Mourides, 20, 103, 268n22, 278n6 Mouvement Socialiste d’Union Sénégalaise, 134

movie cameras, 87; advertisements for, 153–54 movies: colonial censorship of, 171–72, 291n16; movie news and star gossip, 145, 276n73; moviegoing in Dakar, 1960 survey about, 142–43; photography, influence on, 63–64, 98 mug shots. See colonial identity documentation; criminological photography Mussai, Renée, 81 Mustafa, Hudita, 101 Naggar, Carole, 225 Namibia: colonial identity documentation in, 233–35 National Archives: of Benin, 161, 232–33, 242–43, 253–56, 262, 305n38; as colonial proj­ect, 182–83; of Senegal, 198. See also Centre Béninois de Recherche Scientifique et Technique (cbrst); Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal (crds); Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (ifan) Ndoye, Khady, 109. See also Faye, Ibrahima negative dumping: in Senegal River, 51, 272n27. See also color photography: impact on African photog­raphers; destruction of negatives Newell, Stephanie, 62, 120, 125–26; concept of transcolonial reading public, 140–41 Niang Siga, Fatou, 103, 270n2 (Intro) Nicodemus, Everlyn, 262 Nigeria, 12, 21, 91, 229, 268n31, 283n76; early photography in, 172–73; marriages “by photo” in, 94; radio technologies in, 106–7. See also Yoruba: funeral rituals and photography; Yoruba: regional influence of photog­raphers Nimis, Érika, 167, 172–74, 283n76, 300n61; on early photography in

Index

325

Atlantic world, 45; on regional influence of Yoruba photog­raphers, 47–48, 267n15, 292n20 1972 coup d’état in Benin (Dahomey): destruction of ministry of information archives subsequent to, 196–97. See also Kérékou, Mathieu Njie, Ousmane, 208, 212–13, 297n18 N’Kegbe, Mlle, 81 nonalignment, 243, 249, 252, 256, 303n8, 304n25. See also Keïta, Modibo Ogou, Franck, 261–62, 265n3, 299n40 Oguibe, Olu, 22, 266n5 Olibé, Alphonse, 262–63 Organ­ization of African Unity (oau), 252, 305n30 Ouando (Porto-­Novo), 196, 253 Ouédraogo, Jean-­Bernard, xiv, 12, 174, 212, 293n43 Ouidah, 110–13, 214; early photography in, 299n40 Owo: funeral rituals and photography, 21. See also Nigeria pan-­Africanism, 143–50, 161. See also African unity; nonalignment Paoletti, Giulia, 103 Paris-­Dakar (newspaper), 122–23 Paris-­Soir (newspaper), 122 Parti Socialiste d’Action Sénégalaise (psas), 167, 190 passports. See colonial identity documentation; id-­card photography Perret, Thierry, 120, 123 photog­raphers’ ­unions, 15, 56, 170, 292n20 photographic preservation initiatives, 260–63, 305n39 Phu, Thy, 28, 290n2 Picton, John, 100 Pinney, Christopher, 26, 62, 76, 275n63 Pinther, Kerstin, 99–100

326

Index

plasticity, 9, 22, 194, 268n33. See also decolonial imagination; indexicality; twins Plateau (Dakar), 133, 274n45, 276n85 Podor, 5, 63, 114–15, 207, 211, 298n29 Polisario Front. See Western Sahara po­liti­cal imagination, 9, 11, 37, 102, 108, 270n52; Partha Chatterjee definition of, 29; in con­temporary theories of photography, 25–28, 269nn45–46, 270n51. See also citizenship; decolonial imagination; po­liti­cal photography po­liti­cal photography: African photog­ raphers’ participation in, 4–5, 51, 159–60, 163–71, 175–79, 200–202; changing definitions of, 165, 182–83, 186–87; in exhibitions, 295n79; in postcolonial archives, 184–86, 194–200, 242–57, 205n38, 294n72; publication of, 180–82; puzzle games based on, 151–53, 152 Pont Faidherbe, 84–87, 85 Pontiac (lens manufacturer), 6, 7, 11, 130 portraiture: African vs. Eu­ro­pean theories of, 19, 21–22, 91, 209, 267nn20–21, 298n21 pose: “traditional” west African, 53, 189, 191, 218, 237, 238; Yoruba aesthetics, influence on, 294n64. See also diagonal ­angle prayer mats, 93. See also Islam: influence on photography Préservation du patrimoine photographique africain (3pa): West African Image Lab, 262 pricing, 51–54, 66–68, 225–26, 276n81, 297n11, 300n56 print cultures: in west Africa, 120–26, 286n18, 286n27, 287n30; in Western po­liti­cal theory, 138–39. See also public sphere: colonial; transcolonial reading public; transcolonial visual public props, 103–16, 214, 282n60; radios as, 5, 103, 105–8, 109, 220; telephones as, 3, 5,

42, 92, 103, 105, 110; wooden ­horses as, 110–11, 283n77. See also backdrops protectionism, 171–75, 292n36. See also censorship; licensing restrictions public sphere: bourgeois, 139; colonial, 140–41; distinction of colonial from bourgeois, 140–44; studio as, 57. See also print cultures; transcolonial reading public; transcolonial visual public quatre communes, 48, 90, 190, 278n6, 280n20, 285n14 Rabine, Leslie, 80, 101–2, 179, 197–98, 290n1 (Intro), 303n11 radios: collective listening and radio technologies, 106, 107, 123; Grundig and Telefunken advertisements, 147; licensing restrictions on, 291n16; as props, 5, 103, 105–8, 109, 220 Ramadan. See Islam: influence on photography Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (rda), 171, 252 referendum on French Community, 250–51 la Région du Fleuve, 165, 179, 195, 207, 216, 263 reportage. See po­liti­cal photography Resolution Photo (ngo), 262, 305n39 Rizzo, Lorena, 234–35, 290n2 (Intro) Roberts, Allen and Polly, 20, 268n24 Roberts, Andrew, 171–72 Robinson, Sugar Ray, 117, 145 Rolleiflex, 5 Rufisque, 120, 127–28, 130, 134, 190, 285n14 Sahrawi. See Western Sahara sailors: colonial identity documentation and, 229–31; frequent visitors to studios, 115 Sakaly, Abderramane, 167, 283n84 Sarr, Abdou Khadre, 193, 286n26 Sassine, Williams, 242

Second World War, 1, 5, 36, 38, 64, 94–96, 166, 270n2, 271n10, 300n61 Sekula, Allan, 25, 69, 234, 269n36, 296n3. See also Marxist approaches to photography Sembène, Ousmane. See Mandabi (film) Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 121, 124, 157, 159, 163, 178, 186, 190, 247, 250, 287n37, 294n60, 304n22, 304nn24–25; Mali Federation and, 250–51; Mobutu Sese Seko and, 185; self-­presentation in photography, 247, 303n11 serial rephotography, 24, 191–92 Seye, Bouna Medoune, 43, 77–78, 87, 274n45; passing of 258–59 Sidibé, Malick, 44–45, 61, 182, 258, 281n42, 291n16 Sierra Leone: early photography in, 45, 48, 91, 173, 272n20 Socé Diop, Ousmane: as editor of Bingo, 118–21, 124, 133–35; Harcourt portrait of, 64 Le Soleil (newspaper), 82, 185, 246 Sontag, Susan, 25–26 Sor (Saint-­Louis), 41–45, 51, 168–91, 279n9; connection to island via Pont Faidherbe, 84–87; as working-­class neighborhood, 38, 70 sous verre painting 102–3, 282nn55–56. See also intermediality South Africa, 122, 285n17; colonial identity documentation in, 233–35; “wedding portraits,” 238–39. See also Drum (magazine) South-­West Africa. See Namibia Sow Fall, Aminata, 50 Sprague, Stephen, 21, 268n28, 294n64. See also twins Strassler, Karen, 236–37 strikes, 166, 304n23. See also ­labor organ­izing studio hours, 41, 45, 271n4 Stultiens, Andrea, 267n21 Sufi. See Mourides

Index

327

Sursock, Émile, 49, 50 Sy, Doro, 51, 57 Sylla, El Hadj Adama, 195, 293n46; as curator and museum professional, 178, 184–85, 192–93, 243; Modibo Keïta, response to photo­graphs of, 245–49; on marriages “by photo,” 94–96; po­liti­cal photography, participation in, 163–65, 175–88, 194, 200–201 Tabaski, 78; itinerant practice, influence on, 213, 216; urban studio practice, influence on, 299n35. See also Islam: influence on photography Tagg, John, 69, 296n3. See also Marxist approaches to photography tailors: ties to photog­raphers, 83, 98–102 Tangiers. See Morocco Teinde Dieng, Ndèye, xv, 14, 43, 277n92; darkroom work, 72, 74–76, 79–82. See also Diop, Mouhamadou telephones: Cotonou-­Paris telephone line, 169; as props, 3, 5, 42, 92, 103, 105, 110. Thiam, Ibrahima, 260–61 De Tilène au Plateau: Une enfance dakaroise (Diallo), 276n85 Togo, 147, 286n24, female photog­raphers in, 81, 278n100 Tométy, Justin, 108, 175, 177 Tounkara, Awa, 82 Touré, Samory, 294n65 Touré, Sekou, 143 transatlantic slave trade: abolition, effect on photography, 47–48, 272nn16–17, 272nn19–20, 272nn23–27, 273n30; abolition, effect on west African economies, 70; Agouda (Afro-­Brazilian) heritage in west Africa, 289n67; effect on west African economies, 277n87 transcolonial reading public, 140–41. See also print cultures; public sphere; transcolonial visual public

328

Index

transcolonial visual public, 120, 135–44. See also print cultures; public sphere twins, 4, 23, 274n47; twin rituals and photography, 21–22, 220, 268nn28–29 unclaimed portraits, 56–57 Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (ups), 134 United Nations: war in Western Sahara and, 255–57 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organ­ization (unesco), 193, 259, 305n34 Upper Volta. See Burkina Faso vaccinostyl, 32, 65–66, 276n79 vaudoun, 110–14, 111, 112, 221, 283n82 Vautier, René: censorship of Afrique 50, 171 vernacular cosmopolitanism, 88–91. See also creolization Vernet, Horace, 9, 266n5 Vieyra, Paulin, 171, 292n23 wall calendars, 115. See also backdrops Warner, Michael, 288n63 Washington, Augustus, 45, 48–49, 271n15, 272nn16–17 “wedding portraits,” 238–39, 302n90 Wendl, Tobias, 105, 278n1 Werner, Jean-­François, 22, 54, 57, 204, 213, 215, 296n5, 297n11 Western Sahara, 161, 242, 254, 254–57, 303n8, 304n27 Wilder, Gary, 299n52, 304n22 Yoruba: aesthetics, 294n64; funeral rituals and photography, 21; philosophies of photography, 22, 268n29; regional influence of photog­raphers, 47–48, 267n15, 292n20. See also Nigeria; twins Zaire. See Demo­cratic Republic of Congo Zaya, Octavio, 204

This page intentionally left blank

This page intentionally left blank