Old Pictures, New Approaches: Researching Historical Photographs

Abstract

the journal when it comes to the photographic products of its authors, to the insightful memoir by G. I. Jones about his own photography in Nigeria (Jones 1985). An essay by Paul Jenkins and me about photographs from Africa in the Basel Mission Archive seemed a little lost, but not entirely out of place (Jenkins & Geary 1985). Research on historical photographs from Africa was in its infancy. This issue of African Arts revisits photography in Africa, only this time the emphasis is entirely on historical photographs, for much has happened in the past six years. Among the events that focused attention on this new field of inquiry was a panel at the Triennial Symposium on African Art, held in Washington, D.C., in 1989, in which John Mack, David Prochaska, and I participated. Our papers form the core of this issue. In addition, VirginiaLee Webb, in charge of the Photography Study Collection in the Department of Primitive Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presented a fascinating paper on photographs of the which unfortunately is not included here because of space considerations. Her essay, Fact and Fiction: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of the Zulu, will therefore appear in the next issue of African Arts. The study of historical images from Africa has become a legitimate pursuit-as legitimate, although not yet quite as established, as the study of images of Native Americans or of the Rajs in India has been for some time now. As in any burgeoning field, certain theoretical and methodological directions unfold, often linked to more general developments in scholarly inquiry. Photographic research positions itself at the intersection of several major contemporary currents. Cultural anthropology has witnessed a renewed interest in visual anthropology, and many of the theoretical directions adopted in the study of photographs in general derive from this field.1 Recent anthropological research emphasizes the triadic relationship between the photographer, the subject/object, and the viewer (Fig. 1). Historians of Africa have refined their methods of approaching written sources and have also begun to look critically at pictorial records and how they complement other forms of evidence.2 The immense historical value of particular images eed hardly be pointed out. Two striking examples are illustrated here: the king of Benin on his way into exile in 1897 (Fig. 4), and the sack of the palace at Laikom in 1905, which from an art historical point of view contains exquisite evidence on the royal arts of the Kom kingdom in Cameroon (Fig. 3). Perhaps the most influential recent development that has stimulated scholars' interest in visual materials is the ava-