Photography, exhibitions and embodied futures in colonial Uganda, 1908–1960

Abstract

This article seeks to complicate our understanding of the relationship between the camera and colonial rule in Africa. Based on a case study of the Uganda Protectorate between the years 1908 and 1960, it argues that photography was in fact more deeply embedded within processes of imperial governance than we may have previously appreciated. It substantiates this claim by focusing not upon the more coercive practices of photography, or the more derogatory elements of certain kinds of photographic representation, but instead upon the political ‘work’ that photography did within this colonial society. It argues that photography here operated within a wider ecology of state-controlled media, which not only represented various ideal or model futures but actively encouraged African subjects to physically engage with them. As such, photography was a key technology of governmentality. The article will substantiate this argument with a particular focus on the Uganda Protectorate’s official Photographic Section, between the years 1947 and 1960.