Picturing the Past: Heritage, Photography, and the Politics of Appearance in a Yoruba City

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the practice of photography. Though much of this chapter can be read as a confirmation of this argument, my interest here is not in the historical sanitization of heritage but in the dynamics that have led to its formation. Photography therefore has not only been part of heritage; as 'objects of melancholy', as Susan put it, photographs helped to create it. In fact, given the attention Anderson devoted to Walter Benjamin's ideas about technological reproducibility on the one side and the very title of Anderson's seminal work on the other, one could expect to see an interest in the role of photography. Arguing that the increasing globalization of heritage through institutions such as UNESCO provides a powerful framework for the visual production of local and/or national identities, the chapter aims to help to understand this process.