The Early Black Printmaker(s) in Ilanga Lase Natal, 1903–1905

Abstract

Art historians trace the history of printmaking as a creative endeavour among Black people in South Africa to the mid-twentieth century. While these genealogies are valuable, they exclude and are silent on the deep history of printmaking as both an artistic and trade skill within the black press. Using a polyphonic art-historical framing, I tap into the Black archive to demonstrate how printmaking was cultivated as both a creative and a visual communications strategy by Black artists during the early 1900s. By examining printed images published in the Ilanga Lase Natal newspaper from 1903 to 1905, I propose a revised chronology of printmaking as a creative endeavour among Black people. The formative Black printmaking tradition I discuss was enabled by colonial-era multinational pharmaceutical enterprises that commissioned many of the etchings and engravings that appeared. A speculative art-historical approach is used to analyse and interpret the various visualisations of New Africans created by these early Black printmakers.