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- Convenors:
-
Andrea Stultiens
(Royal Academy of Art, The Hague)
Kerstin Hacker (Anglia Ruskin University)
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- Stream:
- Arts and Culture
- Location:
- Chrystal McMillan, Seminar Room 2
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel presents critical reflections on current methods and practices of photographic image production on the African continent and the way existing photographs are reproduced, contextualised and curated. It particularly invited presentations that give a central place to the visual material.
Long Abstract:
The relationship between the production of photographs and the African continent has been shaped right from the birth of the medium. Photographs were used to document and publicise 19th century colonial explorations and 20th century famines and wars mostly for audiences outside the continent who learned about the 'other' through images. All too often these stereotypical images are connected uncritically to illustrate research projects related to the African continent.
Recent technological developments give African and non African photographers working on the continent new opportunities to engage with global audiences. This makes it necessary for all those reaching out beyond local applications of photographs t disrupt existing methods/methodologies of photographic production. It fosters connections between theory and practice, south and north, past and present as well as historical and contemporary pictures.
This panel invited photographic practitioners and theorists to discuss reflections on critical methods and practices of image production and the way existing photographs are reproduced, contextualised and curated.
The panel hopes to contribute to discussions on
- the notion of representation, in and through photographs
- explorations of the relevance of the materiality of photographs,
- new narrative forms that are made possible by the continuous development of media which carry and present photographs,
- ways to foster visual self-governance of states and societal groups
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Bianca van Laun (University of the Western Cape)
Paper short abstract:
The paper investigates the afterlives of prison identification photographs of individuals hanged by the apartheid state in South Africa during the 1960s. It considers the materiality, mobility and temporalities of these photographs, recovered and reinterpreted through a memorialisation project.
Paper long abstract:
For many of the families of those hanged by the apartheid state in South Africa during the 1960s, their bodies remained invisible and missing. Judicial executions, and the corpses they produced, were hidden entirely from the scrutiny of the public and press. As the apartheid state claimed and maintained control over the bodies of these condemned prisoners- both in life and death- families were prohibited from viewing the corpse or attending the burial. This paper examines the ways in which the prisoner files, documents, and photographs in particular, produced through the bureaucratic procedures that processed prisoners to death on the gallows, have been reclaimed and repurposed by post-apartheid nation building and memorialisation projects. Under the auspices of the Gallows Memorialisation Project, bureaucratic records and photographs have been recovered from the apartheid state archives, reinterpreted and placed into different and new 'presentational circumstances' that desires to overturn their original oppressive logic. However, as the photographs and documents are used to fix the identities of particular individuals that the Project seeks to commemorate, the logic that drives their reproduction in the new configurations and contexts seems to replicate the bureaucratic rationality that produced them. In replicating the bureaucratic rationality that produced them, the biographical subject is unable to escape this logic of the prison photograph and remains missing.
Kerstin Hacker (Anglia Ruskin University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how collaborative networks from the global north and south can challenge visual narratives of nations and promote visual self-governance through photography. The paper draws on the findings of the photographic collaborations between the author and photographers from Zambia.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how collaborative artistic networks from the global North and South can challenge existing visual narratives and promote visual self-governance through photography. Artistic exchanges can catalyze change in complex national and historic visual narratives and might have found ways to overcome the 'binary agenda of colonialism' (Rings, 2017).
I argue that the increasing diversity of collaborative art interactions have so far not been given enough attention in post-colonial and neo-colonial studies. Most studies focus on the notion of the 'other", 'difference' (Said 1978, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o 2000, Bhabha 1994) and geographical separation (Blaut, 1993).
During photographic workshops in 2017 and 2019 with a group of Zambian photographers, visual artists and educators at the Visual Arts Council of Zambia, we aimed to embrace inclusive and complex visual narratives that broaden the understanding of current and historic societal events in Zambia. A lot of images from Zambia simplify the visual narrative and feed into established photographic depictions of low-income countries surrounded poverty, wildlife and dependent on foreign aid. These stories are mainly published through Western media outlets and fed back to the country through digital TV and international papers. There are very few opportunities to discuss these representations in a national context and to question its accuracy in representing the country as a whole. The paper will showcase outcomes from the workshops and will explore potential contradictions between and confluences of post-colonial and neoliberal meta-narrative and the artistic (micro) interactions.
Vanessa Peterson (Tate Modern)
Paper short abstract:
Photography festivals are concentrated in Europe & America, thus preventing engagement by practitioners away from centres of production. In recent times, photography festivals in Africa are changing this discourse, from Accra to Lagos to Addis Ababa. I would like to consider what that means today.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past 20 years, there has been a marked increase in photography festivals taking place on the African continent, rather than Europe or America. I would like to consider what this means for African photographers, who are often working against the grain in terms of reclaiming narratives. African photographers, curators and editors are working alongside in ways which restore the balance of power back to those who have traditionally lacked control of their stories, due to lack of access, travel, high financial costs. I will analyse the rise of three photography festivals: Lagos Photo Festival, Addis Foto Fest and most recently the first edition of Ghana's first photography festival Nuku Photo Festival, to further understand how these institutions are disrupting and altering the photographic landscape not just in Africa, but globally.