Degree Program
Undergraduate
Major
Art & Architecture History
Abstract
“Developing Perceptions: Definitions of Self in African Portrait Photography”
Photography is a relatively new medium in the art world, and within this world, African photography is consistently excluded from the predominantly Western canon. Despite its introduction to Africa as a mechanism of colonialism, African photography carries with it distinct messages expressing Africa’s experience and global relationship with the world. In the cases of King Njoya, Seydou Keita, and Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, photography defines itself against the oppressive colonial and postcolonial modes of representation. In doing so, these examples of African portrait photography seek to capture a space that I refer to as an “African self”. By controlling and harnessing the agency of representation through the medium of photography, the notion of the “African self” speaks to how colonial and postcolonial African photographers rely not on Western assumptions and systems of classification, but on the ways in which their work visualizes a different representation of Africa, one based on nuances of locality, individuality, power, and globalization.
This paper is about how three African portrait photographers, King Njoya, Seydou Keita, and Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, seek to individualize themselves and their sitters in creating an “African self” by employing a medium that works to classify and de-individualize those who it captures with its lens, especially on the African continent. By examining how photographic practices and modes of distribution changed on the African continent, it becomes increasingly crucial to analyze how the people on the “other” side of the lens negotiate identity and the politics of representation.
Bridget K.Garnai is a junior, studying Art & Architecture History in the Department of Art at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She is the president of the Art Museum Student Organization, an editor for Effusions art journal, and will be a Collections Intern at the Miami University Art Museum during the Spring 2016 semester.
Start Date
12-2-2016 10:30 AM
End Date
12-2-2016 11:50 AM
Included in
Developing Perceptions: Definitions of Self in African Portrait Photography
“Developing Perceptions: Definitions of Self in African Portrait Photography”
Photography is a relatively new medium in the art world, and within this world, African photography is consistently excluded from the predominantly Western canon. Despite its introduction to Africa as a mechanism of colonialism, African photography carries with it distinct messages expressing Africa’s experience and global relationship with the world. In the cases of King Njoya, Seydou Keita, and Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, photography defines itself against the oppressive colonial and postcolonial modes of representation. In doing so, these examples of African portrait photography seek to capture a space that I refer to as an “African self”. By controlling and harnessing the agency of representation through the medium of photography, the notion of the “African self” speaks to how colonial and postcolonial African photographers rely not on Western assumptions and systems of classification, but on the ways in which their work visualizes a different representation of Africa, one based on nuances of locality, individuality, power, and globalization.
This paper is about how three African portrait photographers, King Njoya, Seydou Keita, and Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, seek to individualize themselves and their sitters in creating an “African self” by employing a medium that works to classify and de-individualize those who it captures with its lens, especially on the African continent. By examining how photographic practices and modes of distribution changed on the African continent, it becomes increasingly crucial to analyze how the people on the “other” side of the lens negotiate identity and the politics of representation.
Bridget K.Garnai is a junior, studying Art & Architecture History in the Department of Art at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She is the president of the Art Museum Student Organization, an editor for Effusions art journal, and will be a Collections Intern at the Miami University Art Museum during the Spring 2016 semester.