Early Histories of Photography in West Africa (1860–1910)

African patrons and entrepreneurs quickly picked up the new technology, which circulated and flourished through local and global networks of exchange. Photographers, clients, and images moved across the region often traversing both national and ethnic boundaries.
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Five Men, Lutterodt and Son Studio, Albumen silver print from glass negative, Ghana
Multiple artists/makers
ca. 1880–85
West Africa (Senegal) Dakar—Native griot with his guitar [Afrique Occidentale (Sénégal) Dakar—Griot indigène avec sa guitare], Louis Hostalier (Senegal)  French, Postcard format photomechanical reproduction published by Metharam Bros. et Cie. Dakar
Louis Hostalier (Senegal)
Metharam Brothers et Cie
ca. 1900
Dakar—Mulatto (Senegal) [Dakar—Mulâtresse (Sénégal)], Jean Benyoumoff  Senegalese, Postcard format photomechanical reproduction published by Jean Benyoumoff
Jean Benyoumoff
Jean Benyoumoff
1900–1910
François-Edmond Fortier  French, gelatin silver print
François-Edmond Fortier
1900–1910
1910s
In Nioro (Sudan)—Wives and son of Wolof trader [A Nioro (Soudan)—Femmes et Fils de Marchand Ouolofes], Louis Hostalier (Senegal)  French, Postcard format photomechanical reproduction
Louis Hostalier (Senegal)
Déposé
ca. 1900–1910
Self-portrait with balustrade and hanging, Alex Agbaglo Acolatse  Togolese, Glass, emulsion
Alex Agbaglo Acolatse
1910s
Dakar—Senegalese type [Dakar—Type Sénégalais], Jean Benyoumoff  Senegalese, Postcard format photomechanical reproduction
Jean Benyoumoff
Jean Benyoumoff
ca. 1900–1920
Dakar – Senegalese Type [Dakar—Type Sénégalais], Jean Benyoumoff  Senegalese, Postcard format photomechanical reproduction
Jean Benyoumoff
Jean Benyoumoff
ca. 1900–1920
Two dapper young men leaning on a chair, Alex Agbaglo Acolatse  Togolese, Glass, emulsion
Alex Agbaglo Acolatse
ca. 1915
Afrique Occidentale- Danseurs "Miniankas"- Fétiches des Cultures, François-Edmond Fortier  French, photomechanical print
François-Edmond Fortier
1905–1906
Bundoo Girls – Sierra Leone, Alphonso Lisk-Carew  Sierra Leonean, Photomechanical reproduction
Alphonso Lisk-Carew
Lisk-Carew Brothers
ca. 1905–25
Self-portrait in bow tie and hat, Alex Agbaglo Acolatse  Togolese, Glass, emulsion
Alex Agbaglo Acolatse
1920s
Dakar (Senegal)—Wolof women [Dakar (Sénégal)—Femmes Ouolofs], A. Albaret-Dakar, Postcard format photomechanical reproduction
A. Albaret-Dakar
A. Albaret-Dakar
1910s
Ogooué Lambaréné—Young girls [Ogooué Lambaréné—Jeunes Filles], Khalilou  Gabon or Senegal, Postcard format photomechanical reproduction
Khalilou
Demba N'Diaye
early 20th century
Stitch resist indigo wrapper, Cotton, dye, Wolof peoples
Wolof peoples
Early to mid-20th century
Group Portrait, Alex Agbaglo Acolatse  Togolese, Glass, emulsion
Alex Agbaglo Acolatse
1900–1920

Unlike any other medium, photography was appropriated across the world almost simultaneously. Only ten months after François Arago officially announced the inve­­ntion of photography at the French Chamber of Deputies in 1839, the first daguerreotypes had arrived in the African continent as French and Swiss artists began documenting Egypt’s wondrous monuments with their cameras. In West Africa, explorers and government officials such as the French Louis Bouët and Jules Itier were among the first to employ this technology as they traveled along the Atlantic coast in the early 1840s. Yet, if the invention of photography coincided with the consolidation of colonial empires in the region, this medium was not the monopoly of Europeans.

African patrons and entrepreneurs quickly picked up the new technology, which circulated and flourished through local and global networks of exchange. Photographers, clients, and images moved across the region often traversing both national and ethnic boundaries. The first studios were in fact often temporary ones, established by professional photographers who worked itinerantly, moving from one urban center to the next. That was the case for the African American Augustus Washington (1820–1875), who, disillusioned with America’s treatment of its black citizens, relocated to the West African nation of Liberia, where he opened the first studio in the capital of Monrovia in 1853. Through his advertisements placed in local newspapers, we can follow his journey as he visited the main African capitals along the Atlantic coast. In 1860, he arrived in Senegal, where he opened the earliest documented studio in the country. By the 1870s, a number of photographers, such as the Sierra Leonean Francis W. Joaque (ca. 1845–1900) and the Gambian John Parkes Decker, had taken up this activity, working for both European and African clienteles.

George Lutterodt (1850/55–ca. 1904) was one of these pioneers who, in 1876, opened a business with his son Albert in Accra, present-day Ghana. In one of the earliest portraits in the Met collection, dated to the early 1880s (), Lutterodt carefully orchestrates the mise-en-scène to render the refinement and eminence of the central sitter. In his traveling practice, Lutterodt not only served his cosmopolitan patrons, but also worked with and trained local apprentices. One of them, Alex Agbaglo Acolatse (1880–1975), established his own business around 1900 in neighboring Togo. Like the Lutterodts, he specialized in portraits of the upper class and documented the social and political life of the then-German colony. In one portrait (), he captures two male sitters who, as in Acolatse’s self-portrait (), pose in black suits. With their hands either in their pockets or resting on the waist, they stand in front of a backdrop depicting aristocratic interiors that identify them as members of the Togolese elite.

By the early 1900s, most West African capitals had permanent studios. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, Alphonso Lisk-Carew (1887–1969) opened a studio with his brother Arthur between 1903 and 1905. Serving a broad clientele, they produced a wide array of images, including formal portraits, event photography, and images from the interior of the country, many of which circulated in the form of postcards. In one example (), the caption introduces the sitters as “Bundoo girls,” or members of a pan-ethnic women’s association also known as Sande. Here, the young women pose in a symmetrical arrangement in front of a painted backdrop with tall trees, lavish curtains, and decadent architectural details. The sitters’ matching attire foregrounds their kinship and rich cultural heritage, which Lisk-Carew portrays with dignity.

As the Lisk-Carews’ activity suggests, between 1900 and the 1920s postcards had become a popular commodity, with which African (), European, and South Asian () photographers experimented. François-Edmond Fortier (1862–1928) is regarded as one of the most prolific European photographers who worked across French West Africa between 1900 and 1912. He is mostly known for his large collection of postcards, which he continued to reprint and reissue into the early 1920s. Featuring an abundance of ethnographic scenes () and constructed types, his works spoke to the Western desire for the exotic and the “Other.” As such, they remained popular among Europeans living in the colony and in the metropole. Among his collectors was Pablo Picasso, who owned several of his postcards and used them as inspiration for some of his sketches. While most were designed to appeal to the foreign community, Fortier occasionally produced portraits of African upper-class sitters, at least one of which circulated in the form of a cabinet print ().

Recent research has complicated the proposed scenario according to which all portraits circulating in postcard or cabinet print form were ethnographic in scope exclusively for foreign consumption (); (). There is evidence that photographers often reprinted and distributed portraits originally commissioned by private clients in commercial formats such as postcards, with or without the patrons’ consent. In one image attributed to the French photographer Louis Hostalier, two women are posed symmetrically with a young boy standing behind them (). The sitters are labeled on the postcard as “Wives of a Wolof merchant”; their hands, decorated with henna, rest on their knees. The precious stitch-resist indigo-dyed cloths () wrapped around their waists allow us to identify them as refined and wealthy inhabitants of Saint-Louis, the historical capital of Senegal. The collision between personal portrait—the single photograph—and public commodity—the postcard—may come as a surprise. Yet, practices of reproduction have been central to the history of photography since its inception across the world. As a commercial activity, photographic studios sought strategies to maximize their income by selling commissioned works not only to the original patron, but to a wider audience. In studying these early practices, it is essential to account for the ambiguity of these portraits, whose meaning often changed according to the context in which they circulated.

While more research needs to be done on the first decades of photography in West Africa, these early works attest to its popularity, especially the genre of portraiture. Building on local traditions of art making such as sculpture, the new medium both overlapped with well-rooted practices of portraiture and introduced new aesthetics and ideas. Close analysis of the composition, types of props, and choice of poses reveals localized codes and formal vocabularies. In this experimentation with new technologies, clients alongside photographers were active agents in the creation of their likeness. Through the itinerancy of these entrepreneurs, clients, and images, photography inserted Africans into a global visual economy, as consumers, producers, and patrons.


Contributors

Giulia Paoletti
Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

March 2017


Further Reading

Geary, Christraud M. “Different Visions? Postcards from Africa by European Photographers and Sponsors.” In Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards, edited by Christraud M. Geary and Virginia-Lee Webb, pp. 147–78. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.

Haney, Erin. Photography and Africa. London: Reaktion Books, 2010. See pp. 3–34.

Paoletti, Giulia and Yaëlle Biro. "Photographic Portraiture in West Africa: Notes from 'In and Out of the Studio'." Metropolitan Museum Journal 51 (2016). See on MetPublications

Peffer, John, and Elisabeth L. Cameron. Portraiture and Photography in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Saint-Léon, Pascal Martin, N’Goné Fall, and Frédérique Chapuis. Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography. Paris: Editions Revue Noire, 1999.

Schneider, Jürg. “The Topography of the Early History of African Photography.” History of Photography 34, no. 2 (2010), pp. 134–46.


Citation

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Paoletti, Giulia. “Early Histories of Photography in West Africa (1860–1910).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ephwa/hd_ephwa.htm (March 2017)