Logótipo Próximo Futuro

Visões sobre a negritude na fotografia

Publicado14 Jul 2015

Etiquetas Negritude fotografia arquivo Sebastião Salgado

Imagem: Fotógrafo desconhecido, Retrato de estúdio do Rei Khama III. África do Sul, início do séc. XX

A exposição Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive esteve patente no C/O Berlin, em colaboração com o African Photography from The Walther Collection. Elsa Guily, crítica de arte radicada em Berlim, analisa esta exposição, confrontando-a com outra, Genesis, de Sebastião Salgado, do ponto de vista da representação dos estereótipos e da perpetuação, ou não, da perspectiva ocidental dominante sobre a negritude.

 Its eloquent title, Distance and Desire: Encounter with the African Archive, announces its preconceived purpose upfront: asking questions as to the role of archives and the impact of the photographic image in the writing of history. The project was organized into three sections, beginning with photographs from the Walther Collection and juxtaposing images from historical archives of photos taken in southern and eastern Africa around the turn of the twentieth century with works by contemporary artists from African perspectives whose approaches seek to reinterpret the ethnographic and colonial archive. From the outset, the visitor is clued in:  it is impossible to view these photographs without realizing the violent relations inherent in European colonialism in Africa, and equally impossible to detach them from the historical contexts in which they were produced. The displacement of these archives invites us to examine our own gaze with a certain critical distance in order to reflect upon the processes of identifying and constructing difference, especially racial and gendered difference. The project re-envisions the archive as the bearer of collective memory, restoring the agency and individuality of the subjects portrayed and thereby creating alternative narratives of history.

In parallel to Distance and Desire, the Genesis project by photographer Sebastião Salgado intones an ecological message to humanity. These purportedly “socially conscious” photographs, which amount to a romantic invitation on an “eco-tourist” journey, perpetuate the representation of ethnicized bodies beside immaculate landscapes in black and white. The portraits’ subjects are made anonymous, their identities reduced to objectifying and vulgarizing captions that describe their practices and customs. Considering that both cultural visions are embedded in the same globalized, post-migratory space, it seemed to me that despite the Distance and Desire project’s noble intentions to deconstruct the white supremacist gaze, an ambivalent complicity might lodge in visitors’ minds. Thus I was compelled to interrogate both exhibition spaces jointly in light of the problems of images’ circulation and the act of “making visible.” How is the viewer positioned in relation to the discursive powers of representation? What relationships are formed between the photographer as an auteur, the individual photographed, and the viewer? At what point does the act of observation begin to dictate the subject’s development?

O texto completo em Gazing at a Distance

The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960

Publicado20 Jan 2015

Etiquetas fotografia arquivo África

Liz Timbs, historiadora, doutoranda em História Africana, escreve no site Africaisacountry a rubrica 'Digital Arquive', sobre fotografia e África. Neste artigo, debruça-se sobre The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960.

The Humphrey Winterton Collection is an expansive collection of over 7,500 photographs taken mainly in East Africa between 1860 and 1960. Part of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Collection at Northwestern University, the Winterton Collection was assembled by British collector Humphrey Winterton. These photographs preserve a range of key historical moments in the region, from the opening of the Busoga Railway in 1912 to Hermann von Wissman’s 1889-1890 expedition to suppress the Abushiri Revolt. In addition to major historical events, this collection also captures life in this region from the mid-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth century.  From portraits to landscapes, this collection really does, as the site purports, represent “an unsurpassed resource for the study of the history of photography in East Africa.”  The photographs are tagged and cataloged in a variety of ways, but, to be honest, these efforts at organizing the collection make it quite difficult to find anything.  It’s much simpler to use the keyword search function to navigate the collection or, if you have the time, to browse the collection in its totality.

Mais aqui

"Africa through a lens": de A(frica unkown) a Z(imbabwe)

Africa through a lens is a set of thousands of images taken from a broader photographic collection of Foreign and Commonwealth Office images, held at The National Archives. Starting with some incredible early photographs from the 1860s, the images span over 100 years of African history. These images are now available, for the first time, to view online.

Continuar a ler aqui e para ver toda a coleção no flickr (onde as imagens surgem organizadas por países) basta navegar até aqui.