Short Abstract

This panel examines colonial photography in Namibia and South Africa, focusing on digital restitution as a collaborative practice that challenges colonial visual regimes, (re)centres Southern African perspectives, and reshapes archival access, knowledge production, and heritage practices.

Long Abstract

Namibia and South Africa occupy a pivotal position in the history of colonial photography and its enduring afterlives. From German colonialism in Namibia to British colonialism and apartheid in South Africa, photography served conquest, racial classification, scientific knowledge production, and colonial governance. Yet colonial photographs remain marginal to historical scholarship, often treated as illustrations rather than historical sources. Echoing Christopher Pinney’s notion of "scopophobia", this panel examines both the colonial politics of looking and the persistent neglect of photographs within historical and archival practice.

Hundreds of thousands of colonial photographs remain dispersed across European museums, archives, missionary collections, and private holdings. While digitisation has expanded access, digital access alone does not constitute restitution. The panel conceptualises digital restitution as a relational and collaborative process that reconnects photographic collections with descendant communities while challenging colonial visual regimes and the privileging of written archives.

Focusing on Namibia and South Africa, and welcoming comparative perspectives from Southern Africa, the panel brings together historians, museum professionals, archivists, artists, digital humanists, and community practitioners. Contributions may explore provenance, community archives, Indigenous knowledge, counter-visualisation, artistic interventions, digital storytelling, and participatory approaches. By foregrounding Southern African perspectives, the panel asks how digital restitution can reshape knowledge production, archival practices, collective memory, and relationships between institutions and communities, contributing to more equitable and empowering heritage futures.

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