Paper short abstract:

The photograph of a Dogon ‘Black Monkey Mask’ by Man Ray (1936) and subsequent images of the same museum object reveal the complicated and violent stories of ethnographic collections and the phantom image of Africa in both art and anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the visual histories of a black and white photograph by Man Ray from 1936 showing a Dogon ‘Black Monkey Mask’, first brought to Paris from Mali during the Paulme-Lifchitz expedition in 1935. Initially a wooden object from the Dogon ‘dama’ ceremony, marking the end of mourning and thrown away to decompose, the plundered object becomes a symbol of what Michel Leiris has called ‘l’Afrique phantôme’, an obscure exoticised image of African culture. Many Modernist artists have used ethnographic collections and archives for their work while anthropology has largely excluded fine art photography and popular cinema from anthropological theory. How can anthropology creatively and critically engage with photographic collections and visual culture of a given period? Leiris’ autobiography and diaries ‘L’Afrique phantôme. De Dakar à Djibouti 1931-1933’, published in 1934 and never translated into English, harshly criticized the realities of ethnographic expeditions at the time. French anthropologist Marcel Griaule, an expert on Dogon masks and member of the same expedition took a similar photograph of a monkey mask during a ceremonial dance, giving the object a more precise explanation on how the mask was used in its original context, although the Dogon themselves do not separate the mask from the performer, the mask is the performer. While Man Ray’s lighting certainly accentuates the mystery and beauty of the mask, similarly to the use of three-point-lighting for film actors, we can also interpret the photograph in a wider context of cultural production and exchange of knowledge, the circulation and display of consumer goods, and an emerging trade in ‘world art’.