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- Convenor:
-
Gregor Dobler
(Freiburg University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Images of the living and dead
- Location:
- Room 1221
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
A workshop on how to engage with and use colonial photographs. Starting from presentations on photographs and their context, the panel seeks to become a space of critical discussion: how, and how far, can colonial photographs be used in the face of (or even in the interest of) decolonial critique?
Long Abstract:
Colonial photographs of people often fascinate us. They become anchors for our attention and make us ask about the human beings whose traces they bear.
On one level, we cannot deny the photographs' reality. Once, what they show was visible through the lens of a camera. This captures our imagination and focuses our attention. Individuals who were confronted with the reality of colonialism confront us through the lens of a photographer.
On many other levels, however, the 'reality' behind the images becomes much more difficult to grasp, as the extensive literature on the pitfalls of using photographs as a historical source, particular in colonial contexts, has made amply clear. Photographs distort, silence or taint realities. Colonial photographs are always also documents of colonialism.
Reading photographs as documents of colonialism alone, however, risks to once more eliminate the perspectives of the people who confront us through them. Can we develop readings that take colonial contexts seriously and use images to deconstruct their logic - but that also see photographs as documents of people who had an independent existence?
The panel seeks to address this question in practice, serving as a laboratory of both reading photographs and criticizing our readings. 10 minute-presentations should focus on one or several photographs - on the image, its contexts, our knowledge about them; on presenters' own readings and interpretations; and on the methodological, ethical and epistemic questions linked to them. We will then jointly discuss these readings and try to develop a critical practice of interpretation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 8 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This talk engages with a selection of photographs taken by Ruth Dammann in what is today Namibia. Approaching the images through the lens of "surfacings" allows accessing the potential of autobiographical construction for African interlocutors and teaches us on aesthetic practices of whiteness.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation engages with a selection of photographs taken by Ruth Dammann in the 1950s in South West Africa and proposes a reading of the biographical fragments, resonances and aesthetic constructions that emerge from the material as "surfacings". I was inspired to approach the concept of surfacings as a theoretical lens for my study by a recent publication by Lewis and Baderoon as well as by the themed issue “Intimate Archives//Autoethnographic Acts” edited by Leora Farber. Instead of aiming for fact-based historical retrieval, reading for the multifaceted, multisensory surfacings of individuals and their stories in so-called “colonial archives” allows accessing aesthetic constructions of whiteness, as well as practices of self-fashioning by two African interlocutors of the Dammanns’ by the name Elisabeth and Bernhard Kahiiko.
As a starting point for my inquiry, I reflect on a quote by Hartmann, Silvester and Hayes. In "The Colonising Camera", they write: “[...] when colonial officials, settlers or outsiders took photographs of the colonised, this constituted ethnography. When white men (or women) took pictures of themselves, this was something different. It was personal, biographical or autobiographical, but not ethnographic.” (p. 16.)
The study of chosen travel photographs of and by the Dammanns’ as well as portrait photography of the Kahiiko-couple in conjunction with other sources reveals how this predominant assumption becomes brittle. Here, reading for surfacings functions as a proposition of how we may engage with ‘colonial photography’ for decolonial knowledge production and as a way of deconstructing aesthetic legacies of the past.
Paper short abstract:
The revolts of January 4, 1959 marked a crucial step in the road to Congolese independence. Reading with Fanon, this paper focusses on three topoi in the photo archive of the revolts: the material targets of the protests, the facial expressions of its participants, and the use of ‘vandal tags’.
Paper long abstract:
In November 2021, the Belgian State Archives digitalized a collection of five photo albums of the sûreté coloniale. It contains about 450 photographs from four different photographers, visually documenting the events of early January 1959 and its aftermath in Léopoldville (today Kinshasa). These events, known as “the revolts of January 4”, marked a decisive momentum in the process towards Congolese independence. A concurrence of circumstances – a meeting of political party ABAKO that was prohibited last minute by the colonial authorities, a lost soccer game, and the recurrent presence of unemployed youths in Léopoldville’s streets – led to a culmination of colonial discontent among the city’s Black citizens and resulted into riots. According to Mutamba (1988: 377), the January 4 events changed Belgian-Congolese relations for good and rendered the general anti-colonial climate irreversible. Reading with Frantz Fanon’s work on colonial violence, this paper focusses on three topoi present in the January 4 photo collection: (1) the material targets of the revolts, (2) the textuality of the ‘vandal tags’ used by the protesters, and (3) the facial expressions of both ABAKO leaders and Congolese citizens in the streets. While the photos made their way into the sûreté archive due to colonial anxiety over the loss of Belgian control, as “evidence” (Sontag 1977: 3) of the “rage” of colonial subjects, they suggest a different kind of reading in the 21st century: the images are strong visual reminders of the liberating and performative aspect of anticolonial jocularity. Furthermore, the paper explores parallels with the more recent protests in the Congolese capital against President Joseph Kabila in 2016.
Paper short abstract:
How can we as researchers do justice to sentiments of colonial nostalgia that our interlocutors may attach to colonial photos?
Paper long abstract:
In the current intellectual climate, marked by both long-overdue calls to decolonize Western social sciences and revisionist tendencies from the political right, how can we as researchers do justice to our interlocutors’ sentiments of colonial nostalgia? This input starts from a series of dusty and faded photographs of steam engines and mechanical workshops taken during the Benguela Railway’s colonial heydays to reflect on infrastructural decay, people’s affective entanglements with such cycles of construction and disrepair, and the epistemological and ethical challenges accounting for these sentiments pose to researchers.