“When we speak of ‘shooting’ with a camera, we are acknowledging the kinship of photography and violence.” Teju Cole
This visual essay will assess the ways in which early photography was used as a tool to justify Europe’s colonial project in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, by depicting Black Africans as inferior to white Europeans. It will also consider how the camera was used during the same period in the United States for a similar purpose, namely, to further the cause of white racial superiority.
Africa: photography and the colonial project
The invention of photography occurred at a most opportune moment for Europe’s colonial powers. Photography was used to justify Europe’s colonisation of Africa and helped to further cement the ideological basis for white racial superiority. Between 1870 and 1900, Europe’s unrelenting imperial aggression towards Africa, eventually led to the colonisation of the continent. By this point, the first photography studios had already been established on the continent decades prior, and by the turn of the century, photographers travelled widely, hired by colonial regimes to produce images.
Let’s begin by looking at the way in which photography fed into a discourse of European superiority.
Anthropological photos
Alongside their military might, the colonisers brought with them both missionaries and scientists- the former to ‘save’ and the latter to ‘study’.
Since systematically documenting and cataloguing new territories/peoples was already a hallmark of Europe’s interactions with Africa (think of the brief occupation of Egypt by the French in 1798) the invention of photography helped to further this, particularly with the ‘cataloguing’ of human beings. And thus, encyclopaedia’s filled with ethnographic ‘types’ were born; individuals photographed as representatives of their ethnicities, ‘objects’ to be studied, whose name we’ll never know.
These images, used for anthropological purposes, ensured not only a denial of power and agency, but a dehumanisation of the subject, intensified by the use of a number board placed above the head to identify the photographic plate and individual. These photos directly contributed to a discourse of white superiority; they were used as evidence supporting race theories of the time, whereby facial features, including the size of an individual’s skull were thought to relate to intellectual ability.
The image above was taken by Northcote W. Thomas, the first government anthropologist appointed by the British Colonial Office. He conducted surveys in Nigeria and Sierra Leone from 1909-15. The image below, is captioned ‘Maybe someone who has some authority or has some influence.’ ‘She looks as though she’s somebody important.’
Visual representation of existing stereotypes
The myth of the ‘dark continent’, already well established in Europe by this point, was further cemented through photography, allowing existing stereotypes to be represented visually. If we look at a broad spectrum of colonial photographs produced in Africa (and this also applies to the Middle East and elsewhere), a visual vocabulary emerges.
Photography was used to emphasise the contrast between ‘light’ (civilised) and ‘dark’ (uncivilised). This ‘light’ was shown by contrasting skin colour and by emphasising power dynamics through dress and pose.
In the image above, Belgian colonial administrators take centre stage, the white of their clothing juxtaposed against the black of the tribe who make up the backdrop of the photo. Meanwhile the chief is placed awkwardly to the left of the frame, acknowledging his status above the other individuals of his race, while simultaneously placing him below the white colonists in hierarchy.
This contrast between white and black is a recurring theme in photographs that include both coloniser and the colonised. In the photograph below however, a group of young children, now ‘saved’ don white clothing.
Meanwhile, at a sewing class in the Mission of the Daughters of Charity in the Belgian Congo (1910), the position of the white women, again dressed in white, with their hands placed on shoulders of those seated, emphasises their dominant status over the young women. Their manner is parental, infantilising those seated; the ‘white saviour’ trope captured on camera.
The photo below speaks for itself.
Power dynamics are also captured in other ways. In the photo below from 1899 Nigeria, the king of Ijeba sits next to the British governor of Lagos. The king’s beaded crown is parted and his face visible, something against the usual customs of this tribe.
As Teju Cole has noted, “The dozens of men seated on the ground in front of him are visibly alarmed. Many have turned their bodies away from the oba, and several are positioned toward the camera, not in order to look at the camera but in order to avoid looking at the exposed radiance of their king.”1
The role of the photographer
“Photographers intervene in every photograph they make, whether by orchestrating or directly interfering in the scene being imaged; by selecting, cropping, excluding, and in other ways making pictorial choices as they take the photograph; by enhancing, suppressing and cropping the finished print in the darkroom; and finally by adding captions and other contextual elements to their image to anchor some potential meanings and discourage others…In short, the absence of truth is an inescapable fact of photographic life.” (Andrew E. Hershberger)2
The role of the photographer was not passive; we are seeing (whether consciously or subconsciously) his ideals and values represented through the image. “Because of this inherent bias it is important that photographs are not seen as truth, but as representations that exist inside a multifaceted cultural process.” 3
This is especially apparent with studio photography, which, through the use of artificial backdrops and props created an image of Africa that ultimately served the ideological needs of the colonial powers (this was also the case elsewhere in the non-white world).
Photographic archives were created documenting people, professions, costumes and custom. “Indeed nothing belies the myth of photographic naturalness in the Orientalist image more than the staging of what is being represented in such photographs. The photographer’s intervention here goes well beyond mere framing, lighting or focus, for everything in the image denotes a staged scene: the artificial backdrop, the ever-present props, and the unnatural gaze of the sitter.”4
Francois Edmond Fortier (1862-1928) was one of the best known proponents of this type of photography, publishing over 3500 postcards of French West Africa.
Even photos outside of studio settings were often carefully crafted to show a particular view of Africa and Africans in their ‘natural’ environment. Subjects are often seen partaking in ‘primitive’ activities.
As Cole has pointed out, “This photography, in which the subjects had no say in how they were seen, did much to shape the Western world’s idea of Africans.”5
So far, we have seen three types of photograph; the first, the ethnographic “type” was primarily concerned with the physical appearance of the subject from an anthropological perspective; the second type placed colonisers alongside the colonised using a visual vocabulary that spoke of the power of the former over the latter. Third, we have seen the staged image, often studio based, documenting the costume and occupation type of the subject in a specific setting or against an artificial backdrop. While the first fed directly into the racist scientific theories of the period, the latter two helped satisfy a European demand for exoticism and ultimately helped to justify the colonialist project.
The role of the audience
Alongside the photographer’s representation, it is important to consider who the intended audience of these photographs was. The images, particularly those staged, were intended for a white European audience and helped to reinforce an image of Africa as the ‘dark continent’ as well as fulfil existing stereotypes and expectations of an ‘uncivilised’ people. Black Africans (alongside other non-white peoples) were the ‘Other’, everything that European were not.
Photographs were printed for distribution in Europe as postcards, allowing these representations to be circulated more widely. “Postcards showing ‘native types’ had anthropological overtones, for the publishers realized that they could profitably appeal to the passion for exoticism, and often eroticism, under the guise of scientific knowledge.” 6
Often featuring erotic and pornographic content, they “gratified colonial desire”7 with an imagery that was actively used in colonial propaganda campaigns to lure European men to the colonies for work.
The caption below reads, “Oh! But they are kind, the little neg*****s, and tame!”
An “imaginative geography“8 was created for the audience, of an Africa that existed only in the Western consciousness, one that was expressed through the binary construction of ‘our land’ and ‘their land.’ Theirs is ‘uncivilised’, ‘primitive’ and ‘unknown’; ours is therefore its opposite. Black Africans were ‘uncultured’ and ‘unclothed’ and therefore in need of ‘civilising’, justifying Europe’s colonial enterprise.
And thus, photography was used as a tool that helped to cement the ideological basis for European or white superiority and the subjugation of Black Africans as inferior, satisfying the white gaze. The role of both the photographer and the intended audience must be considered; they both played a role in the representation of Africa and Africans.
In contrast, let’s take a look at photos of Africans taken by and for Africans.
African photography studios
The first photography studios run by Africans emerged well before the appearance of European colonial powers on the continent. If we take West Africa, the first photography studios were established in the 1860’s run by local photographers who would travel across the region photographing different urban centres.
George Lutterodt (1850/55–ca.1904), a Ghanaian, was among the pioneer generation of African photographers and worked along the coast of West Africa in the 1870’s. Alongside the images he produced for his (African) clients, Lutterodt also worked with and trained local apprentices.
This studio photo, ‘Five Men’, dated ca.1880-85, taken by Lutterodt, has been choreographed with care by the photographer, to enhance the eminence of the man in the centre.
His rings are proudly displayed on his hand, and the men around him have been placed in deferential or protective poses, all signalling the status of the central figure. It is an image that speaks of dignity and tradition.
“Something changed when Africans began to take photographs of one another: you can see it in the way they look at the camera, in the poses, the attitude. The difference between the images taken by colonialists or white adventurers and those made for the sitter’s personal use is especially striking in photographs of women. In the former women are being looked at against their will, captive to a controlling gaze. In latter they look at themselves as in a mirror, an activity that always involves seriousness, levity and an element of wonder.” 9
Seydou Keïta (1921-2001), a Malian photographer, opened his studio in 1948, specialising in portraiture. Notice the way in which the women are positioned in the image below and their relaxed demeanour.
Let us now turn to America in the same period (late 19th and 20th century). Caution: the subject matter here may be distressing (though distressing images will not be shown).
United States: photography and white supremacy
As we have seen, in Africa photography was used by the colonisers as a tool that allowed them to cement their ideological superiority and power over Black Africans. However, even in the US photography was used as a means of subjugating and dehumanising Black people, even after the abolishment of slavery. This happened through particularly sickening means- lynching postcards.
They are exactly what they sound like: photos of lynched victims printed on postcards intended for distribution, collection or kept as souvenirs. Commonplace between 1880 and 1930 (though officially banned from distribution in 1908), these images depicted the lifeless bodies of Black men and women hanging from trees and lampposts, having been forcibly dragged from their homes, ‘accused’ of crimes and killed without due process.
Spectators of these lynchings sold one another souvenirs, including these postcards. Often the photographer was one of the killers.
The postcards often display the victim in the centre of the image, while smiling spectators pose around the frame of the shot. The image above has been cropped; the original photo shows the victim’s lifeless body hanging above.
Below, a crowd gathers after the lynching of two young African American men (out of shot) who were taken from the Grant county jail, in Marion, Indiana, and lynched in the public square.
The purpose of these images was, quite simply, to dehumanise Black people and proclaim the superiority of the white race.
“Within specific localities, viewers did not disconnect the photographs from the actual lynchings they represented. Through that particularity, the images served as visual proof for the uncontested ‘truth’ of white civilized morality over and against supposed black bestiality and savagery.”10
A decision has been made not to reproduce any lynching postcards here. More than a hundred are reprinted in the book “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography In America” by James Allen.
According to Allen, the postcards “…besides the obvious function of sensationalism and the profitable nature of these images for photographers – many of them were sold on the streets in drug stores, through the mail – they served to bond the white community together in supremacy. They also were news events that were highly covered by the press. So these images were small newspapers that people posted through the mail and sent to their relatives to say, this is what happened in our hometown.”
***
Let us pause here and consider what we have seen so far. In Africa white European colonisers used photography to visually emphasise their power and racial superiority over subjugated Black natives. In the US photography was used as a tool by white Americans (ordinary citizens, not agents of the state as in Africa) to dehumanise Black murder victims and create visual ‘proof’ of white superiority.
In both cases, photographers were active participants in the images they created. Africans were deliberately depicted in a way that suited the ideological purposes of European powers. In the US, photographers were often participants in the actual lynching of the victim.
The intended audience of the images were white people, for whom both ideological depictions were created, helping to justify colonisation in the former and white supremacy in the latter.
Ultimately the aim of white photographers in both contexts was to highlight difference or to ‘other’ the subject, whose identity was deliberately created to contrast with that of the intended audience of the photo.
The Situation Today
Does this still happen today?
As we have shown previously on this platform and as Sacred Footsteps’ writer Zirrar has shown numerous times in his work, this style of photography, which can be termed as ‘Orientalist’ persists to this very day. For an in-depth analysis of how this happens, read ‘Orientalist Travel Photography: Creating the ‘Native.’‘
National Geographic
A discussion on this type of photography cannot be complete without mentioning National Geographic. The magazine, which published its first edition in 1888, has built its platform on the very ethnographic photos we have already discussed. By their own admission, theirs is a legacy based on racism, and the subjugation of non-white peoples.
Even today, their content makes apparent the ‘difference’ between the western (white) and eastern (non-white) world, in the images they choose to represent both locations. As Zirrar has shown in his analysis of ‘National Geographic’s Best Photographs of 2019’ the western world is advanced and enlightened, while the eastern drowns in poverty, corruption and endless war, which it seeks to escape though migration to the west.
Recently Nat Geo’s coverage of the ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ protests in Minneapolis, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, was criticised for their use of white photographers over local Black ones.
The trope of great white man who puts himself at great risk in the “third world” to tell the stories of oppression is now in action in Minneapolis. (1/3) https://t.co/ODCDa2hiCM
— Chirag Wakaskar (@chiragwakaskar) June 4, 2020
Do you know who also understands the LIVED pain of oppression and suffering… BLACK PEOPLE. How come @natgeo can’t seem to find any to hire? https://t.co/7nV5K8WIVD
— Holly-Marie Cato (@HMCato) June 4, 2020
Nat Geo are not alone however; this lack of representation, and the prioritisation of white photographers over Black is a problem across the board.
Here are four more of the largest U.S. front pages from today that all feature photos by non-Black male photographers. C’mon, guys. pic.twitter.com/FTOMpP0JK5
— Women Photograph (@womenphotograph) June 2, 2020
Publications will routinely pay Western photographers to travel to an African country on assignment instead of hiring local talent.
I might’ve gone in on my Instagram stories today but feel like I need to repost it here as a thread. But I’m lazy so…
— Khadija M. Farah (@kmfarah) January 9, 2020
Here are my thoughts on photography in Kenya, respresentation, why I’m taking a break from it for a while, what needs to change etc.
(THREAD) pic.twitter.com/acepsCGFNX
As we have already established, photographs represent the values and ideals of the photographer; an inherent bias is present in their work, which can only be seen as a ‘representation’ of the truth.
The socio-cultural identity and background of the photographer, whether consciously or subconsciously, inevitably helps shape his or her photography. We need only to look at the work of Black photographers during the Civil Rights Movement in the US to see the difference an ‘insider’, someone with a real stake in the community they are photographing, can make.
Photographers such as Gordan Parks “exposed mainstream understandings of black poverty, marginalisation and, crucially, how black citizens were treated by US police. They served to counteract enduring media stereotypes of black criminality, forcing the readers…to reassess their beliefs about an experience that even today garners little attention in US media.“11
Others, such as RC Hickman and Calvin Littlejohn, captured crucial moments in the civil rights struggle.
“But overall their work was largely about the everyday life of their subjects, illustrating a community that did the same things as everyone else – loved, laughed, worked, played – even amidst all the painful injustices and on-going tensions and calamities of the civil rights struggle.” 12
Concluding remarks
The aim of this visual essay was to show the correlation between photography and power, and the way in which the camera was used from the very beginning to subjugate Black Africans and Black Americans, and create visual ‘proof’ of white superiority.
Though there is so much more that could still be added, this essay will conclude with the image of a Black woman who, despite existing in an era and society that denigrated her due to the colour of her skin, used the camera to her advantage.
Sojourner Truth escaped from slavery in 1826, becoming a well known abolitionist. Using photography to further her message and reach a wider audience, she sat for numerous portraits which were printed as cartes de visite (small photos that were distributed and exchanged). Though she didn’t take the photos herself, Cole notes, “so insistent was her control over how she was seen that these are practically self portraits.”
She knew the power of photography “in the struggle to make white Americans see black American humanity…(the photos) reminded others that…her dignity was not negotiable and this reminder was a challenge to the conscience of all who saw, held or bought the “shadow.”13
In her own words, “I sell the shadow to support the substance.“
Footnotes
1 Teju Cole, “When the Camera was a Weapon of Imperialism (And When it Still is),” New York Times.
2 Andrew E. Hershberger, “Photographic Theory: An Historical Anthology,” John Wiley & Sons, 2014: 335.
3Hannah Mabry, “Photography, Colonialism and Racism,” International Affairs Review.
4 Ali Behdad, “Orientalism Matters.” Modern Fiction Studies56, no. 4 (2010): 709-28. Accessed June 7, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/26286953.
5 Teju Cole, “There’s Less to Portraits Than Meets the Eye, and More,” New York Times.
6 David MacDougall. The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 2006), 178.
7 Terence Ranger “Colonialism, Consciousness and the Camera.” Past & Present, no. 171 (2001): 203-15. Accessed June 7, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/3600818.
8 Edward Said, “Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental.” Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.
9 Teju Cole, “Portrait of a Lady.” Known and Strange Things. Random House Trade, 2016
10 Amy Louise Wood, “Lynching Photography and the Visual Reproduction of White Supremacy,” American Nineteenth Century History: Taylor & Francis, 2005.
11 Tom Seymour, “How the Photographer Gordon Parks Upended Stereotypes About Policing and Crime in America,” The Art Newspaper.
12James Jeffrey, “Black Photographers and the Civil Rights Movement,” Al Jazeera.
13 Teju Cole, “There’s Less to Portraits Than Meets the Eye, and More,” New York Times.
