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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940 |
Authors: | Killingray, David Roberts, Andrew D. |
Year: | 1989 |
Periodical: | History in Africa |
Volume: | 16 |
Pages: | 197-208 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | photography historical sources History and Exploration Literature, Mass Media and the Press |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171784 |
Abstract: | This paper gives an outline history of photography in Africa from its beginnings up to c. 1940. It is a revised version of a paper which was presented at a workshop on 'Photographs as sources for African history', held at SOAS, London, in 1988. Photography in Africa began between 1844 and 1864 among the ancient monuments of Egypt, as an adjunct to a flourishing European tradition of Orientalist art. By the 1880s photography was being used more or less systematically by those engaged in the extension of colonial rule. Between the 1890s and the First World War, photographs of Africa were published profusely to promote a variety of imperial, commercial, missionary, and scientific enterprises. The fine reproduction of photographs was a notable feature of the ethnographic monographs which by the 1890s were beginning to supersede the discursive expedition report. Despite the notable advances in photographic techniques between the wars, newspapers were 'incredibly slow to adapt themselves to the photo-age'. The Second World War and its aftermath gave a new importance to photographs of Africa as instruments of propaganda. Notes, ref. |