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| Title: | Salvage anthropology in a city without history: East London and photographic collections of Joseph Denfield, 1950-1969 |
| Authors: | Mnyaka, Phindezwa Elizabeth Bank, Leslie |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Periodical: | South African Historical Journal (ISSN 1726-1686) |
| Volume: | 66 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 55-78 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | photography towns colonial history 1950-1959 1960-1969 |
| About person: | Joseph Denfield (1944-1967) |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2013.833288 |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the personal and public photography taken in the 1960s by Joseph Denfield, a well-known South African ethnographic photographer and amateur historian in East London. The authors argue that his collection allows for a critical reflection on the narratives of the history and culture of East London during this period. Drawing attention to the economic, infrastructural, political and cultural changes that the city underwent from the 1950s onward, the authors place Denfield's images alongside such changes noting the ways they offer a silent critique of the 'dismantling' of the city's colonial past, and in turn draw on the discursive trope of 'salvage anthropology' to 'redeem' such a past. His images are melancholic and nostalgic, documenting a city in ruins. They lament the passing of an era and the collapse of a particular kind of city. Some of his photographs were deeply personal and private, but they are also of great public significance because they now provide the cornerstone of a heritage-driven representational history of a city which, the authors argue, effectively has no modern history. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
