Photography: daguerreotype and the African experience

Abstract

This paper traces the origins of photography as a visual genre. It goes ahead to discuss the introduction of photography to Africans by the Europeans who used it to entrench stereotypes during colonialism. It questions certain essentialist assumptions in colonial stereotypical photography especially as they affect Africa. While colonial stereotypical photography persisted, Africans attempted to forge a visual subjectivity often downplayed in several colonial visual archives. This paper attempts to emphasize certain aspects of such subjectivities exhibited through African studio photography and visual culture. The paper also undertakes a critique of documentary photography and visuality in gender. This critique is narrowed down to Africa where it seems objectivity is far-fetched in an attempt to construct a visual narrative of social circumstances through documentary photography and where gendered visuality seems controversial.