Beautifully illustrated, Portrait Photography in Africa offers new interpretations of the cultural and historical roles of photography in Africa. Twelve leading scholars look at early photographs, important photographers' studios, the uses of portraiture in the 19th century, and the current passion for portraits in Africa. They review a variety of topics, including what defines a common culture of photography, the social and political implications of changing technologies for portraiture, and the lasting effects of culture on the idea of the person depicted in the photographic image.

From 19th-century studio practice through the independence era, African photography has best been known for modes of portraiture that crystallize the sitter's identity and social milieu. Even portraits by contemporary artists are often interpreted as windows into African realities. This exhibition reconsiders African contemporary photographic portraiture by presenting four practitioners whose concerns range well beyond questions of social identity. Sammy Baloji, Mohamed Camara, Saïdou Dicko, and George Osodi expand their subjects' interpretive possibilities, exemplifying a new creativity and versatility in portrait-making. While each artist employs different strategies, they all challenge the assumption that photographic portraits serve as mirrors of the "self." Baloji's montages dislocate the subject historically, Camara probes the boundaries of the portrait genre, Dicko expresses uncertainty at the possibility of representation, and Osodi engages his subjects as platforms for political commentary. The four artists enlist portraiture as a point of departure for exploring subjectivity, history, and photographic form. The Expanded Subject offers new insights into the expressive and conceptual range of African photo-portraiture today.

This powerful and celebratory account of Africa and photography will appeal to all those interested in the medium, and in how the two have interacted and informed each other over time. --

French colonisers of the Third Republic claimed not to oppress but to liberate, imagining they were spreading republican ideals to the colonies to make a Greater France. In this book Simon Dell explores the various roles played by portraiture in this colonial imaginary. Anyone interested in the history of colonial Africa will have encountered innumerable portraits of African elites produced during the first half of the twentieth century, yet no book to date has focused on these ubiquitous images. Dell analyses the production and dissemination of such portraits and situates them in a complex and conflicted field of representations. Moving between European and African perspectives, The Portrait and the Colonial Imaginary blends history with art history to provide insights into the larger processes that were transforming the French metropole and colonies during the early twentieth century. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

This catalogue introduces readers to Malian photographers Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta and others whose images visualize an influential form of post-colonial African identity.

Distance and Desire offers new perspectives on the African archive, reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings. Presenting an extraordinary range of portraits, cartes de visite, postcards and album pages from Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as recent photography and video art.

"Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe, two commercial photographers from Mali, took mesmerizing portraits in Bamako, the capital, during the period before and after the country achieved independence from France in 1960. This book presents a range of these portraits as well as excerpts from recent interviews with the artists and an essay placing their work in the context of the history of portrait photography in West Africa since its beginnings in the 1840s." "These photographs are the work of Africans controlling the camera to create images of African subjects for an African audience. For both photographers the studio was a theater in which to coordinate costumes, lighting, props, and poses to help the subjects define themselves. Keita adapted the formulas of portrait photography to make unique images that reflect both his clients' social identity within the community and their enthusiastic embrace of modernity. Later, as portrait conventions and societal roles became more flexible, Sidibe's subjects took an even more active part in constructing the images they wanted to convey. In Bambara, the language widely spoken in Mali, there is an expression, i ka nye tan, which means "you look beautiful like that." Keita's and Sidibe's protraits flatter the sitters, presenting them in the best possible light."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved