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.

J. A. Green (1873 1905) was one of the most prolific and accomplished indigenous photographers to be active in West Africa. This beautiful book celebrates Green s photographs and opens a new chapter in the early photographic history of Africa. Soon after photography reached the west coast of Africa in the 1840s, the technology and the resultant images were disseminated widely, appealing to African elites, European residents, and travelers to the region. Responding to the need for more photographs, expatriate and indigenous photographers began working along the coasts, particularly in major harbor towns. Green, whose identity remained hidden behind his English surname, maintained a photography business in Bonny along the Niger Delta. His work covered a wide range of themes including portraiture, scenes of daily and ritual life, commerce, and building. Martha G. Anderson, Lisa Aronson, and the contributors have uncovered 350 of Green s images in archives, publications, and even albums that celebrated colonial achievements. This landmark book unifies these dispersed images and presents a history of the photographer and the area in which he worked. "

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.

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. --

Imaging Culture is a sociohistorical study of the meaning, function, and aesthetic significance of photography in Mali, West Africa, from the 1930s to the present. Spanning the dynamic periods of colonialism, national independence, socialism, and democracy, its analysis focuses on the studio and documentary work of professional urban photographers, particularly in the capital city of Bamako and in smaller cities such as Mopti and Ségu. Featuring the work of more than twenty-five photographers, it concentrates on those who have been particularly influential for the local development and practice of the medium as well as its international popularization and active participation in the contemporary art market. Imaging Culture looks at how local aesthetic ideas are visually communicated in the photographers' art and argues that though these aesthetic arrangements have specific relevance for local consumers, they transcend geographical and cultural boundaries to have value for contemporary global audiences as well. Imaging Culture is an important and visually interesting book which will become a standard source for those who study African photography and its global impact.