Framed and Hidden Histories: West African Photography from Local to Global Contexts
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43306256 peer reviewed article
Abstract-
The recontextualization of West African photographs in the international art venues is a fairly recent phenomena. Its history dates to the 1991 “Africa Explores” exhibition curated by Susan Vogel at the Center for African Art and the New Museum in New York City. Subsequently, over the past twenty years, numerous exhibitions, biennials, catalogs, articles and monographs have reformulated national and regional histories of photography in Africa as well as developed a new canon of artists and artworks. With their oeuvres reframed to create niche markets, particular artists have achieved international acclaim, relative financial success, and opportunities to network with colleagues across the globe, while other locally renowned photographers and professional apprentices remain largely absent from these contexts and their associated narratives. Also hidden are the conditions under which these practitioners’ negative archives have been transported and their images transformed to satisfy the aesthetic preferences of foreign audiences. Engaging these issues, with a focus on professional photographers who have worked in Mali from the 1940s to the present, my analysis seeks to complicate popular interpretations of black- and-white photography from western Africa by raising ethical questions concerning the continued methods of their collection, presentation, and dissemination in the global art market and the effects this market has had on the artistic legacy of photographers still situated along its periphery.Keller, C. M. (2014). Framed and Hidden Histories: West African Photography from Local to Global Contexts. African Arts, 47(4), 36–47. https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_a_00181