Portrait Photography in Senegal: Using Local Case Studies from Saint Louis and Podor, 1839–1970

Abstract

This research investigates contrasting contexts of portrait photography at different periods in Senegalese history, demonstrating some of the range of photographic practices that developed within particular cultural milieus at different historical moments. The intention is to consider differing case studies of photographic practice, situated and shaped within processes of enculturation and trajectories, rather than offer a “scissor-paste” (Belting 1997:3) history of photography in Senegal. The photographic medium was appropriated and used by African photographers in what is now Senegal as early as the 1850s and developed in ways that were culturally specific contingent on local, regional, and international intersections. My aim is to move away from dominant Western models that accord photographic trajectories worldwide to a universalist European or North American interpretation and thereby incorporate such trajectories as part of that canon, highlighting Senegalese photographic configurations that have elements similar to Europe yet also differ. The basis of this research is a series of recorded interviews and photographs that I gathered in Senegal in June and July 2013. The sheer marginality of African photography in the discipline of history means that oral testimony takes on a special value, allowing access to such “hidden histories” (Thomson 1998:585).The last three decades have seen a growing interest in African photography;1 however, it is problematic that much of this literature has appeared in exhibition catalogues of contemporary photography from Africa that tend to acknowledge a need for alternative historical approaches but still veer towards universal humanist interpretations (Cameron and Peffer 2013:4). Erin Haney (2010:17) has argued that this was perhaps because the majority of the authors and curators have not engaged in substantial on-the-ground research, which is crucial to understanding the imagery's locally derived cultural perspectives or specific historical and social contexts. Instead, the works have been placed in Western exhibition spaces, labelled as “fine art,” and recontextualized.2 This is most apparent in the treatment of twentieth-century West African studio photography, focusing on individual photographers and identifying them as the “first African photographers.” The classic example is the so-called discovery of Malian photographers such as Seydou Keïta (1921–2002) and Malick Sidibé (b. 1935) by French art curators who considered commercial photographers to be potential “artists” if they had some form of archive that could be activated in a new context. Much of this literature has two orientations. One seeks to identify a universalist canon of great photographs that accommodates African photography; the other emphasizes a material history of photography linked to sociopolitical conditions. This gives rise to an unstable tension between approaches that seek to identify an African canon that can be fitted into a conventional framing of art or photographic history, counterpointed by an alternative approach that seeks an ethnography of photography.It is difficult to fully acknowledge the depth of photographic history—particularly its early history—in many parts of Africa; Senegal is no exception. Researching early African photographic practices is problematic due to the lack of accessible or even extant early source material, the lack of historical research conducted around the subject, and the difficulty of identifying photographers. Adama Sylla, a photographer active in Saint-Louis from the 1950s and the former curator of the photographic collections of the Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Senegal (CRDS), stressed that “the state archives, private archives, and family photo albums are complementary,” and all three aspects are essential to any concrete analysis or historical finds.3 When I visited the CRDS in Saint-Louis, Fatima Fall, the director of the archives, explained how difficult conservation has been due to the hot, humid climate, insects, and lack of funding for proper equipment.4 When she started working at the archives in 1994, she found boxes of photographs “ruined or near ruin” and since then has worked on a major restoration project attempting to digitize and reorganize the 34,000 images.5 Many early images have been destroyed or lost, both accidentally and deliberately. Additionally, the first generation of people able to remember the early photographers has passed away. It is also worth considering whether preservation is a universal concern.Knowledge of technological developments is rather patchy for the African continent. However, it is worth noting as a backdrop before moving on to the particular case studies in Senegal. Photographic technologies arrived in Africa shortly after the invention of the daguerreotype was made public by the French government in 1839. We find the daguerreotype in Mehmet's court in Egypt in that very year and in the royal courts of Abyssinia a few years later (Matt 2002:14). None of these early daguerreotypes themselves appear to have survived, but in some instances posterity has favored these early images and reproduced them in different formats, such as aquatints, expensive travel books, or souvenir albums produced in the Near East and Europe (Haney 2010:14). The use of the daguerreotype was commercialized by both Africans and Europeans in urban settlements up and down the African coast, and although the majority of their production was in studios, most seem to have also made extensive forays into urban hinterlands (Vokes 2012:5). It is true that those who first contributed to the spread of the new technology were European traders, explorers, and missionaries, who either used a camera themselves or possessed photographic images that were accessible to Africans (Cameron and Peffer 2013:39). Photographs were frequently taken by French and British naval officers, and the missionary societies recognized photography's potential very quickly, such that photography was used by Western agents to construct a seemingly dense catalogue of knowledge about Africa.Africans themselves were quick to appropriate the technology and work as photographers, seeking clients among the African and European populations residing in the coastal economic centers who were able to pay cash. However, Nicolas Monti (1987:7) notes that, in comparison to European photographers of Africa, “photographic documents taken by native photographers are relatively rare” in the available archives. It is perhaps more fitting to say that, prior to independence, the representations of Africa's social realities available in the West were the works of European photographers, which thereby obscured the existence of work by African photographers who were active in the colonies as early as the 1850s. African contributions have been largely overlooked as a result of the fragility of the photographic record, but since the 1890s, evidence has surfaced of consumption of photographs by local black working- and middle-class populations. Santu Mofokeng (2013) has demonstrated, in his brief study of family albums among black South Africans, that by the late nineteenth century, photography was already popular in South Africa. As studies of early photography continue, it is now certain that West African coastal towns are remarkable sites for some of the earliest African-run studios on the continent and sustained local patronage from the 1850s (Haney 2010:24). Slowly, many West African studios that were presumed to be European-owned are now being reconsidered and properly attributed. In West Africa, renowned studios such as those of, for example, Dionysius Leomy, the Lutterodt family, and Neils Walwin Holm thrived in Freetown, Accra, and Lagos, respectively, and by the late nineteenth century popular photo studios had sprung up in most major cities across the rest of the continent.6 With respect to Senegal, Hickling (2014) registered the presence of both European and African photographers and suggested Bonnevide as the first permanent—as opposed to itinerant—studio established at Saint-Louis.7Investigating early photographic development in Senegal led me to Saint-Louis to visit the CRDS, the major national photographic archive of Senegal. Saint-Louis is a historically and politically important city, as it was the first French chartered company on the Atlantic coast of Africa in 1659 and was the political capital of the colony and of French West Africa until 1902.8 From 1920–1957, it also served as the capital of the neighboring colony of Mauritania before falling into decline due to the transfer of the capital to Dakar. L'Institut Fondamental D'Afrique Noire Senegal-Mauritanie was opened in 1943 by the French and served as the photographic archive for both Mauritania and Senegal under the name of IFAN until 1962, when Mauritania withdrew its collection following independence. In 1962, the Saint-Louis branch of this institution changed its name to Le Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal (CRDS) and became an autonomous entity.Saint-Louis was established in 1650 as a fortified outpost for mercantile trade at the mouth of the Senegal River and Atlantic Ocean. The island was in a geographically strategic position and was used as a commercial outlet for the French throughout the Atlantic slave trade and “legitimate” trade that shortly followed (Jones 2012:324). By the mid-nineteenth century, Saint-Louis was already a bustling city with an active commercial, administrative, and social life and had developed as a major West African port of call. From the late seventeenth century, a mixed-race (métis) merchant community had started to develop, characterized by the signares women who were famed for their wealth and social mobility. By the nineteenth century they had “formed a nucleus of civic and commercial life” (Jones 2012:325). A large proportion of the métis families in the capital were property owners and made up a distinctly urban class that was characterized by elegance and beauty.9 In such a cosmopolitan environment, it is not surprising that photography took root quite early, and Saint-Louis was the site of some of the earliest examples of African-run studios. Recent research suggests that commercial daguerreotypists worked there as early as the 1850s, and the wealth of the city drew in other photographers, such as the African American Augustus Washington in 1860, followed shortly afterwards by Decampe in 1861 (Viditz-Ward 1998:35). Other early photographers established in Saint-Louis included Bonnevide, Hautefeuille, Louis Hostalier, and Pierre Tacher; many studios and their archives were absorbed into later generations of studios under new partnerships. Portraits by J.P Decker, a Gambian photographer who emerged from Freetown but travelled all around French West Africa, are in the Saint-Louis collection, which further affirms that the city hosted a number of African and French photographers and postcard printers (Viditz-Ward 1998:35). The majority of early photography seems to have been portraits or documentation of ceremonies. Early photographic technologies were complex and required large equipment. Each mirror-like image realized in daguerreotype was completely unique and nonreproducible. Senegal was also prolifically represented in the postcard form that emerged in the 1890s. Worth mentioning is the photographer and publisher François Edmond Fortier (1862–1928), who produced over 8,200 postcards of Senegal, depicting landscapes, architecture, political events, colonial projects, ethnic groups, and women.Ismaila Camara, a full-time archivist at the CRDS, explained that one of the problems with studio portraits from to the in Saint-Louis is whether they were taken by French or Senegalese As photographers of both were working in such it can be very difficult to or This is the case in Saint-Louis due to the métis community example, was taken by the French photographer Louis Hostalier, who was working in Saint-Louis from the We also that was taken by a Senegalese photographer working in Saint-Louis around the because one of the is still and The are similar and the are more or the The in both the photographs are on or and have their placed on their their and The are and the their with their have yet the and a certain of a is placed in both of the one of the was the of the and they the and framing of the it is that both the Senegalese photographer and the French photographer used the they have seen work and and if the of similar the photographs are of very explained that the they by the of their by women in West and have been for the to their that they were both from families that were in the colonial perhaps in to the of the wealth of the city and the of a métis until the of European and African photographic practices were This is not to the that the and the have historically used the camera for distinctly different of and it is rather to move away from a that local and in Senegal was an of a photographic technologies were and in ways that local Senegalese and their cosmopolitan of and It is important to at the or by photographers, and their in specific as they are as much about local as they are about of political and historical context. at specific case studies of and practices that from the Western of photography as as the and means that the medium was taken up in more extensive and social practices a of In to one of in The of it to photography as as a on the and agents which it and it to Senegalese to consider is the wealth of from a that has a of and have on the one of a of the in Senegal who from to In the of was taken in the of Senegal, was placed under by the French colonial after a as an political The is but the has one of the most reproduced images in Senegal and is to which a range of popular to images to that and to sites to for and of the of all these is that the to the images the of photographic the The has taken on a life of its and has argued that one be to away from the of conventional photography in to as themselves consider and The seemingly or of a of taken on a of not be or and that, from a of the portrait is of that seem to rather than its to other that all aspects of have a that images of and his family are active of and The images offer and the of the of a photographic and not seem to In the has been considered to a but Haney argued that what is considered to be in a to be a rather It also be that the to the photographic is in some ways as important as the The portrait has been reproduced on an in many different yet the and is in no and it as “the for an of the of photographic was the development of Senegalese that were appropriated or by photography's growing The and difficulty of photographic images rise to two very that the ways that image worked in a local context. Senegalese to the late nineteenth century but had its in Senegal between the and the The seems to have spread from the to Senegal, but there is also a that it have from the Near from The development of was on by the images by and in the form of In these to the of the of French West Africa, who as they could the of within the argued that the interest in and that all work a towards the work of the colonial be destroyed In Senegal, it was made images and photographs that the development of because were and photography was still a very expensive were with of the earliest worked on the of the on such as or to or the was from the of studio portrait popular de Senegal, and the between by that were on studio was also used as a of images for public depicting both and at the development of the medium and its to photography not local but the that it to the CRDS I across photographs of women in by which I was was the By the had made a part of in a be to new and his be with photographic portraits from and Adama Sylla, a photographer active in Saint-Louis from the 1950s and the former curator of the photographic collections of the CRDS, that the images were in the throughout the which between three to images served as the to the new community and social that she was into within a new and Adama that in the is as a of The then be in of the photographs in and of From at the early to the this be a crucial of the of of in the of it was a public the their most images to the new as a of within this context. Fatima Fall, director of the CRDS, on the social of being by photographs on the was quick to it to class and these images not have but also social the and the that they are by people and popular for the as an example of how photography, in this case a of has not been into social practices in this also it as a shaped around local was a that for about and that I was quite its Adama was rather it no now have and the of photographs they no a social of and its in was not a of but a of sociopolitical and and this case study on the of the photographer The have been the of studio photography in West Africa (Cameron and Peffer the first of independence, Senegalese of all photography as By the and had already established studios in Saint-Louis, and that to both the and the images an important in the that the between colonial and by the by and of the I on images and his as a photographer in colonial and Senegal, important documents of a social history of the century that and from a was in 1943 in to the has and worked his a followed by years of at the working for his family, who started them to the French around and it was there that his first by the up his and a which to in the in to to a in The of Senegalese photography were in bustling urban centers such Saint-Louis or in the of the in the was still a In opened the first photography studio in in which is still The studio was and there being around the throughout the The studio became a to the and In it an individual and of in local has the majority of his and has a photographic of the more than over a of portraits are specific of and of social and practices in the The majority are of or in the Le but they as much as they from complex yet representations the these portraits are not to be considered as of their but they specific about archive studies from a of that complex of individual and the that the family was a very important to the generations to and the were with the to and their in a particular which became the of their (Matt 2002:14). The archivist at the CRDS on the of family albums in still the when to to them family with important of portrait taken has been for the family history and the very was considered a who made a of to be and was to of Western of was a and was to in a form what his to and had to the most to The two in his studio have not changed since the and on one is a Europe and on the is a of of the were by and when about the of an framing found in much early studio photography, but by of the of and the to Europe gives the people of a to the the and a photographer was in for a range of By the an was essential for of Senegal, and photographers in the were still to by was a great for photographs following and all the being by both the Senegalese and to them to different and the photographs the photographs with the a fitted with a and no or into the of the became a in the of its and to be and that his and that was when the government to to in the in Mauritania in to being with who the and that of their to be at rather When they the the the to how around this and after a by to to need a or an not to to the to and after much and the to be this is the of local even in the state were with technologies and was not a medium that people and the to be down to was an were this to technology could be as a to new of or an to the in social by and comparison can be made with photographs in the in and that me was “the of the In the early not after his studio had a to the of portrait that had been the could in the of the to his to the that were in an for to

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.