| Description |
1 online resource : illustrations, portraits |
| Contents |
Introduction: At least two histories of liberation -- From early days to Kodak swag -- West African avant-gardes? -- Photography and decolonial imagination -- Note on geography, spelling, and language -- Part 1. What makes a popular photography? -- Ch. 1: Ça bousculait! (It was happening!) -- Early luminaries -- Numbers of prints, darkroom schedules, the interval -- What's in an angle? -- Vaccinostyl(e) -- Economic thresholds -- Methodological reflection: Where is photography's field? -- Ch. 2: Wild circulation: photography as urban media -- From Saint-Louis, with love -- Vernacular cosmopolitanism and media infrastructure -- They did it?by photo? -- Tinkers, tailors: towards an expanded intermediality -- Undoing the colonial backdrop -- The road to Ouidah' and the moon -- Ch. 3: Decolonizing print culture: the example of Bingo -- Paris on the front page -- Africa on the cover -- Politics/anti-politics of representation -- Towards a transcolonial visual public -- Independence, pan-Africanism, and consumer marketing -- Know your African leaders -- Part 2. Republic of images -- Ch. 4: Africanizing political photography -- Censorship, political and other -- Protectionism and colonial markets -- State formation and the documentary impulse -- Aspirational research -- Proto-political images -- Methodological reflection: Endangered archives in the postcolony -- Ch. 5: The pleasures of state-sponsored photography -- The citizen stops for a moment -- The gift of electric light late at night -- Two ears, six copies -- Not everyone was happy -- Bureaucratic inspiration -- Heterogeneous visualities and the "ideal" image -- Ch. 6: African futures, lost and found -- Federation and non-alignment -- Visual histories under pressure -- Stirring it up (threats and promises) |
| Summary |
"In Unfixed Jennifer Bajorek traces the relationship between photography and decolonial political imagination in Francophone West Africa in the years immediately leading up to and following independence from French colonial rule in 1960. Focusing on images created by photographers based in Senegal and Benin, Bajorek draws on formal analyses of images and ethnographic fieldwork with photographers to show how photography not only reflected but also actively contributed to social and political change. The proliferation of photographic imagery--through studio portraiture, bureaucratic ID cards, political reportage and photojournalism, magazines, and more--provided the means for west Africans to express their experiences, shape public and political discourse, and reimagine their world. In delineating how west Africans' embrace of photography was associated with and helped spur the democratization of political participation and the development of labor and liberation movements, Bajorek tells a new history of photography in west Africa--one that theorizes photography's capacity for doing decolonial work"-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on February 21, 2020) |
| Subject |
Photography -- Political aspects -- Africa, French-speaking West -- History -- 20th century
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Photography -- Social aspects -- Africa, French-speaking West -- History -- 20th century
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Photography -- Political aspects -- Africa, French-speaking West -- 20th century
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PHOTOGRAPHY / Criticism
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Photography -- Political aspects
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Photography -- Social aspects
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French-speaking Western Africa
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
2019980319 |
| ISBN |
9781478004585 |
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1478004584 |
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