16
by 1845.These early photographers were itinerants,
producing mainly portraits for European settlers and
locals for a few weeks at a time before moving on.
While travelling daguerreotypists continued to service
small towns, permanent photographic studios began to
be established in busier locales from the mid-1840s.
The most direct route to India and Australia was round
the Cape of Good Hope, so photographers set up per-
manently along the South African coastline, and even
inland, earlier than elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 1846 Parisian Jules Léger opened the fi rst studio in
Grahamstown, and Carel Sparmann, assisted by E. Jones
and Dr S.N.H. van Sweel, established one in Cape Town.
By 1861 there were around 40 photographic studios in
South Africa. Also en route to India were the islands
of Mauritius and neighbouring Reunion, where studios
were fi rst opened by Evariste Letourner at Port Louis
in 1843 and by François Cudenet at Saint-Denis in the
1860s, respectively. From the late 1860s, West Africa
saw the establishment of permanent studios run by Eu-
ropeans, Africans and photographers of mixed origins.
Washington de Monrovée opened the fi rst studio in St-
Louis (Senegal) in 1860 and was followed by Decampe
the next year. Gerhardt L. Lutterodt, operating between
Freetown (Sierra Leone) and Douala (Cameroon) in the
1870s, trained his nephew Freddy (1871) and son Erick
(1884–1959) who opened studios in Accra in 1889 and
1904, respectively. Many of East Africa’s early per-
manent studios were established by photographers of
Indian origin. In 1868 A.C. Gomez from Goa opened the
fi rst studio in Zanzibar, branching out from his existing
photographic business in India.
As elsewhere, early African commercial studios were
not always profi table so photographers often supple-
mented their income by continuing to work in related
professions, such as opticians, chemists, jewellers,
printers, publishers and booksellers. Using imported
materials and equipment of European manufacture,
they kept up to date with developments in photographic
technology and styles. Studio owners practiced a variety
of photographic processes, including the calotype and
wet-plate from the mid-1850s. However the potential
explosiveness of the collodion (guncotton in ether)
required for the preparation of the wet-plate negatives
made shipping dangerous. The studios offered cased,
cartes de visite, cabinet and hand-tinted photographs.
Portraits, rural landscapes and scenes of life and new
constructions in the rapidly growing towns were avail-
able for purchase by wealthy locals, Europeans and other
foreign settlers. Unfortunately, due to the detrimental
effects of the climate, few of these early photographs
have survived.
From the late fi fteenth century Europe had contact
through trade with sub-Saharan Africa, yet by the early
nineteenth century the peoples, cultures and geography
away from the coasts and southern tip remained largely
unknown to Europeans. The invention of photography
coincided with the growth of European travel inland and
the new medium was used enthusiastically, if not always
successfully to document the pioneering explorations.
The fi rst photographs of the interior of sub-Saharan
Africa were taken during Dr David Livingstone’s (1813–
1873) Zambezi expedition of 1858–1864 by its offi cial
photographer and cartographer Charles Livingstone
(1821–1873). Journal entries by the expedition leader
and other members recount Charles’s lack of knowledge
and skill with the wet-plate process and subsequent
poor results. The expedition’s doctor and naturalist
Dr John Kirk (1832–1922) was more successful. He
experimented with different techniques, and found
waxed negatives most effective as they did not require
the distilled water the expedition lacked. Kirk’s subjects
were chiefl y buildings, boats, and vegetation. The Royal
Geographic Society in London holds stereoscopes made
in Zanzibar by James Augustus Grant (1827–1892) dur-
ing John Hanning Speke’s (1827–1864) Nile expedition
from the island, through Uganda, to Gondokoro (Sudan)
between 1860 and 1863. Grant’s photographs show the
British Consulate staff and buildings, slave markets,
emancipated slaves and other local people. However,
he appears to have abandoned photography in favour
of coloured sketches once on the mainland.
Expedition and travel photography was beset by
numerous diffi culties. Transportation of all the neces-
sary equipment, including a large and cumbersome
camera, chemicals, plates and dark-room facilities,
proved problematic in a climate and conditions which
foreigner travellers found inhospitable. The intensity of
the African sun, which the French publication Moniteur
Universal had presumed as early as the 14th January
1839, would give instantaneous, sharp daguerrian im-
ages, caused over-exposure of plates. Camera and tripod
were unbalanced by strong winds. Heat and dust played
havoc with wet collodion. Dirty water deposited a fi lm of
mud and sand on developed plates, which were further
damaged by the humidity. Processing had to be done at
night, in the usually stifl ing and malodorous environ-
ment of a wagon covered by blankets and skins. Not only
problems of a technical nature were encountered. Wild
animals terrorised travellers. Diary entries also recount
the reluctance and sometimes refusal of Africans to be
photographed. Unlike their littoral counterparts, who
had been photographed and practised photography from
the 1840s, inhabitants of localities little visited by Eu-
ropeans were understandably suspicious and sometimes
fearful of the camera. That this was not always the case
is exemplifi ed by Thomas Baines’ humorous diary entry
for July 1862. He recounts a chieftain situated near Lake