18
Photographers were employed to record engineer-
ing feats, such as the building of railways, roads and
bridges, symbols of the civilising effects of the colo-
nial endeavour. In the 1880s Cape Railways employed
T.D. Ravenscroft. In the late 1890s William D. Young,
offi cial photographer for Ugandan railway, covered
the construction of the Mombasa-Kampala line. From
the 1880s publication of photographic albums of these
infrastructural projects, such as J.A. da Cunha Moraes’
Africa Occidental (1885–88), Robert Harris’ South
Africa Illustrated (1888) and The Queen’s Empire
(1897), increased. They depicted an idealized picture
of the European presence in Africa to garner support
for the colonial agenda at home. Colonial administra-
tors also used photography to check and control native
populations subjected to their rule. As early as the 1860s
partners Acly and Lecorgne took identity photographs
of African, Indian and Chinese immigrants disembark-
ing at Mauritius point of arrival, Coolie Ghat, for the
island’s government.
Taking pictures as a hobby was popularised by the
introduction of dry-plates and small hand-held cameras
in the 1880s. Enthusiastic amateur photographers, in-
cluding women, formed camera clubs, creating a forum
for the exchange of information, advice and aesthetic
ideas which they gained from the increasing number
and range of photographic journals published. In sub-
Saharan Africa, the fi rst camera club meeting was held
in Kimberley, South Africa in 1890. Contacts with the
club movement in Britain were formed. Sir Benjamin
Stone (1838–1914), President of the Birmingham Photo-
graphic Society, addressed the Cape Town Photographic
Society in 1894. Previously, in 1882 a member of that
club, C. Ray Woods, was the fi rst in South Africa join
the Royal Photographic Society in 1882. The clubs
acquired premises with studio and dark-room facilities,
exchanged prints and lantern slides, organised outings
and participated in competitions. From 1896 a national
salon organised by the Cape Town Society became an
annual event. By 1895 there were in total eleven photo-
graphic societies in South Africa and just two elsewhere
in the continent, at Constantine and Oran, Algeria.
In comparison with photographs taken by colonial
offi cials, scientists and amateurs, commercial photogra-
phers catering for a European market for travel photog-
raphy that had greatly expanded by the 1880s, created
less authentic images of Africa and its peoples. Large
photographic companies operating in sub-Saharan Af-
rica, such as Naretti (Abyssinia), Lazarus (Mozambique)
and Harris (South Africa), produced appealing, saleable
photographs by carefully staging subjects to adopt cer-
tain poses and wear ‘typical’ clothes and ornaments.
Their manipulated representations contributed further
to a stereotype of Africa and Africans. In the nineteenth-
century photography’s relation to sub-Saharan Africa
was predominantly as a transmitter to the outside world
of a view of the continent that was anything but unbiased
and informs prejudices to this day.
Anne-Marie Eze
See also: Africa, North (excluding Egypt and
Palestine); Anthropology; Egypt and Palestine;
Ethnography; Expedition Photography; Survey
Photography; Imperialism and Colonialism; Royal
Engineers; Travel and Exploration; Herschel, Sir John
Frederick William; Piazzi Smyth, Charles; and Stone,
Sir Benjamin.Further Reading
Bensusan, A.D. Silver images: history of photography in Africa.
Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1966.
Killingray, David, and Roberts, Andrew. ‘An outline history of
photography in Africa to ca. 1940,’ History in Africa, 16.
1989.
Lenman, Robin, ed., ‘Africa’ in The Oxford companion to the
photograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Monti, Nicholas. Africa then: photographs 1840–1918. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1987.
Saint Léon, Pascal Martin, Fall, N’Goné, and Fall, Frédérique.
eds.. Anthology of African and Indian Ocean photography.
Paris: Revue Noire, 1999.
Zaccaria, Massimo. Photography and African studies: a bibli-
ography. Pavia: Department of Political and Social Studies
in the University of Pavia, 2001.AFRICA, NORTH
Photography in the countries of North Africa—present
day Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, and Libya—may
logically be considered separately from photographic
practice in the Near East—the Holy Land and Egypt—in
the nineteenth century. The number of visitors to Egypt
and the Holy Land—initially explorers and antiquarians,
followed by travelers extending the Grand Tour, and
ultimately tourists lured by package tours and a highly
developed tourism industry—accelerated and amplifi ed
photographic activities in those areas. Other regions of
North Africa experienced the arrival of photography
in the hands of European travelers and the subsequent
establishment of indigenous commercial photographic
studios at different paces.
The earliest photographers of North Africa were
motivated primarily by the documentary interests of
architects, antiquarians, and archaeologists who focused
initially on Greco/Roman ruins. The site of Baalbek
in present day Lebanon was photographed frequently
by visitors and commercial photographers; a list that
begins with Joly de Lotbiniere (1839) and Gerault de
Prangey (1842), followed in short order by Maxime
DuCamp (1850), and later commercial photographers
such as the Bonfi ls Studio. Lerebours’ Excursions Da-
guerriennes (1841–44), the fi rst book with engravings