PHOTOGRAPHY IN AFRICA: CENTRAL
AND WEST
West African portrait photography has garnered
much Western attention, spurred by the interna-
tional fame of Malian Seydou Keı ̈ta. Scholars’
gazes have also fixed on West and Central Africa’s
rich history of anthropological photography. Forms
of state-sponsored photography and contemporary
art practice have likewise elicited interest.
The medium of photography reached Western
Africa’s coastal towns soon after its invention,
and African practitioners were active by the
1860s. The end of the nineteenth century saw the
spread of commercial studios from coastal to
inland centers. Varying policies by colonial autho-
rities either fostered or impeded the development of
indigenous photographers, yielding uneven pro-
gress. In the beginning of the twentieth century,
studios participated in the international postcard
market, supplying images to European publishers
and distributing work regionally to Westerners
(but rarely to Africans). Several photographers
and publishers may be considered as exemplary of
those participating from West and Central Africa
in this global trade in images. The most important
local producer was Frenchman Edmond Fortier,
active in Senegal. Fortier’s grand project is
described by David Prochaska in hisAfrican Arts
article ‘‘Fantasia of the Photothe ́que: French Post-
card Views of Colonial Senegal’’ (1991) as a series
of photographic documents, conceptually ‘‘filed’’
as colonial knowledge. Indigenous African studio
and postcard photographers active at the beginning
of the century include several Sierra Leone Creoles,
whose work has been discussed by Vera Viditz-
Ward in her article ‘‘Studio Photography in Free-
town’’ inAnthology of African and Indian Ocean
Photography (1999), and Togo’s Alex Acolatse,
whose career has been sketched by Phillipe David
in the Anthology of African and Indian Ocean
Photography article ‘‘Photographer-publishers in
Togo’’ (1999). The thorny question of whether
African photographers articulated a different
vision than their European counterparts is consid-
ered by Christraud Geary inDelivering Views: Dis-
tant Cultures in Early Postcards(1998), where she
offers a nuanced answer, acknowledging both the
power of Western conventions and the possibility
of a particularly African vision.
Following World War Two, a boom in indigen-
ous portrait studios responded to the needs of a
growing African middle class. In the 1940s, Mama
and Salla Casset operated studios in Dakar, Sene-
gal, and Seydou Keı ̈ta began work in Bamako,
Mali. Typically, Keı ̈ta’s sitters availed themselves
of costumes and studio props to project a fashion-
able, modern appearance. (The fascinating migra-
tion of Keı ̈ta’s work from its Malian context into
the canon of Western art photography is explored
by Elizabeth Bigham’sAfrican Artsarticle, ‘‘Issues
of Authorship in the Portrait Photographs of Sey-
dou Keita’’ [1999].) The next generation of portrai-
tists active after national independence, exemplified
by Mali’s Malick Sidibe ́ and Niger’s Philippe
Koudjina, eschewed the studio formality of Keı ̈ta’s
work, frequently bringing the camera out-of-doors
to photograph the leisure of a burgeoning youth
culture. Samuel Fosso, a studio operator in the
Central African Republic, has wrought personal
statements from studio conventions since the
1970s in a series of theatrical self-portraits. In the
1980s, color photography arrived and studio photo-
graphers began to fade from the scene. An excep-
tion is Phillip Kwame Apagya who has worked in
Shama, Ghana since 1982, relying on elaborate
painted backdrops to create imaginative environ-
ments for his sitters.
Valuable anthropological studies of portrait
photography are now being produced by Western
scholars. The integration of photography into Yor-
uban cultural formations in Nigeria is the subject
of Stephen Sprague’s groundbreaking article in
African Arts, ‘‘Yoruba Photography: How the
Yoruba See Themselves’’ (1978). Taking the work
of Cote d’Ivoire-based Corne ́lius Yao Azaglo
Augustt as an example, Jean-Franc ̧ois Werner’s
article ‘‘Photography and Individualization in
Contemporary Africa: An Ivoirian Case-study’’ in
Visual Anthropology(2001) argues from the ubiqui-
tous identity portrait that photography’s centrality
in African visuality is derived from association with
modern state power. In his article ‘‘Self and Acces-AFRICA: CENTRAL AND WEST, PHOTOGRAPHY IN