Image Ethics” in and about Africa

The thoughts to follow are inspired by a num ber of recent works in art history and culture, most of which concern parts of world other than The excellent essays of Photography's Other Histories (2003) edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peter son and chapters of Raw Histories: Photo graphs, Anthropology and Museums (2001) by Elizabeth Edwards are particular sources for my ruminations. How might insights of writers working in Aboriginal Australia, Papua New Guinea, or First-Nation America be applied to various image worlds of Africa and its diasporas? This First Word is a call for discussion concerning locally appropri ate image ethics and visual repatriation, as these phrases to be explained below are being articulated by activist scholars. Africans have long been subjects of pho tography by non-Africans, and as Salah Has san notes, of Africa's world through invention of camera went hand in hand with appropriation of Africa's wealth (2007:8) during colonial period and subsequently as well. Hassan raises an essential question in his introduction to Fall 2007 special issue of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art that is dedicated to photography and film: What happens when African and African diaspora artists turn camera on their own culture, or when they shift focus to cultures other than their own? (ibid). Such local, reflexive use of photography by and for Africans began by mid-nineteenth century. For example, Augustus Washington (1820-1875), who was born in United States, free son of a South Asian mother and an African-American father, became the first daguerreotypist in West Africa. Washington moved his business and fam ily to Liberia in 1853 to find a better life, and examples of his photography of Liberian nota bles have been preserved (Geary 2002:103; see also Schumard 1999a, 1999b). He went on to become an important sugar farmer in Liberia

Computer vision · Geography · Image (mathematics) · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Computer Science · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation

• Beyond Wide-Eyed Angels

  Peri M Klemm, Leah Niederstadt•African Arts•2009

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• Growing Up with Aborigines

  Open Access•Michael Aird•Photography's Other Histories•2003

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• Visual Methods in Social Research

  Marcus Banks, D Zeitlyn•Visual Methods in Social Research•2015

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• A Saint in the City

  Allen F Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts•African Arts•2002

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• African Ceremonies

  Allen F Roberts, Vera Viditz-Ward et al.•African Arts•2000

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• Losing the Forest but not the Stories in the Trees

  J A Bell, Joshua Bell•Journal of Pacific History•2006

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• The Truth Be Told

  Godfrey Muriuki, Neal Sobania•Journal of Eastern African Studies•2007

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