“Picture is a Silent Talker” (Apagya) African Studio Photography in the English Classroom

GISELA FEURLE

Prologue N THE PLAY “Sizwe Bansi is dead” by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, first performed in in 1972, the I protagonist Styles, a photographer, opens a studio:

So here it is! (S TYLES points to his name board) “Styles Photographic Studio: Reference Books; Passports; Weddings; Engagements; Birthday Parties and Parties. Proprietor: Styles.” When you look at this, what do you see? Just another photographic studio? Where people come because they’ve lost their Reference Book and need a photo for the new one? That I sit them down, set up the camera … “No expression please.” …click-click… “Come back tomorrow, please” … and then kick them out and wait for the next? No, friend. It’s more than just that. This is a strong-room of dreams. The dreamers? My people. The simple people, who you never find mentioned in the history books, who never get statues erected to them, or monuments commemorating their great deeds. People who would be forgotten, and their dreams with them, if it wasn’t for Styles. That’s what I do, friends. Put down, in may way, on paper the dreams and hopes of my people so that even their children’s children will remember a man…1

1 Athol Fugard, John Kani & Winston Ntshona, “Sizwe Bansi is dead” (1972), in Township Plays, ed. Dennis Walder (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000): 159. 88 GISELA FEURLE º

1. Introduction There is a long tradition of African photography which – with a few ex- ceptions – has been ignored in ‘the North’ until quite recently. For a long time the images of Africa and its people were mainly determined by Euro- pean representations. Colonial officers, missionaries, adventurers, social anthropologists, artists, and journalists took pictures of ‘the Other’ and it is not surprising that they differ from the pictures Africans took of Afri- cans. European photographers on the continent in the colonial era always looked for the primitive or exotic ‘Other’ and produced images and imagi- naries to confirm Western supremacy or the critique of Western civiliza- tion.2 Aspects of these images are still being reproduced in the media with the stereotypical and one-sided representations of Africa as the continent of catastrophes, hunger, and war, on the one hand, and of exotic cultures and traditions, on the other. By contrast, African photography provides insight into facets of self-portrayal and into processes of cultural and social change on the continent. After a brief introduction to the development of studio photography and its contexts in West and East Africa, I will reflect on the particular character of studio photographs and consider European and African tradi- tions. Against this background I will then introduce some African studio photographers and their work. The last part will discuss didactic aspects with reference to my teaching experience: dealing with African studio photography in the English classroom, working with images and texts.

2. Studio Photography in West and East Africa African photography as it developed in West and East Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century is mainly a tradition of portrait photo- graphy. Early photo journalism as practised by photographers of the famous Drum magazine in South Africa in the 1950s, such as Bob Gosani and , or ’s work documenting South Afri- ca’s realities, was exceptional on the continent at that time. From the beginning of the twentieth century, Africans took up the pro- fession of photographer in various regions and colonial contexts. This

2 See Tobias Wendl & Heike Behrend, Snap me one! Studiofotografen in Afrika, ed. Wendl & Behrend (Munich, London & New York: Prestel, 1998): 8.