Negotiating the Visible: Photography in Senegal and Beyond

Based on research conducted over the past 15 years, the book is the first to focus exclusively on Senegal, as one of the epicenters of African modernity, at the intersection of Black Atlantic, Islamic, and African cultures. In her talk, Giulia Paoletti will offer a visual journey from the 1840s, when the oldest-surviving daguerreotype from West Africa was made, to the 1960s, when photography became the most popular medium as Senegal achieved its independence. She will discuss Africa’s most celebrated modernists, such as Mama Casset, and also offer insights into lesser-known photographers like Oumar Ka and once-anonymous figures such as Macky Kane. In considering a variety of genres and media including glass painting and lithography, this study privileges the close study of photographs as constantly engaged in a dynamic process of circulation, negotiation, and conversion, within, across and beyond the colonial empire. As such, the photograph appears as a moving image that demands we stop looking at it and “instead start watching it,” as it negotiates the visible.

The panel discussion will focus on the following thematic lines: The social aspects and categories in West-African photography (for instance portrait photography, family albums and the sociocultural and economic backgrounds of the studio clientele), the role of postcards as a massproduced, widely circulating medium, documentary photography, and, not least, the bigger picture: How do we address early photography in relation to contemporary art photography, the technological aspects of the medium itself, as well as working structures of studio photographers in a global context?
The panel participants will introduce research in their fields and institutions, recent exhibitions, publications, field work, and initiatives of and for younger researchers, presenting a diverse, critical and widened picture of a geography of photography.