The Colonising Camera

Title: The Colonising Camera
Subtitle: Photographs in the making of Namibian History
Editors: Wolfram Hartmann, Jeremy Silvester, Patricia Hayes
Contributors: Bollig, Michael; Gewald, Jan Bart; Gordon, Robert J.; Landau, Paul S.; Rohde, Nick; Timm, Margo; Wallace, Marion
Publishers: University of Cape Town Press; Out of Afrika; Ohio University Press
Windhoek (Namibia); Cape Town (South Africa); Athens (USA) 1998
ISBN 1919713220 / ISBN 1-919713-22-0
ISBN 9991621407 / ISBN 99916-2-140-7
ISBN 0821412612 / ISBN 0-8214-1261-2
Original softcover, 26 x 28 cm, 220 pages, numerous bw- and colour photos, illustrations, maps

Description: The Colonising Camera

The death of an African king in battle; the celebration of aeroplanes as instruments of policing; the panoramic recording of rituals; the hunting trophy draped over a motor-car; the bold gaze of African women in a changing urban landscape; marching groups of Herero men in German uniform. These and other photographs are reprinted from the archive originals and brought under critical inquiry in this volume. The core of the book 'The Colonising Camera' is an exhibition of colonial photographs from Namibia, dating from the onset of South African colonial rule. The exhibition is accompanied by commentaries which explore the intertwined themes of photography and colonialism. This in-depth scrutiny of Namibian photographs shows very strong links between visuality and the making of colonial cultures in an African setting. The book offers new ways of thinking about Africa's incorporation into the wider world through the production and circulation of images. Photographs were powerful cultural commodities in Namibia, whether used by Germans, South Africans, Americans or Africans themselves. Much of the book's freshness derives from its approach to South Africa, not usually conceived as a colonial power. South African photography cast Namibians as ethnographic subjects in need of tutelage. The camera took possession of awesome landscapes, and constructed particular kinds of 'whiteness' in the territory. But readers will be struck by the ways in which Namibians have used (and continue to use) photography to challenge their long history of colonisation and dispossession.

Content: The Colonising Camera

Acknowledgements
Notes on contributors
Map of Namibia
Part I Introduction
1. Photography, history and memory
Patricia Hayes, Jeremy Silvester, Wolfram Hartmann
2. This ideal conquest: photography and colonialism in Namibian history
Jeremy Silvester, Patricia Hayes, Wolfram Hartmann
3. Photography in colonial discourse: the making of 'the other' in southern Africa, c. 1850-1950
Brent Harris
Part II Exhibition: The colonising camera:
photographs in the making of Namibian history, 1915-1950
Part III Commentaries: from colonising camera to 'How we see each other'
4. Backdrops and Bushmen: an expeditious comment
Robert J. Gordon
5. Mirror images? Photographs of Herero commemorations in the 1920s and 1930s
Jan-Bart Gewald
6. Funerary photographs: the funeral of a chief
Wolfram Hartmann
7. Looking at the locations: the ambiguities of urban photography
Marion Wallace
8. Your space or mine? The photography of the Police Zone
Jeremy Silvester
9. Transpositions: the reinterpretation of colonial photographs of the Kwanyama king Mandume ya
Ndemufayo in the art of John Ndevasia Muafangejo
Margo Timm
10. Hunting with gun and camera: a commentary
Paul S. Landau
11. Performing gender, staging colonialism: camping it up/acting it out in Ovamboland
Wolfram Hartmann
12. Framing Kaokoland
Michael Bollig
13. Northern exposures: the photography of C.H.L. Hahn, Native Commissioner of Ovamboland 1915-1946
Patricia Hayes
14. How we see each other: subjectivity, photography and ethnographic re/vision including
Matida sida ra mugu: from an exhibition by rural Namibian photographers
Rick Rohde
Appendix: photographic references and sources
List of abbreviations
Bibliography
Index