Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T08:50:57.349Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fragile Legacy: Photographs as Documents in Recovering Political and Cultural History at the Royal Court of Benin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Flora S. Kaplan
Flora S. Kaplan*
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Photographs create a tantalizing sense of “being there” while history was being made. They offer a means of entry into cultures that are historically non-literate, stimulating informants' memories and linking their oral traditions to specific events and persons in the culture. Their research potential in West Africa and in Nigeria, in particular, is only now being recognized (Edwards 1990; Kaplan 1990: 317-319; Scherer 1990: 131, 135, 139, 141, 145; Sprague 1978; Viditz-Ward 1985; 1991). The focus here is on photographs connected with the royal court of Benin, and with ongoing ethnographic field work initiated in 1982.1 Special attention is given to photographs taken between 1926 and 1989 by S. O. Alonge, the first indigenous and Benin royal photographer. His work illuminates political and cultural history, and contributes to the beginnings of a history of photography in Nigeria.

Evocative images have been used to illustrate books and articles about West Africa.since the early days of nineteenth-century photography. Studies of visuals, however, taken in Nigeria by indigenous photographers and reported systematic uses of photographs in research designs are still rare (Borgatti 1982; Kaplan 1980, 1991a, 1991b; Karpinski 1984; Sprague 1978). Most research extant on early uses of visuals has been on cinema (Rouch 1975a, 1975b). There has been serious interest in the condition and circumstances of Nigeria cinema and filmmakers, and a desire to create a history of African film (Mathias 1986). The impetus to codify and to create methods for the study of film and stills in anthropology points to a growing awareness of their potential as much more than entertainment and illustration. Photographs are best been as behavior and ideas captured and expressed in imagery, and studied much as we do material culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 18 , 1991 , pp. 205 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blackmun, Barbara W. 1984. The Iconography of Carved Altar Tusks from Benin, Nigeria. Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Borgatti, Jean A. 1982. Okpella Masks: In Search of the Parameters of the Beautiful and the Grotesque. Studies in Visual Communications 8 (3): 28–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connah, Graham. 1975. The Archaeology of Benin. Oxford.Google Scholar
Echeruo, Michael J. C. 1977. Victorian Lagos: Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Lagos Life. London.Google Scholar
Edwards, Elizabeth. 1990. Photographic ‘Types:’ The Pursuit of Method. Visual Anthropology 3 (2/3): 235–58.Google Scholar
Fagg, William. 1970. Divine Kingship in Africa. London.Google Scholar
Geary, Christraud M. 1983. Things of the Palace: A Catalogue of the Bornum Palace Museum in Foumban (Cameroon). Wiesbaden.Google Scholar
Geary, Christraud M. 1988. Images from Bornum: German Colonial Photography at the Court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902-1915. Washington.Google Scholar
Geary, Christraud M. 1990. Impressions of the African Past: Interpreting Ethnographic Photographs from Cameroon. Visual Anthropology 3 (2/3): 289–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1980. Una tradición alfarera: conocimiento y estilo. Mexico City.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1981. Images of Power: Art of the Royal Court of Benin. New York.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1984. Doing Field Work at the Royal Court of Benin. Paper presented at CenSCER, University of Benin, 12 December.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1985. Art of the Royal Court of Benin. Benin.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1990. Some Uses of Photographs in Recovering Cultural History at the Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria. Visual Anthropology 3 (2/3): 317–41.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1991a. Benin Art Revisited: Photographs and the Documentation of Museum Collections. Visual Anthropology 4.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1991b. Urban Potters of La Luz. Carbondale.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Flora S. 1992. In Splendor and Seclusion: Royal Women at the Court of Benin, Nigeria. In preparation.Google Scholar
Karpinski, Peter. 1984. A Benin Bronze Horseman at the Merseyside County Museum. African Arts 17 (2): 54–62, 88–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathias, Timawus. 1986. Random Thoughts on Film Making in Nigeria. Gongola State Television, 16 April.Google Scholar
Monti, Nicholas. 1987. Africa Then: Photography, 1840-1918. New York.Google Scholar
Rouch, Jean. 1975a. The Situation and Tendencies of the Cinema in Africa. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 2 (2):51–58.Google Scholar
Rouch, Jean. 1975b. The Situation and Tendencies of the Cinema in Africa. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 2 (2): 112–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherer, Joanna C. 1975. You Can't Believe Your Eyes: Inaccuracies in Photographs of North American Indians. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 2 (2): 67–79.Google Scholar
Scherer, Joanna C. 1990. Historical Photographs as Anthropological Documents: A Retrospect. Visual Anthropology 3 (2/3): 131–55.Google Scholar
Sprague, Stephen. 1978. How I See the Yoruba See Themselves. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 5 (1): 9–28.Google Scholar
Van Der Zee, James and Dodson, Camille B. Owen. 1978. The Harlem Book of the Dead. New York.Google Scholar
Viditz-Ward, Vera. 1985. Alphonso Lisk-Carew: Creole Photographer. African Arts 19 (1): 46–51.Google Scholar