There is an urgent need to reclaim our photographic heritage

African vernacular photography

Visual images evoke the most powerful sense of a moment in history, none more so than photographs. There are countless examples that immediately spring to mind as icons of turning points in the 20th century.

Photography also has a destructive legacy, unfortunately, in the so-called ‘scientific’ images of Africans made during colonial-era. Much has been written about the cold scrutiny of the lens such people were subjected to in that process.

The fact that photography was appropriated as an African art form, and quickly became absorbed as part of urban African domestic life, has been largely overlooked though. It is precisely because photographs produced an instantaneous visual image that they became so popular.

Means of communication

During the early part of the 20th century, while an African migrant labour force was basically denied education and access to literacy, photographs became a means of communication. For communities who were still close to the traditions of oral history, the image of a person spoke volumes of their character and provided a record of the individual.

Later, when the process of urbanisation and industrialisation was experienced in full force, vast numbers of people left rural areas to live in segregated ‘townships’. These dense peri-urban areas that were consolidated by the apartheid government also provided great opportunities for African photographers who worked in the townships.

At first photographs were only taken in makeshift studios, but these still provide a priceless archive of African family life during the middle of the 20th century. Families recognised the inherent power of photographs to record their simple domestic histories in a visual account of weddings, births, birthdays and other celebrations.

Birth pains

During the final decades of the century, South Africa suffered tremendous social upheaval in the birth pains of a democratic society. Much of that process has been well-documented in published photography. As more and more people gained access to cheaper cameras, the ordinary rituals of family life were also recorded during that time. These images from Soweto, kwaMashu and Khayelitsha have been neglected as part of South African photographic history, and there has been little effort to document and publish pictures from this record.

Despite the global economic turndown, fine art presently remains at a premium. Talent scouts from the centres of the industry (for that is what it has become) in New York and London constantly scour the world for new sources of artworks. Photography has recently emerged as a stronger force in the international art trade, due to prior lack of exposure compared with other branches of the fine arts such as painting or sculpture. There is intense interest in the ‘hidden’ photographic records of places previously ignored by the mainstream. South Africa is precisely such a place.

Claim our own

There is an urgent need to claim our own photographic heritage before it is claimed by others. This requires a comprehensive survey of African vernacular photography, which are the images produced by African photographers for African communities.

While these pictures tell a story that is both universal, and unique to our country, they also compose a continuation of the ancient tradition of oral history. The family albums of South African townships could be presented in the form of an exhibition or book, as a vital part of the story of our nation’s growth.