The African photographic archive: research and curatorial strategies
- Submitting institution
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University of Brighton
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 7123954
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury
- ISBN
- 9781472591241
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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A - Design History, Visual and Material Culture
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The African Photographic Archive brings together research from across the disciplinary boundaries of art, anthropology and history with archival and curatorial practices in order to address the conceptual and methodological challenges of working with photographic collections in or related to Africa. It was the first such volume to focus specifically on African archives within the broader photography studies literature. Newbury co-edited and structured the book’s contents, co-authored the introduction and contributed a single-authored chapter. The introduction maps existing research and curatorial practices in the field and develops a series of interlinked conceptual and methodological arguments on the idea of African photography, the archival lives of photographs in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and researchers’ and curators’ methods of engagement with historical photographic collections. This context serves to identify and position the significance of the research presented in each of the chapters. The chapters, commissioned and shaped in consultation with the editors, provide a series of case studies of research with photographic collections across four thematic dimensions – ‘Connected Histories’, ‘Ethnographies’, ‘Political Framings’ and ‘Archival Propositions’. The editors worked closely with authors to shape the volume overall as a theoretical and methodological contribution to the field of African photography studies.
Newbury’s single-authored chapter is based on original research and curatorial practice with a collection of South African photographs. The chapter examines the complex and multiple forms of agency in the archive and the ethics of research and curation as they apply to the display of photographs from South Africa’s apartheid past in the post-apartheid present. The impetus for the volume originated in a symposium convened in 2011 by Morton and Newbury, which was based around a photographic exhibition Newbury had curated for display at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -