Getting Pictures Right

Context and Interpretation

Edited by: Michael Albrecht, Veit Arlt, Barbara Müller, Jürg Schneider. With contributions by: Elizabeth Edwards, Richard Fardon, Barbara Frey Näf, Christraud Geary, Erin Haney, Anton Holzer, Paul Jenkins, Thoralf Klein, Marisol Palma.

Series: Topics in Interdisciplinary African Studies Volume 3

2004
192 pp.
56 b/w illustrations, 2 tables
Text language(s): English
Format: 160 x 240 mm
450 g
Paperback
€ 36.80

CONTENTS

Theory of the Visual – Photographs as Source and Medium

Elizabeth Edwards:
Thinking materially / Thinking relationally

Anton Holzer:
Der Weg und die Fotografie Mission Photographs – Photography in the Colonial Context

Thoralf Klein:
The Basel Mission as a Transcultural Organization – Photographs of Chinese Christians and the Problem of Agency

Marisol Palma:
Konstruktion, Sammlung und Archiv – Zur sozialen Biografie der Feuerland-Fotografien von Martin Gusinde

Richard Fardon:
The Ethnologist and the Missionaries – Recording the 1908 Lela in Bali Nyonga

Barbara Frey Näf:
Imaging the Past – Historicising Portraits of the Kodagu and Nilgiri region, South-East India

Paul Jenkins:
Camera evangelistica – camera lucida? Trans-border experiences with historical photographs from a mission archive

The Postcolonial Project of Visual Representation

Christraud Geary:
Portraiture, Authorship, and the Inscription of History – Photographic Practice in the Bamum Kingdom, Cameroon (1902–1980)

Erin Haney:
If these Walls could talk – Exploring the Dynamic Archive through Ghanaian Portraiture

Reviews

This volume contains most of the papers presented at the symposium held in Basel in September 2003 to mark the retirement, after thirty-one years, of Paul Jenkins as archivist of the Basel Mission. The occasion and this publication particularly addressed Jenkins's pioneering role in preserving and interpreting mission photographs and in promoting them as a unique and valuable resource for the study of the missionary encounter with, and perception of, indigenous cultures and peoples. As John Ruskin observed in the 1860s, photographs are "of great use if you know how to examine them" [...] This is a rich, absorbing, and well-illustrated compilation, [...] and the editors are to be congratulated for bringing it to press so expeditiously.

Rosemary Seton in Interantional Bulletin of Missionary Research, 30/2, 2006, pp. 104-105

Most of the nine articles in this beautifully illustrated volume were presented in 2003 at a symposium to mark the retirement of Paul Jenkins as archivist of the Basel Mission. Many Africanist historians will, for a variety of reasons, share Patrick Harries's view of Jenkins as an 'archivist from heaven'. [...] Only three articles are explicitly devoted to Africa [but] Africanists can also learn a great deal on methodology from the three articles on other continents. [...] The book is a fitting tribute to Jenkins's pioneering achievement. At the same time it opens up a myriad of perspectives for future research, not least in African history.

Adam Jones in Journal of African History, 47/2006, pp. 159-160

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