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
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, 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, 159-160
Dieses Jahr stellt Mission 21 Fotografien aus dem Archiv der Basler Mission vor, die das Bewusstsein dafür schärfen, dass ein Bild ohne zusätzliche Informationen falsche Assoziationen auslösen kann. So auch das hier gezeigte Bild mit dem Titel „Strickende Schülerinnen“. Dargestellt ist eine Gruppe junger Frauen in Fumban, der Hauptstadt des Königreichs Bamum in Kamerun. Im Hintergrund sichtbar ist Anna Wuhrmann, Lehrerin an der Mädchenschule. Auf das Bild aufmerksam geworden ist das Team von Mission 21 durch einen Artikel von Paul Jenkins, dem ehemaligem Archivar der Basler Mission, der es im Buch „Getting Pictures Right“ analysiert hat. [...]
Die Schülerinnen strickten in zehn Wochen 125 Paar Baumwollsocken für die Soldaten und folgten damit ihrem König, der Deutschland bis zum Ende des Krieges unterstützte. Das Bild ist somit ein spannendes Beispiel für die koloniale Verflechtung der Mission, das aber erst mit zusätzlichen Informationen richtig gedeutet werden kann.
Andrea Rhyn in Eine Welt, 2/2023, 39
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