Santu Mofokeng’s The Black Photo Album / Look at Me: 1890–1950 (2013) and the Victorian Dispositive. Photographic Staging and Appropriation as Practices of Anticolonial Resistance
Santu Mofokeng’s The Black Photo Album / Look at Me: 1890–1950 (2013) and the Victorian Dispositive. Photographic Staging and Appropriation as Practices of Anticolonial Resistance

Summary/Abstract: This contribution discusses selected historical photographs of the research project,collection, and photobook The Black Photo Album / Look at Me: 1890–1950 published in 2013by Santu Mofokeng (1956–2020), both within the original context of their emergence as wellas taking Mofokeng’s intention in editing the photobook into account. Furthermore, the locationof the image content and its aesthetics in the colonial context of South Africa 1890–1950and within the Victorian photographic dispositive are in the focus. The analysis of the TheBlack Photo Album / Look at Me: 1890–1950 considers the Victorian photographic discourseof the late 19th century as an influential frame. This discourse entails ongoing mechanismsof epistemic violence in the visual representation of the Black community. Furthermore, thepaper perceives the photographs found by Mofokeng as a material testimony of practiced anticolonialresistance. This perspective contributes productively to the critical discussion of Mofokeng’squestion, if these images are “evidence of mental colonisation” or did they serve tochallenge prevailing images of ‘African people’ in the ‘West’.

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