Of Jumbled Valises and Civil Society: Photography and Political Imagination in Senegal

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements As always in my research in Senegal, I am deeply indebted to Fatima Fall, Ibrahima Faye, Khady Ndoye Faye, Bocar Ly, Gnilane Ly, Leslie Rabine, and El Hadj Adama Sylla for their extraordinary generosity and wisdom. I am particularly indebted to Rozy Fredericks, Hélène Neveu Kringelbach, and Karim Dahou for their help with identifications of key figures in the photographs reproduced here. Notes [1] See, for example, Pinney Citation1997, Citation2004; Pinney & Dwyer Citation2003; and Strassler Citation2009. [2] On the pertinence of these distinctions in an African context, see Young Citation2007. [3] The restoration of the French title serves to remind us of Foucault's preoccupation with the visual or optical dimensions of power. [4] 'At issue is an effort to disclose the inextricable relationship between the populations facing pending catastrophe and the citizens with whom they are governed, doing so by means of an examination of the civic space of the gaze, speech, and action that is shared by these governed populations' (Azoulay Citation2008: 17). [5] For a selection of recent scholarship on this topic, see the special section on 'Photography and the State' in the 2010 annual review issue of Theory, Culture & Society and my introduction to the same (Bajorek Citation2010b). [6] For a discussion of some of the distortions introduced by the critical and curatorial reception of the work of Seydou Keïta, see Bajorek Citation2009. [7] For a notable exception to this trend, see Enwezor Citation2001. [8] For a history of itinerant practices in Western coastal cities, see Haney Citation2010. [9] Personal interview with Adama Sylla, Saint‐Louis, Senegal, 15 July 2008. Personal interview with Guibril André Diop, son of the photographer Doudou Diop, Saint‐Louis, Senegal, 26 December 2007. All interviews were conducted in French. [10] Sylla was, in addition to a professional photographer, curator of photographic collections at the Saint‐Louis branch of IFAN (later, the CRDS) and a formidable private collector. I conducted interviews and looked at photographs with him on two separate visits to Saint‐Louis, Senegal, in December 2007 and July‐August 2008. Interviews were conducted in French. I am deeply grateful to Fatima Fall, Director of the CRDS, in Saint‐Louis for her suggestion that I contact Sylla, and for the introductions she made. [11] See again Haney Citation2010. [12] Arguably, the emigration began earlier still, with the 1902 transfer of the capital of the AOF from Saint‐Louis to Dakar. See Aïdara Citation2004; Brigaud & Vast Citation1987. [13] Unfortunately, I could not obtain permission to reproduce this photograph. [14] In July 2008, I travelled to the presidential palace with Leslie Rabine, who had obtained a letter signed by President Abdoulaye Wade granting her permission to consult the official photographic archives of the Office of the President ['La Présidence']. After much discussion at the guardhouse and after the summoning of officials from the interior, she was not admitted—because no one knew where the archives were located. On a later visit, she successfully obtained an appointment with the presidential librarian and archivist and was admitted to the complex, only to discover that the archivist was not able to provide access to this archive. [15] In Dakar, it was suggested to me by archivists and librarians that I might find the photographic archives of the regional governments in the iconographic collections of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal. After repeated visits to the national archives in July and August of 2008, however, I was not able to obtain any clear information as to the precise nature, or the location, of these collections. In 2008, I was told by IFAN personnel that the photographic collections of the National Archives had been transferred to the photothèque of the main IFAN site in Dakar, an autonomous facility housed on the campus of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (IFAN‐UCAD). Upon visiting the IFAN‐UCAD photothèque and consulting all processed photographic materials, I determined that none of these collections contained photographs that had been commissioned by either the regional governments or by the official information service post‐1960. [16] I am grateful to Clare Harris and Chris Morton for their thoughtful and incisive comments regarding the relationship between 'official' and 'unofficial' archives in my research, generously shared with me during a presentation of my work in progress at the Oxford Pitt Rivers Museum, on 26 February 2010. [17] Personal interview with Adama Sylla, Saint‐Louis, Senegal, 15 July 2008. [18] Personal interview with Adama Sylla, Saint‐Louis, Senegal, 15 July 2008. [19] Several photographs from this photographer's collection, which forms a subset of Sylla's personal collection, were published in Revue Noire's Anthology. See Saint‐Léon et al. Citation1999. [20] A point for further research in this regard is the practice of Doudou Diop, who worked in the quarter of Sor, in Saint‐Louis, from the early 1950s. Diop, an accountant in the French army by day, ran a well‐known and extremely successful studio practice out of his family home evenings and weekends. Among the personal work he undertook (that is, this work was not commissioned) were photographs of troops parading in formal regalia in front of the various city monuments and government buildings. After acquiring a 16 mm motion picture camera, Diop attempted an extended series of experiments aimed at shooting 16 mm film while riding through the streets of Saint‐Louis on his motorcycle. Personal interviews with Guibril André Diop, son of the photographer, Saint‐Louis, Senegal, 26 December 2007, and Bouna Medoune Seye, Dakar, Senegal, 24 December 2007. [21] As indicated above, the fate of such offices and their archives are a matter for further research. [22] Candace Keller discusses the permits that were required by photographers in the French Sudan, now Mali, in a podcast that was recorded for the Africa: Past and Present series. See Keller Citation2010. My knowledge of the regulations regarding public photography in Dahomey comes from personal interviews with Cosme Zinsou Dossa conducted in July 2009 in Porto‐Novo, Benin, and with Benoît Adjovi, also in July 2009, in Cotonou, Benin. [23] Heartfelt thanks go to Leslie Rabine for the introductions she provided me to the Faye–Ndoye family and their collection, and for the suggestion that I meet her in Senegal in the first place. Her generosity and erudition have entered into all of my discussions of this collection, and I have learned from her at every stage of this research. All reproductions of the photographs to which I refer from the Faye–Ndoye collection were made by her expert hand, including those printed here. [24] See Roberts & Roberts Citation2003.