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For the first time, an exhibition focuses on the photographs of the earliest local photographers from West and Central Africa. Since the late 19th century, they have been creating enchanting photographs together with their customers in open-air studios. The thought of future viewers was always present; for them, the people in front of the camera staged themselves in the way they wanted posterity to see them. The photographs are thus sharply differentiated from the images of colonial photographers, who served to confirm a backward, exotic other.
Using around one hundred original prints, the exhibition addresses the most important themes in the history of photography in West and Central Africa. The focus is on the peculiarities of this photo culture and the interrelationships with other local art forms.
"The Future is Blinking" is a quote by the Ghanaian photographer Philip Kwame Apagya (*1958) from the film Future Remembrance by Tobias Wendl (1997). Apagya thus refers to what he considers the most important task of photography in Ghana: creating memories for future generations with idealized portraits.
"The Future is Blinking" Early studio photography from West and Central Africa
Museum Rietberg
Gablerstrasse 15
CH-8002 Zurich
Switzerland: until 3 July 2022
Details: https://rietberg.ch/ausstellungen/the_future_is_blinking
Victoria and Albert Museum's photography collection
National Science and Media Museum
RPS Journal 1853-2012 online and searchable
Photographic History Research Centre, Leicester
Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné
British Photography. The Hyman Collection
The Press Photo History Project Mapping the photo agencies and photographers of Fleet Street and the UK
The correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot
Historic England Archive
UAL Photography and Photography and the Archive Research Centre
Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group
www.londonstereo.com London Stereoscopic Company / T. R. Williams
www.earlyphotography.co.uk British camera makers and companies
Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock.
National Portrait Gallery, London
http://www.freewebs.com/jb3d/
Alfred Seaman and the Photographic Convention
Frederick Scott Archer
© 2022 Created by Michael Pritchard.
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