Re-tracing representations and identities in Twentieth Century South African and African ...

341 Pages·2012·9.45 MB·English

Re-tracing representations and identities in Twentieth Century South
African and African photography: Joseph Denfield, regimes of seeing and
alternative visual histories

Thesis submitted for the requirement of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Fort Hare
By
Phindezwa Elizabeth Mnyaka
History Department
Supervised by Prof Gary Minkley

January 2012
I, Phindezwa Elizabeth Mnyaka, acknowledge that ‘Re-tracing representations and identities
in Twentieth Century South African and African photography: Joseph Denfield, regimes of
seeing and alternative visual histories’ is my own work and that all the resources I have used
or quoted have been acknowledged by means of complete reference. This work has never
been submitted by anyone at any university for a degree.

Student signature:................................................ date:..........................................

Supervisor signature:............................................ date:..........................................

ii
Table of Contents

Abstract..................................................................................................................... vi

Acknowledgements.................................................................................................. vii

Introduction.............................................................................................................. 1

History and Photography........................................................................................ 8

‘Raw histories’........................................................................................................... 14

Pulling it all together................................................................................................ 19

1 Pagan Sanctuary............................................................................................... 22

‘A little army pamphlet’.............................................................................................22

Maps and the ethnographic photographer.................................................................. 28

Trekking through Northern Nigeria........................................................................... 36

Conclusion................................................................................................................. 64

2 Photography of Anthropology.......................................................................... 66

Expeditions through Nigeria...................................................................................... 66

Basutoland and the construction of an idyll............................................................... 81

Conclusion................................................................................................................. 106

3 From Salons to the Native Reserve................................................................... 108

Pagan Life on the Nigerian Plateau.......................................................................... 108

Exhibiting in salons................................................................................................... 117

Native photography.................................................................................................... 135

Conclusion................................................................................................................. 149

Betwixt and Between................................................................................................150

iii
4 ‘Unearthing East London’s treasures’: reconstructing public
history from the private album........................................................................ 155

Encounters with glass negatives................................................................................ 155

‘Do you remember?’.................................................................................................. 165

‘Early Days’............................................................................................................... 180

Conclusion................................................................................................................. 187

5 A Border History...............................................................................................189

The Border Historical Society................................................................................... 189

The Saga of East London........................................................................................... 206

Conclusion................................................................................................................. 210

6 Practices of History........................................................................................... 213

‘A real piece of Africana’.......................................................................................... 213

A permanent exhibition............................................................................................. 236

Conclusion................................................................................................................. 242

7 Secure the Shadow............................................................................................. 243

An investigation into early photographers................................................................. 243

Photography’s History............................................................................................... 252

‘Operation Book’....................................................................................................... 257

Conclusion................................................................................................................. 267

8 Ghosts of the City.............................................................................................. 269

Images in silence........................................................................................................ 269

Burial sites................................................................................................................. 278

Future anterior?.............................................................................................. ........... 286

Images of ruin............................................................................................................ 295
iv
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 303

Conclusion................................................................................................................ 305

Bibliography................................................................................................. ........... 315

Appendix

Photographs by Joseph Denfield.................................................................... ........... 337

v
Abstract
The thesis examines the photographic collection of Joseph Denfield, an archivist and
historian who experimented with photography over a twenty-year period. The study is located
within the field of critical visual studies that focuses on historical photography in its depiction
of identities and groups in the context of social change. The thesis pays attention to the
manner and extent to which Denfield participated in regional visual economies at various
moments during his photographic career in order to establish his contribution towards a
visual history in Africa and more broadly Southern Africa. It follows Denfield’s career
trajectory chronologically. It begins with a study of his photographic work in Nigeria which
was oriented around so-called ‘pagan tribes’ and which was framed within the discourse of
ethnography. It then pays attention to his growth as an artist in photography that resulted
from years of exhibiting in salons. I read these photographs and texts in relation to his earlier
work in Nigeria given the extent to which he drew on anthropological discourses. It is
through his involvement with photographic art circles that Denfield developed as a historian
as a result of his research into the history of photography and regional visual histories. This
took the form of both unearthing historical photographs as well as photographing historical
sites to construct the past in particular ways through the visual. At each stage he translated
these histories into public forms of representation and power thus he figures among a small
group of ‘colonial’ photographers that shaped the visual economy of Southern Africa.
Through a detailed study of his work, the thesis thus aims to re-think through new dimensions
of visual culture.

vi
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to several people who have all played a part in shaping this research. I first need
to thank the staff at the East London Municipal Library for giving me space to explore, think
and dream in their Denfield Africana Room. This is probably one of East London’s most
underutilised resources. It is a historian’s dream. I want to thank Glenn and Carmen
especially.
Of course, without Prof Gary Minkley, my supervisor, I would probably not have even taken
on this task, thus he is to be both thanked and ‘blamed’. I am especially grateful, however, for
being challenged into new intellectual domains, for his amazing insights not to mention the
countless books of his that I have kept the last few years.
In the process of writing I have been fortunate to meet several scholars who have all
contributed with different ideas and suggestions. These are academics located at and
affiliated with the University of the Western Cape.
This research was funded by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the National
Research Foundation. I have also received support from the Fort Hare Institute of Social and
Economic Research. I am especially grateful to Nkosazana Ngcongolo for all the ways she
has assisted. I cannot forget William and Ayanda at the Govan Mbeki Research and
Development Centre for the encouragement and conversations ‘in between’ writing. I owe
you both.
And to family and friends, this leg of the journey is finally complete...

vii
Re-tracing representations and identities in Twentieth Century South
African and African photography: Joseph Denfield, regimes of seeing and
alternative visual histories

Introduction
On the first floor of the East London Municipal Library there is the Denfield Africana
Library. It was the brain-child of Margy Van Deventer, a former director of the library who,
in her plans for the reconstruction of new premises for the library in 1964, chose to include an
Africana room “to house approximately 5000 books and a nearly complete fill of the Daily
Dispatch, together with maps, photographs and pamphlets of local interest”1. Although the
construction of the new site began only in 1968, by August 1967 Van Deventer had already
decided to name the Africana room the Denfield Africana Library after Joseph Denfield,
following his death in July of that year2. Only a week before his death, Denfield donated “the
most comprehensive collection of historical material on East London”3 to the library.
According to a media report, this included survey maps dating to the 19th century,
programmes for early concerts, a complete set of ‘redbooks’ for East London and large
historical photographs of the city.
The Africana room houses all material the library has collected and continues to collect that
relate to Africana. The collection extends beyond Denfield’s donation. Here one can peruse
numerous volumes on a myriad of topics about the African continent ranging from travel
books of explorers towards the end of the nineteenth century, to leather-bound dissertations
published only a few years ago. It is in this room that one also finds an archival collection of
a few regional newspapers on microfilm, several photo albums donated by individuals and
countless documents all pertaining to the city. Over the past four years I have focused largely
on one section of the Africana Library, that is, the set of texts and images that relate to Joseph
Denfield in the room. Located in a few cabinets, I refer to this as the ‘Denfield Collection’.
This is material that relates specifically to Denfield’s career in photography and speaks to his
experimentation with the medium both in and outside East London. These range from

1 M.H. Van Deventer, Draft building programme for the central library, East London. Denfield Collection, East
London Municipal Library, 1964 [henceforth DC].
2 Daily Dispatch, 16 August 1967.
3 Ibid.
speeches and articles he wrote in connection with his photography, to newspaper clips that
librarians collected about Denfield posthumously. The bulk consists of material relating to
East London history: both images and texts Denfield collected and wrote about the city, as
well as numerous letters to individuals and organisations relating to the history of
photography.
The documents have been filed haphazardly around his projects in different regions, that is,
his photography in Nigeria in the mid-1940s, photographic exhibitions, photographic
societies, the history of East London and the history of photography4. The Denfield
Collection remains little-known to the public (and to some extent the librarians as well) and
has received few visitors since its establishment5. Thus my investigation did not begin with
any particularly focused question but with a burgeoning curiosity as to the kinds of queries
the collection would potentially yield.
Centrally, the thesis explores various moments in the African and more broadly South
African photographic visual economy through the work of Denfield to figure out the ways in
which these moments feed into events, meanings and identities that characterised Africa at
certain points. While it may be argued that the pictorial turn in historical studies is relatively
recent and that the regional visual economy remains under-researched, especially with
regards to twentieth-century southern Africa, there is a growing scholarship that pays
attention to historical photography in its depiction of identities and groups in the context of
social change. Recently, Patricia Hayes provided ‘A short history of South African
photography’6 which draws together key concepts in the practice of photography in relation
to South Africa’s past. Hayes divides her account along three modalities: power, secrecy and
proximity. Under the first modality which covers the period roughly from the end of the
nineteenth century to late 1940s, the account makes mention of a myriad of photographic
practices, from daguerreotypists, to ethnographic practices, prison photography, salons and
pictorialism. These she relates in varying degrees to the processes of colonisation, knowledge
production and captivity.

4 Denfield did not donate his photographs taken in Nigeria and Lesotho. To access these I have had to re-
photograph images that appeared in newspapers and journals, as well as download those available on the
British Museum website.
5 Interview with librarian, 26 August 2009.
6 P. Hayes, ‘Power, secrecy, proximity: a short history of South African Photography’, Kronos: Southern
African Histories, November, 33 (2007), 139-162.
2
In the second phase she focuses on the cohort of documentary photographers from the 1950
to the 1980 that exposed the effects of apartheid including explicitly anti-apartheid
photographers. She notes the concealment of such practices in the period of state repression.
Lastly, she draws attention to post-apartheid photographic practice, noting the
professionalization of former struggle photographers, the complexity of social distance
existing between the photographers and photographed, issues around photographing ‘one’s
community’ and the emergence of woman-centred photography with a feminist agenda.
Hayes’ three modalities are useful in accounting for the politics of photographic practice,
both as an effect of historical context and in turn reproducing certain effects. She moves away
from a focus on individuals moulding the practice to the wider networks of which they are a
part. These modalities, as well as the nuances of photographic practice, can be explored
further through the Denfield Collection. At different points, power, proximity and secrecy
(albeit to a lesser extent), characterised the manner in which his photographs were produced.
Through a study of his engagement with subjects in Nigeria and his ‘native assistants’ in
Basutoland, for example, relations of power can be discerned. Moreover, his proximity to
subjects under study mediated the kinds of images he produced. However, in her account of
South African photography, Hayes refers to proximity only in relation to post-apartheid
practices. A study of Denfield’s work over a twenty-year period challenges such a
characterisation as it suggests that distance between Denfield and his subject matter remained
a constant attribute that mediated the kinds of images he produced. Moreover, other
photographic concerns she raises as post-apartheid concerns, including shifts in different
modes of representation from, for example, documentary to art, can be problematised through
the Denfield Collection in that they appear to have a much longer history. That is to say, the
Collection disrupts her periodisation of specific practices and issues.
As a ‘short history’, Hayes’ account is not intended as an all-inclusive or highly-detailed
description. As a result, she condenses issues around photography into specific periods and
contexts. Thus, for example, ethnographic and salon photography emerge as early colonial
practices, documentary photography as anti-apartheid and explorations of identity through
photography as post-apartheid phenomena. However, Denfied’s body of work suggests there
are limits to this implicit categorisation. Denfield began working with photographs in
colonial Nigeria from the late 1940s up to the late 1960s in apartheid South Africa. At each
point, a few of the concepts Hayes raises emerge though they do not always correspond with
the periods and social contexts to which she refers. Moreover, they do not always appear in
3