Title: Studio Photo Jacques: A Professional Legacy in Western Cameroon
Abstract: Abstract Through an exploration of the history and legacy of the first photography studio in Mbouda, Western Cameroon, this paper focuses on links between professionalism in the local photography trade and the importance of the studio establishment. Despite increasing access to cheap cameras and colour processing, the photography studio remains an aspiration for local photographers, evidencing contradictions in the economic drivers maintaining the operation of photographic studios. The paper explores notions of recognition and remembrance inherently linked to photography practices for photographers and their subjects. It also looks at how a professional career can be validated through the visible presence of the photographic studio, constructions of local memory and the alteration of images for new audiences in the international art market and scholarly archive. Keywords: Jacques Touselle (1939–present)Malick Sidibé (ca. 1936–present)Joseph Chila (1948–present), Western CameroonYaoundeAfrican photographystudio photographyprofessionalismmemory Notes 1 – Michelle Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That: The portrait photographs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums 2001, 13. 2 – See, for example, Liam Buckley, 'Self and Accessory in Gambian Studio Photography', Visual Anthropology Review, 16:2 (Fall–Winter 2000–2001), 1–21; Stephen Sprague, 'Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves', African Arts, 12:1 (1978), 52–9; Tobias Wendl, 'Portraits and Scenery', in Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, Paris: Revue Noire 1998, 143–55; and Jean-François Werner, 'Photography and Individualization in Contemporary Africa: An Ivoirian Case-study', Visual Anthropology, 14:3 (2001), 251–68. 3 – See David Zeitlyn, 'Archiving a Cameroonian Photographic Studio with the help of the British Library "Endangered Archives Programme"', African Research and Documentation, 165 (2009), forthcoming; and David Zeitlyn 'Archiving Photographs in Cameroon', Anthropology Today, forthcoming. 4 – Emmanuel Noupembong, interview, 3 April 2007. 5 – David Zeitlyn interview with Jacques Touselle, 2003. 6 – Jacques Touselle, interview, 18 March 2007. 7 – Werner, 'Photography and Individualization', 251. 8 – Louis National Fofou, interview, 27 March 2009. 9 – This admission required prompting from his former apprentice Louis National Fofou, who was the only person to name a predecessor to Jacques in the town. Since writing this paper, I have learned from David Zeitlyn that Touselle was taught by Ignatious Nochai, a photographer trained in Yaoundé. Zeitlyn recorded this information in an interview conducted with Touselle ca. 2005. 10 – Jacques Touselle, interview, 19 March 2007. 11 – Photo Pascal Tchoffe, interview, 22 March 2007. 12 – Photo Adelaide Tiofoue, interview, 25 March 2007. 13 – Photo Pascal, interview, 26 March 2007; Louis National, interview, 27 March 2007; anonymous interview, 23 March 2007. 14 – Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That; Werner, 'Photography and Individualization'; Candace Keller, Mopti a la Mode, exhibition catalogue for spring 2007 show at Indiana University. 15 – Tobias Wendl, Future Remembrance:Photography and Image Arts in Ghana (film), Göttingen: IWF 1998. 16 – Jacques Touselle, interview, 19 March 2007. 17 – Terence Ranger, 'Colonialism, Consciousness and the Camera', Past and Present, 171 (2001), 209. 18 – Stephen Sprague, 'Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves', African Arts, 12:1 (1978), 56. 19 – Photo Eric, interview, 26 March 2007. 20 – Elizabeth Edwards and Jean Hart (eds.), Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Things, New York: Routledge 2004, 4. 21 – Buckley, 'Self and Accessory', 4. 22 – Ibid., 6. 23 – Joan M. Schwartz, '"Records of Simple Truth and Precicion": Photography, Archives and the Illusion of Control', in Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory, ed. F. X. Blouin, Jr and W. G. Rosenberg, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 2009, 70–1. 24 – Jacques Touselle, interview, 19 March 2007. 25 – Jean-François Werner, 'Twilight of the Studios', in Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, Paris: Revue Noire 1998, 92. 26 – Photo Pascal Tchoffe, interview, 22 March 2007. 27 – Translated from 'fatigué'. 28 – Photo Pascal Tchoffe, interview, 22 March 2007. 29 – Erika Nimis, 'Motion Pictures in Nigeria', Visual Anthropology, 14:3 (2001), 293. 30 – Werner, 'Photography and Individualization', 266. 31 – Photo Elie, interview, 24 March 2007 (full name unknown). 32 – Pascal Tchoffe, interview, 22 March 2007. 33 – Translated from 'les enfants'; anonymous interview, 25 March 2007. 34 – See also Buckley, 'Self and Accessory', 1–2. 35 – Photo Eric, interview, 27 March 2007. 36 – Jacques Touselle, interview, 20 March 2007. 37 – Jacques Touselle, interview, 20 March 2007. 38 – Studio Cameroon: The Everyday Photography of Jacques Touselle, curated by Philip Grover and Chris Morton in collaboration with David Zeitlyn, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford 9 November 2007–29 June 2008. See also Hélène Neveu Kringelbach, 'Studio Cameroon: The everyday Photography of Jacques Touselle', African Arts, 42:3 (Autumn 2009), 85–6. 39 – John Peffer, 'Africa's Diaspora of Images', Third Text, 9:14 (2005), 348. 40 – Elizabeth Bigham, 'Issues of Authorship in the Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keïta', African Arts, 32:1 (1999), 56–67. 41 – Photo Philips, interview, 28 March 2007 (full name unknown).
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-04-23
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 8
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