Perspectives

Call For Papers: Validating Visual Heritage in Africa – Historical Photographs and the Role of the “Archive”

Buea, Cameroon
15 Aug 2014

Call For Papers: Validating Visual Heritage in Africa – Historical Photographs and the Role of the “Archive”

African Photography Initiatives announces the conference Validating Visual Heritage in Africa: Historical Photographs and the Role of the “Archive” and is calling for papers.

The conference will take place in Buea (Cameroon), organised in collaboration with the Universities of Buea, Cameroon and Basel, Switzerland. It will be held during the last week of January 2015. The exact dates are yet to be confirmed. The aim of the conference is to stimulate discussions about, and set out an agenda for, the space(s), value, role and future of photographic collections within the broader framework of the ‘Archive’.


Call for Papers

Contributions from scholars/students and practitioners working in archives and the media as well as anyone  involved with historical images are welcome. Consult the panels page for more information.

The call for papers open until 15 August 2014. Contributors whose panel proposals and papers have been accepted will be informed by September 15 and need to be registered by November 15.

Apply with the application form on the website.

African Photography Initiatives was founded in Bujumbura, Burundi in 2007 by Jürg Schneider and Rosario Mazuela. Led by the enthusiasm for the African continent’s rich visual heritage, in particular photographs, and building on their work experience in the areas of culture, international cooperation and academic research they decided to create a website entirely dedicated to African photography. In 2007 they had the opportunity to work in the Burundian press archives, the Agence Burundaise de Presse (ABP) which still exists. Schneider and Mazuela discovered a rich photographic fund dating back to the late 1950s when the Belgian colonial administration created an Information Office with offices both in Kinshasa and Bujumbura. In parallel to the historical research they carried out in the ABP, they visited photo studios in the suburbs of Bujumbura and talked to the photographers. Supported by the French and German embassies and the Burundian government these activities in the archives and the terrain led to an exhibition in the French cultural centre which was well-frequented and, like the exhibition catalogue, well received by the local press.  Since then African Photography Initiatives have continually been involved in various projects which in some way or other had the common goal to promote Africa’s rich photographic heritage.

african-photography-initiatives.org/index.php