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| Unidentified Photographer, Portrait of King Khama III, South Africa, early twentieth century. Image via The Walter Collection Project Space |
Distance
and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive
Part
III: Poetics and Politics
March
22 – May 18, 2013
Opening
Reception: Thursday, March 21, from 6pm-8pm
508-516
West 26th Street, Suite 718
New
York, NY
The
Walther Collection presents Poetics and
Politics, the third and last exhibition in the series Distance and Desire: Encounters with the
African Archive, curated by Tamar Garb. Poetics
and Politics features an extraordinary range of vintage portraits,
cartes de visite, postcards, and album pages from Southern and Eastern Africa,
produced from the 1870s to the early twentieth century. The exhibition makes
visible both the ideological frameworks that prevailed during the colonial
period in Africa and the exceptional skill of photographers working in the studio
and landscape.
The
culmination of Distance and Desire,
Poetics and Politics offers a
remarkable opportunity to view the narratives that emerge from this African
photographic archive, describing in particular the experience of the studio --
the curiosity between subject and photographer, the negotiations of costume and
pose, and the will for self-representation.
The
exhibition investigates typical European depictions of Africans, from scenes in
nature, to sexualized images of semi-nude models, to modern sitters posing in
elaborate studios, critically addressing the politics of colonialism and the
complex issues of gender, race, and identity. Among over 65 vintage prints,
"Poetics and Politics" includes a selection of elegant studio portraits
by Samuel Baylis Barnard, one of Cape Town's most prominent nineteenth century
photographers.
Original
album pages of landscapes and ethnographic imagery are displayed alongside a
series of carte de visite portraits of African subjects, distributed in the 1870s
from the Diamond Fields of Kimberley, South Africa. The exhibition also
features several double-sided displays of album pages, showing striking
combinations of personal and stock images, and the juxtapositions of prominent
figures in both African and Western contexts.
Distance and Desire is accompanied by
an extensive catalogue, published by The Walther Collection and Steidl, and
edited by Tamar Garb. Including twelve original essays, the catalogue offers
new perspectives by contemporary artists and scholars on the African archive,
reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings. On June 8, 2013 the
expanded exhibition incorporating all three parts of Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive will
open at The Walther Collection in Neu-Ulm, Germany.
GALLERY
TALKS
Saturday,
March 23, at 3pm
Tamar
Garb on Distance and Desire
Tuesday,
April 9, at 7pm
Hlonipha
Mokoena and Cheryl Finely
in Conversation on
The South African Photo Album
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