Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures

by Sandrine Colard (Editor), Jean Bofane (Contribution by), Suzanne Freitas (Contribution by), Sinzo Aanza (Contribution by), Annie Lulu (Contribution by)

Overview

• Congolese fiction and memoir writers, and everyday voices revisit the photographic archives of the colonial Congo
• With contributions from celebrated authors such as Sinzo Aanza, Jean Bofane and Annie Lulu, e.a.
• Based upon the extensive research of the colonial Congo's photographic history by Dr. Sandrine Colard

Recaptioning Congo places the colonial Congo's photography history in new perspectives. Six writers and everyday Congolese urban voices take an African-centered look at imperial archival images and provide them with creative, contemporary and/or literary 'captions'. The book, linked to an exhibition in the photography museum FOMU Antwerp, isbased upon the extensive research of the photographic history of colonial Congo (1885 – 1960), conducted by Dr. Sandrine Colard. It contains a wealth of revealing images that highlight the relationship between past and present, Africa and Europe and Belgium and Congo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789401486231
Publisher:	Lannoo International
Publication date:	10/13/2022
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	7.28(w) x 9.65(h) x 1.17(d)
Language:	Dutch

About the Author

Dr. Sandrine Colard (ed.) is an independent curator, a researcher, and a professor of art history at Rutgers University-Newark (New Jersey, USA). She is the recipient of multiple fellowships, such as the Ford Foundation, the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, the Getty/ACLS fellowships, among others.

Table of Contents

Foreword 6

Introduction Sandrine Colard 13

I 1885-1910 The Congo Free State and its Atrocities 30

Archives Union Coloniale Belge and Postcards 35

Text by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Kasala for Myself 58

II 1910-1945 The Rise of the Belgian Congo 74

Archives Union Coloniale Belge 78

Photos Antoine Freitas 86

Text by Suzanne Freitas, My Father, Photographer 87

Photos by Unknown Authors and (Un)known Fathers 104

Text by Annie Lulu, Jaspers 105

A Small Glossary of Minerals 130

III 1945-1960 The Fall of the Belgian Congo 132

Archives Centre d'information et de Documentation/ Inforcongo 136

Text by In Koli Jean Bofane, Evolué, What's That? 137

Nos Images 166

Photos Jean Depara 179

Text by Sinzo Aanza, The Law of the Swaggiest 176

IV Du Bois in Lubumbashi Double Consciousness as Diptychs 200

About the Authors 248

Colophon 252

Editorial Reviews

Recaptioning Congo is on the list of the New York Times 2022 Art Book: "...unfolds rare amateur photo magazines, 1930s studio portraiture, and missionary and ethnographic documentation, and also wrenching but important photos of colonial atrocities."

New York Times