The Nightwatchman: Essays on Portraiture and the Black Male Figure in Colonial South Africa

Drawing on a rich archive of colonial photography, Mokoena explores how images of African policemen and nightwatchmen in colonial South Africa challenged traditional narratives of oppression, revealing how uniform and portraiture transformed the black male figure into an aesthetic subject worthy of admiration.

This illustrated collection of essays brings into focus African men in colonial uniforms as a subject of portraiture. It extends the literature on colonial ethnographic photography by ...