Reframe
Breaking through the White Gaze, Photographic Traditions in African Countries
1_Introduction In 2016, a photo of a woman from the Himba tribe in a Namibian supermarket circulated on social media. She was wearing the usual red-ochre-colored body protection and had her hair covered in a mixture of ochre and grease, resembling pictures in calendars and travel guides. Nevertheless, a media outcry followed. Lower-tier, sensation-seeking tabloid newspapers went as far as to suggest that the woman was looking at washing powder because of the mud on her skin [1] For many people in the West, it was unimaginable that a woman could follow such traditions and enter a modern supermarket at the same time. For them, it was an oxymoron whose elements were too far apart to exist together. This scene is seen/witnessed almost every day, even in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek. A scene that almost everyone who lives in Namibia has seen and can imagine. This example epitomizes a larger problem in the Western perception and documentation of African countries, including Namibia. Apart from the pictures of the Himba people—an indigenous tribe in Namibia—travel guides and calendars rarely depict people. Spectacular savannahs, endless expanses, towering dunes, or the Etosha Pan—these are the images that a Western audience associates with Namibia. These are landscapes that can be romanticized. Anyone looking at the history of photography will not be surprised by the iconographic expectations of the Western public. The camera came to the African continent with the colonial rulers. And with it, the white gaze. Although almost everyone owns a camera today, there is comparatively little documentary photography in Namibia, especially practiced by Namibians, not visitors. Even two well-known photographers who documented the Namibian liberation war did not originally come from Namibia. John Liebenberg was a South African photojournalist who depicted Namibia’s bloody liberation struggle in Ovamboland and later went on to cover the civil war in Angola. Next, Tony Figueira was a photographer of Angolan-Portuguese descent based in Windhoek documenting the protests leading up to Namibia’s independence as well as Sam Nujoma’s, Namibia’s founding father, return from exile. There has always been a social hierarchy and intimacy involved in the relationship between a photographer and their subject. But there is a lack of Namibian photographers taking an active part in documenting Namibian everyday life. This means that narratives are strongly characterized by an outsider and often Eurocentric perspective. Parachute journalism, in which Western journalists are flown into countries to report on pressing…
