tools for remembrance, but also for amnesia, for erasures

May 24, 2020 8:58 AM

Novelist Maaza Mengiste speaks to Africa is a Country about photography as a weapon, her novel The Shadow King and Project 3541: a photographic archive of the 1935-1941 Italo-Ethiopian war.

From the interview at Africa is a Country:

"cameras are no longer big bulky things, they’re handheld... these [photos] are not taken by photojournalists or professionals, these are soldiers who are leaving Italy for the first time... These soldiers were there for an African adventure. They were promised a quick easy war. They were promised women as trophies. You get the land, but you can also get the women. And they bring this camera."

An essay by Maaza Mengiste for Lithub on Gender, Warfare, and Women's Bodies:

"I own a picture of a young Ethiopian girl whom I have started to call Hirut. She is in her teens, and her hair is pulled away from her face and hangs down her back in thick braids. She wears a long Ethiopian dress and even in the aged, black-and-white photo, it is easy to see that it is worn and stained. In the photo, Hirut has turned from the camera. I imagine that she is looking down at the ground, doing her best to focus her attention on something besides the intrusive photographer."

Reviews of The Shadow King from NPR and The Guardian. Bookshop.org listing for the paperback.

posted by spamandkimchi (3 comments total)

Her novel is on my to-read list, and reading her interviews makes me want to read it more.

Also, there is a link in the first interview to the account of the photographer she mentions who took photos of the brothel ceilings; that was interesting to read and I wish they had included more than just the one photograph.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:20 PM on May 24, 2020

I wish they had included more than just the one photograph

Just found a few more at the website of photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani, in the latter half of the gallery called "Ceilings" under "India" in the left sidebar.
posted by msbrauer at 6:46 PM on May 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh I just finally read through the end of the interview and Mengiste mentions the work of so many photographers that she's been touched by and inspired by and I'm excited to go through and learn about all of them. I am not a photographer in any artistic sense (lots of cat photos yes, but that's it). I've never developed film in a dark room, I've only ever had a point-and-shoot. I've always been oriented to words, not images. It's why I feel comfortable on Twitter but itchy on Instagram. But maybe as Mengiste says, there's narrative inside/outside photographs in the same way there is narrative in text. (Obviously I guess, but as I said, I am a very word-bound person).
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:57 AM on May 25, 2020