Photographic backdrops in Cameroon: A study of intra-interregional and intergenerational circulations.
This study is about photographic backdrops in the Cameroon visual scene, from the 1950s to 1980s, a time in which Cameroon moved from a divided state to a unified nation state. Several different forms of these backdrops were identified and mapped out intra- interregionally and intergenerationally amongst different people, places, and cultures. Researching the special materials that compose backdrops has foregrounded photo backdrops’ active voice in and out of the intra-interregional and intergenerational studio as a cultural material which interweaves and politicizes sitters at production, use, and circulation. It allows an investigation of the multi-layered and dense socio-cultural composition of backdrops as a colonial aspect of the complex nature of an ‘African photo studio’ in the post-colonial state. The thesis considered a wide geographic mapping of backdrops, providing a bigger picture of its curvilinear and multi-directional matted socio-cultural network. It sheds light on the synergy between the sitter, artist, and photographer in backdrop production as a material base of its connection of families to backdrops, the immediate society, and those of external nations. This approach situates the Cameroon visual scene within the larger photographic industry using a material, visual and anthropological bottom-up perspective to interrogate sitters, photographers, and artists. Substantial interviews and oral histories with photographers and backdrop painters, provided valid and reliable data through participant observation, photo-elicitation and interviews engaging photo backdrop stakeholders. These methodological approaches expand current debates and establish photo backdrops’ active voice in form and material of painted backdrops as an entangled, multi-layered, and matted intra-interregional and intergenerational object in Cameroon. This dissertation argues that the production, use, and circulation of intra-interregional and intergenerational backdrop material interlaces people and places giving rise to other forms of objects. This sort of backdrop entanglement has presented a photographic material sense of the Francophone and Anglophone unification and accommodation from that of hate, division, assimilation, and rejection. A wider geographic mapping with backdrops has offered a sense of entangled networks of a village connecting with other villages, the city, country, and the world at large using photographic backdrops. As a first study in anglophone Cameroon, it has presented a material diversity through the backdrop identified as a reflection of the diversity of African studios in the colonial and post-colonial state. Backdrops identified in this study form materials for heritage culture and future collaboration as entangled objects of socio-cultural diversity amidst other forms which accommodate resistance to changes.
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