Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T02:50:43.028Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A SNAPSHOT OF HAPPINESS: PHOTO ALBUMS, RESPECTABILITY AND ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY IN DAKAR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2014

Abstract

Young women who live in the improvised urban spaces on the outskirts of Senegal's capital city, Dakar, extemporize their respectability in a time of fiscal uncertainty through personal photography. The neighbourhood of Khar Yalla is an improvised, interconnected and multilayered space settled by families removed from the city centre during clean-up campaigns from the 1960s to the 1970s, by families escaping conflict in Casamance and Guinea-Bissau, and by recent rural migrants. As much as Khar Yalla is an improvised neighbourhood, it is also a space of improvisation. When women pose for, display, and pass around portraits of themselves at key moments in their social life, whether in the medium of social networking sites or photo albums, they reveal as much as they conceal the elements of individual and social life. They index their social networks and constitute their urban space not as peripheral, but as central to the lives and imaginations of their siblings and spouses who live abroad. Photographs actively shape and construct urban spaces, which are often loud, unruly and fraught spaces with vast inequalities and incommensurabilities. How women deal with economic and social disparity, within their own families, communities, and globally, is the subject of this article.

Résumé

Les jeunes femmes qui vivent dans les espaces urbains improvisés de la périphérie de la capitale du Sénégal, Dakar, improvisent leur respectabilité à une époque d'incertitude fiscale à travers la photographie personnelle. Le quartier de Khar Yalla est un espace improvisé, interconnecté et multicouche peuplé par des familles expulsées du centre-ville lors de campagnes d'épuration dans les années 1960 et 1970, par des familles qui ont fui les conflits en Casamance et en Guinée-Bissau, et par des migrants ruraux récents. Khar Yalla est un quartier improvisé, mais aussi un espace d'improvisation. Lorsque les femmes posent pour des photos, affichent et font circuler des portraits d'elles-mêmes à des moments clés de leur vie sociale, que ce soit sur des sites de réseaux sociaux ou dans des albums photo, elles révèlent autant qu'elles dissimulent des éléments de vie personnelle et sociale. Elles répertorient leurs réseaux sociaux et constituent leur espace urbain non pas en périphérie mais au centre des existences et imaginations de leurs fratries et époux qui résident à l'étranger. Les photographies façonnent et construisent activement des espaces urbains où règnent souvent le bruit, le désordre et les tensions, ainsi que de vastes inégalités et incommensurabilités. Cet article traite de la manière dont les femmes gèrent les disparités économiques et sociales au sein de leurs propres familles et communautés, ainsi qu'à l'échelle mondiale.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Appadurai, A. (1986) ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’ in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The Social Life of Things: commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bajorek, J. (2010) ‘Photography and national memory: Senegal about 1960’, History of Photography 34 (2): 158–69.Google Scholar
Behrend, H. (2010) ‘Fragmented visions: photo collages by two Ugandan photographers’, Visual Anthropology 14 (3): 301–20.Google Scholar
Bell, C., Enwezor, O. and Tilkin, D. (1996) In/sight: African photographers, 1940 to the present. New York NY: Guggenheim Museum.Google Scholar
Benjamin, W. (2001) ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ in Arendt, H. (ed.), Illuminations. New York NY: Schocken.Google Scholar
Bigham, E. (1999) ‘Issues of authorship in the portrait photographs of Seydou Keita’, African Arts 32 (1): 5667.Google Scholar
Brennan, V. (2010) ‘Mediating the voice of the spirit: musical and religious transformations in Nigeria's oil boom’, American Ethnologist 37 (2): 354–70.Google Scholar
Buckley, L. M. (2000) ‘Self and accessory in Gambian studio photography’, Visual Anthropology Review 16 (2): 7191.Google Scholar
Buggenhagen, B. (2010) ‘Islam and the media of devotion in and out of Senegal’, Visual Anthropology Review 26 (2): 8195.Google Scholar
Buggenhagen, B. (2011) ‘Are births just “women's business”? Gift exchange, value, and global volatility in Muslim Senegal’, American Ethnologist 38 (4): 714–32.Google Scholar
Chapuis, F. (1999) ‘The pioneers of Saint Louis’ in Saint, P. M.Leon, N'goné, Fall and Chapuis, F. (eds), Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography. Paris: Editions revue noire.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. L. and Comaroff, J. (2001) ‘On personhood: an anthropological perspective from Africa’, Social Identities 7 (2): 267–83.Google Scholar
Davis, M. (2006) Planet of Slums. New York NY: Verso.Google Scholar
Eickelman, D. F. and Anderson, J. W. (2003) New Media in the Muslim World: the emerging public sphere. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Eisenlohr, P. (2006) ‘As Makkah is sweet and beloved, so is Madina: Islam, devotional genres and electronic mediation in Mauritius’, American Ethnologist 33 (2): 230–45.Google Scholar
Fall, A. S. (1999) ‘Vague memory of a confiscated photo’ in Saint Leon, P. M., Fall, N'Gone and Chapuis, F. (eds), Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography. Paris: Editions revue noire.Google Scholar
Foster, R. J. (1993) ‘Dangerous circulation and revelatory display’ in Fajans, J. (ed), Exchanging Products, Producing Exchange. Sydney: University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Foster, R. J. (2006) ‘Tracking globalization. commodities and value in motion’ in Tilley, C.et al. (eds), Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage Press.Google Scholar
Freedberg, D. (1989) The Power of Images: studies in the history and theory of response. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, F. D., Abu-Lughod, L. and Larkin, B. (2002) Media Worlds: anthropology on new terrain. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Grabski, J. (2011) ‘Market logics: how locality and mobility make artistic livelihoods in Dakar’, Social Dynamics 37 (3): 321–31.Google Scholar
Graeber, David (1996) ‘Beads and money: notes toward a theory of wealth and power’, American Ethnologist 23: 132.Google Scholar
Guyer, J. I. (2004) Marginal Gains: monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Heath, D. (1992) ‘Fashion, anti-fashion and heteroglossia in urban Senegal’, American Ethnologist 19 (1): 1933.Google Scholar
Hirschkind, C. (2006) ‘Cassette ethics: public piety and popular media in Egypt’ in Meyer, B. and Moors, A. (eds), Religion, Media and the Public Sphere. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschkind, C. and Larkin, B. (2008) ‘Introduction to media and the political forms of religions’, Social Text 26 (3):19.Google Scholar
Jones, H. (2013) The Metis of Senegal: urban life and politics in French West Africa. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Keane, W. (2001) ‘Money is no object: materiality, desire and modernity in an Indonesian society’ in Meyers, F. R. (ed.), The Empire of Things: regimes of value and material culture. Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Lamunière, M. (ed.) (2001) You Look Beautiful Like That: the portrait photographs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Art Museums.Google Scholar
Landau, P. S. and Kaspin, D. D. (2002) Images and Empires: visuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Larkin, B. (2008) Signal and Noise: media, infrastructure, and urban culture in Nigeria. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Magee, C. (2007) ‘Spatial stories: photographic practices and urban belonging’, Africa Today 54 (2): 109–29.Google Scholar
Makhulu, A.-M., Buggenhagen, B. and Jackson, S. (2010) Hard Work, Hard Times: global volatility and African subjectivities. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. (1990 [1950]) The Gift. New York NY: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Mazzarella, W. (2004) ‘Culture, globalization, mediation’, Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 345–67.Google Scholar
Mbembe, J. A. and Nuttall, S. (2004) ‘A blasé attitude: a response to Michael Watts’, Public Culture 16 (3): 347–72.Google Scholar
Mercer, K. (1995) ‘Home from home: portraits from places in between’ in ‘Self Evident’, exhibition catalogue. Birmingham: Ikon Gallery 1995.Google Scholar
Meyer, B. and Moors, A. (2006) Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Munn, N. D. (1992) The Fame of Gawa: a symbolic study of value transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) society. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mustafa, H. N. (2002) ‘Portraits of modernity: fashioning selves in Dakarois popular photography’ in Kaspin, D. D. and Landau, P. S. (eds), Images and Empires: visuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Oguibe, O. (1996) ‘Photography and the substance of the image’ in Bell, C., Enwezor, O., Tilkin, D., and Zaya, O. (curators) In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to present, exhibition catalogue. New York NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.Google Scholar
Pinney, C. C. (2003a) ‘Introduction: how the other half …’ in Pinney, C. and Peterson, N. (eds), Photography's Other Histories. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pinney, C. C. (2003b) ‘Notes from the surface of the image: photography, postcolonialism, and vernacular modernism’ in Pinney, C. and Peterson, N. (eds), Photography's Other Histories. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Poole, D. (1997) Vision, Race, and Modernity: a visual economy of the Andean image world. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Prochaska, D. (1991) ‘Fantasia of the phototeque: French postcard views of colonial Senegal’, African Arts 24 (4): 40–7.Google Scholar
Rabine, L. (2010) ‘Fashionable photography in mid-twentieth century Senegal’, Fashion Theory 14 (3): 305–30.Google Scholar
Roberts, A. F. and Roberts, M. N. (1998) ‘L'Aura d'Amadou Bamba: photographie et fabulation dans le Senegal urbain’, Anthropologie et Sociétés 22 (1): 1540.Google Scholar
Roberts, A. F. and Roberts, M. N. (2000) ‘Displaying secrets. visual piety in senegal’ in Nelson, R. S. (ed.), Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: seeing as others saw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, A. F. et al. (2003) A Saint in the City: Sufi arts of urban Senegal. Los Angeles CA: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.Google Scholar
Schulz, D. E. (2006) ‘Morality, community, publicness: shifting terms of public debate in Mali’ in Meyer, B. and Moors, A. (eds), Religion, Media and the Public Sphere. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Simone, A. (2001) ‘The worlding of African cities’, African Studies Review 44 (2): 1541.Google Scholar
Simone, A. (2006) ‘Intersecting geographies? ICTs and other virtualities in urban Africa’ in Fisher, M. S. and Downey, G. (eds), Frontiers of Capital: ethnographic reflections on the new economy. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sprague, S. (1978) ‘Yoruba photography: how the Yoruba see themselves’, African Arts 12 (1): 52–9, 107.Google Scholar
Strathern, M. (1988) The Gender of the Gift: problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Watts, M. (2005) ‘Baudelaire over Berea, Simmel over Sandton?’, Public Culture 17 (1): 181–92.Google Scholar
Weiner, A. B. (1985) ‘Inalienable wealth’, American Ethnologist 12 (2): 210–27.Google Scholar
Weiner, A. B. (1992) Inalienable Possessions: the paradox of keeping-while-giving. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wendl, T. (1999). ‘Portraits and scenery in Ghana’ in Saint Leon, P. M., Fall, N'goné and Chapuis, F. (eds), Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography. Paris: Editions revue noire.Google Scholar
Wilk, R. R. and Askew, K. M. (2002) The Anthropology of Media: a reader. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar