Visualizing Africa in Nineteenth-Century British Travel Accounts by Koivunen Leila;

Author:Koivunen, Leila;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Museum, Heritage Studies & Visual Arts
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2008-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

reconsider this argument. In the book, Speke described a great chief called Ukulima, who was “a very kind and good man, though he did stick the hands and heads of his victims on the poles”. Speke stated that Ukulima had once arranged a ceremony in which all the men of the village danced, beat drums and fired guns “like a lot of black devils let loose”.88 Grant’s original water-colour presumably illustrated this scene. Later on, Speke mentioned that Grant had danced with Ukulima.89 Thus, the artist who added the dancing couple in the right-hand corner of the illustration either mistakenly thought Ukulima was a woman or deliberately depicted him devoid of masculinity.90 Whatever the reasons were for inserting a white male into the middle of a wild scene, it certainly served to juxtapose the two cultures in terms of outward appearance and behaviour. From a Western perspective, Grant’s figure personified normality, civilization and culture and made the riotous scene seem even more uncontrolled and barbarian.

The unequal relationship could also be alluded to by utilizing the established iconography of power. The dominant figure of a white explorer was often only inserted into a picture in Europe. Examples of this practice can be found in nearly every book, and are particularly evident in the works of Henry M. Stanley.91 Whilst his harsh measures against Africans made him a controversial figure in Europe,92 his domineering, menacing and violent figure was not concealed in illustrations. On the contrary, it could be inserted in an illustration to produce a very dramatic effect. The illustration in Figure 8.26 depicts an event that occurred to Stanley en route back to the coast in 1872, after having “found” Livingstone in the village of Ujiji, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

One of Stanley’s African porters was carrying a box containing Living-stone’s belongings, whilst wading through a river that was known to be too deep to cross. This infuriated Stanley, and he threatened to shoot the man if he dropped the precious box.93 Stanley himself did not produce any visual material of this dramatic incident, but a full-page illustration did appear in his How I Found Livingstone. Apart from the group of men in the background that were probably drawn on the basis of a simple sketch of a separate river crossing found in one of Stanley’s journals (see Figure 4.3), everything else was fabricated in Europe: the man with the box, the determined figure of Stanley and a boy begging for mercy at his feet. It was not difficult for Western spectators to understand the suggested hierarchical relationship.

In conclusion, the practices of European artists when processing visual material from Africa were strongly divided. On the one hand, original pictures were frequently modified to appear more familiar, comprehensible, logical and vivid to European spectators. This was often achieved by neutralising strange features or by inserting the figure of a white explorer. On the other hand, however, the idea of central Africa as a strange and exotic place was also accentuated by European artists.

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