Light on Darkness? African missionary photography in the nineteenth and early twentieth century

19世纪40年代初，新发展的摄影艺术和19世纪最著名的传教士大卫·利文斯通都被出口到非洲。在接下来的一个世纪里，传教士摄影在为西方公众创造非洲和那里的基督教传教任务的形象方面发挥了很大作用。首先，摄影图像被间接使用--在传教士期刊和书籍中作为插图平版印刷的来源，更广泛地在大众媒体中使用。随着19世纪80年代半色调印刷工艺的发展，照片开始在上述所有媒体中直接使用。此外，魔灯幻灯片被广泛用作教育和宣传工具，在英国公众中广泛传播非洲的形象。不过，总的来说，公众接受了这些照片的表面价值。有一个普遍的假设是“相机不会说谎”。伴随着这些照片的说明，关于非洲和非洲人是什么样子的整个范围的刻板印象，以及基督教传教带来的转变，都被宣传和灌输到英国人的心灵中。传教士的照片可能代表了对非洲现实的不全面甚至非常不平衡的看法，这一想法几乎没有被考虑--尤其是在传教努力所依赖的财政和精神支持所依赖的全国各地的教堂和教堂大厅。因此，出现的非洲、非洲人和传教士的形象(在这种情况下是字面上的)几乎完全由传教士自己决定，几乎没有得到承认的非洲人的参与。在非洲历史的一般领域，也越来越多地在更集中的非洲基督教历史领域，十九世纪和二十世纪初许多传教士史学以欧洲为中心的性质已被广泛接受。在这一时期的大部分时间里，孤立的非洲抗议声音一直存在。从20世纪60年代起，他们(和西方历史学家)越来越多地听到他们的声音，因为他们提请人们注意19世纪传教史学的偏见和局限性。然而，在更具体的非洲传教士摄影领域，几乎没有研究或批评。在一般公众中，对历史照片的态度往往与一个世纪前没有太大不同；在非洲传教士史学领域，对解释这类照片的详细关注很少。这项研究是纠正这种不平衡的一种尝试。它将研究19世纪下半叶和20世纪上半叶传教士(主要是英国人)在非洲拍摄的大量照片的横截面。这项研究将结合这些照片出版时经常附带的说明和文字，试图说明这些照片如何有助于建立对非洲和非洲人的特定刻板印象，这种刻板印象在很大程度上一直持续到现代。

The early 1840s saw the export to Africa both of the newly developed art of photography, and of perhaps the most famous missionary of the nineteenth century, David Livingstone. Throughout the next century missionary photography played a large part in creating for Western public images of Africa, and of the Christian missionary task there. To begin with photographic images were used indirectly - as the source for illustrative lithographs in both missionary periodicals and books, and, more widely in the popular press. With the development of the half-tone printing process in the 1880s photographs began to be used directly in all the above media. In addition, the widespread use of magic lantern slides as educational and propaganda tools spread images of Africa very widely throughout the British public. By and large, though, this public accepted these images at their face value. There was a general assumption that 'the camera does not lie.' Together with the captions which accompanied such photographs a whole range of stereotypes of what Africa and Africans were like, and the transformations which Christian missions brought, was propagated and instilled into the British psyche. The idea that missionary photographs might represent a partial and perhaps very unbalanced view of the African reality was hardly considered - least of all in the churches and church halls up and down the country on which the missionary effort relied for financial and spiritual support. Thus the image (in this case quite literally) of Africa, the African and the missionary which emerged was one dictated almost entirely by the missionaries themselves, with very little acknowledged African input. In the general field of African history, and increasingly also in the more focussed field of the history of African Christianity, the Euro-centric nature of much missionary historiography of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has come to be accepted widely. Isolated African voices of protest have existed throughout most of this period. From the 1960s onwards they (and those of western historians) have become increasingly heard as they draw attention to the prejudices and limitations of nineteenth century mission historiography. Yet in the more specific field of African missionary photography there has been extremely little study or critique. Among the general public attitudes to historical photographs are often not very different to those of a century ago; and in the field of African mission historiography very little detailed attention has been given to interpreting such photographs. This study is one attempt to redress this imbalance. It will examine a large cross-section of photographs taken by missionaries (mostly British) in Africa in the second half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries. Taken together with the captions and texts which often accompanied such photographs when they were published, the study will attempt to show how such photographs helped to establish particular stereotypes of Africa and Africans, which have largely persisted into the modern period.