This research investigates contrasting contexts of portrait photography at different periods in Senegalese history, demonstrating some of the range of photographic practices that developed within particular cultural milieus at different historical moments. The intention is to consider differing case studies of photographic practice, situated and shaped within processes of enculturation and trajectories, rather than offer a “scissor-paste” (Belting 1997:3) history of photography in Senegal. The photographic medium was appropriated and used by African photographers in what is now Senegal as early as the 1850s and developed in ways that were culturally specific contingent on local, regional, and international intersections. My aim is to move away from dominant Western models that accord photographic trajectories worldwide to a universalist European or North American interpretation and thereby incorporate such trajectories as part of that canon, highlighting Senegalese photographic configurations that have elements similar to Europe yet also differ. The basis of...

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