At the end of 2017 a major volume of work entitled African Photographer J.A. Green: Reimagining the Indigenous and the Colonial, edited by Martha Anderson and Lisa Aronson, was published on the accomplished and prolific Nigerian photographer Jonathan Adagogo Green. This presented a unified collection of his work as a commercial photographer operating in the Niger Delta region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Green's work circulated widely, and contemporary collectors of his photographs included European colonial officials, administrators, and traders, as well as local Itsekiri chiefs and ruling elites. For many years Green's African identity was obscured by the stamp he used on the reverse of his photographs, identifying himself only as “J.A. Green, Artist Photographer.” However, through collaborative and concerted research in recent years Green's profile has been revealed and raised considerably, and today his work is much sought after; indeed albums containing Green's photographs...
Revealing Relationships: Colonial Photograph Albums of the Niger Delta at the British Museum: A Case Study
Helen Anderson is Project Curator for Africa in the department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the British Museum, London. She has been working with the museum's historical photographic collections from Africa, with a particular focus on colonial collections from West Africa dating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. [email protected]
Helen Anderson is Project Curator for Africa in the department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the British Museum, London. She has been working with the museum's historical photographic collections from Africa, with a particular focus on colonial collections from West Africa dating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. [email protected]
Helen Anderson; Revealing Relationships: Colonial Photograph Albums of the Niger Delta at the British Museum: A Case Study. African Arts 2021; 54 (4): 8–19. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00621
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