Ohio University Press Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History (New African Histories)

Ambivalent makes photography an engaging and important subject of historical investigation. Contributors bring photography into conversation with orality, travel writing, ritual, psychoanalysis, and politics, with new approaches to questions of race, time, and postcolonial and decolonial histories. Review "Scholars interested in further understanding the ways in which photography can be used as a historical source will be inspired and motivated by the diversity of approaches within this book. While this volume is not necessarily a handbook for beginn "Ambivalent develops a powerful and coherent set of arguments about the inherent ambiguities of photographs and photographic interpretations, in both colonial and post-colonial settings. These arguments are especially impressive in the ways in which they both draw on 'classic' photographic theory and engage with contemporary debates in the field of African visual studies, unsettling received wisdoms about African histories, governance, and 'modern' personhood."--Richard Vokes, University of Western Australia About the Author Patricia Hayes is National Research Foundation SARChI (South African Research Chairs Initiative) Chair in Visual History and Theory at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She has published extensively on colonial and documentary photography in southern Africa. Gary Minkley is National Research Foundation SARChI (South African Research Chairs Initiative) Chair in Social Change in the History Department at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. Recent publications include the coauthored Unsettled History: Making South African Public Pasts.