ART on view 94 International Art and Artists, 2009 (distributed by University of Minnesota Press). 4. Elisofon first traveled to Africa in 1942 as a war correspondent with the U.S. Army Photography Corps. Assigned to North Africa, Elisofon photographed the first landings of U.S. and allied troops at Casablanca and stayed throughout the Tunisian campaign (LIFE, 1942, 1943; Daily Mirror, 1943; U.S. Camera, 1944). Photographs from this period of Elisofon’s early career are accessible at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. www.hrc.utexas.edu. 5. LIFE, 1941. Major General George S. Patton gave him the nickname “Hellzapoppin,” due to Elisofon’s indefatigable style of combat photography and difficulty in pronouncing his name. 6. The Cape Town to Cairo route, as it became known, was secured by British imperialists and businessman Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of Cape Colony and the founder of De Beers mining company. 7. “African Big Shot,” LIFE, 1947. 8. Elisofon also focused his cameras on artists at work and cultural performances of the Kuba, images that appeared in a later issue of LIFE. See “Mystic Art of Tribal Africa,” LIFE, 1952. 9. The king’s photograph was awarded one of the top five photographs in 2013 by the Washington City Paper. The reviewer, Louis Jacobson, points to the use of an innovative medium and notes that the photograph’s effect “is heightened by the use of the reflective metal as a surface” (Washington City Paper, December 27, 2013, p. 24). 10. The Nile, Viking Press, New York, 1964. 11. Elisofon expounded on these ideas in his influential book Color Photography, a book that is considered a training manual as well as a philosophical treatise on the effects of color photography and film. London: Thames & Hudson, 1962. 12. Quoted in “The Photographic Legacy of Eliot Elisofon,” Phil Cohan, Topic, no. 193, 1991, pp. 55–61. Original citation in the New Yorker magazine, 1953. 13. “Nine Worst Days of My Life,” Eliot Elisofon, LIFE, 1951. 14. See “Lost Peaks and Big Game,” LIFE, 1953. 15. “Birth of a Nation: Nigeria,” LIFE, 1960. 16. Eliot Elisofon, “On Photographing African Sculpture,” Tribute to Africa, Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C., 1973, p. 17. 17. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 18. Time-Life, 1952. 19. Op. cit., p. 17. 20. Ibid., pp. 16–17. 21. The Sculpture of Africa (Praeger, 1958) is considered the first comprehensive survey of African art in museums and private institutions and established the basis for the scholarly study of African arts and the field of African art studies in the United States. It is still a standard international reference work and preserves an important record of provenance, ownership, and an object’s movement in history, time, and space. 22. Christraud Geary, In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2002, pp. 48–49; 88. 23. United Artists, 1952. See also Katharine Hepburn, The Making of the African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987. 24. United Artists, 1953. 25. African Carving: A Dogon Kanaga Mask (1974) DER, 19 min., 1974, was produced with Robert Gardner, whom Elisofon accompanied as still photographer on the Harvard-Peabody Expedition to New Guinea in 1961, an expedition that resulted in the classic ethnographic film Dead Birds, 1963, with Film Study Center, Harvard University. 26. Elisofon produced the short film Akan Gold (1972), featuring the collection of Paul Tishman, which is now part of the Disney- Tishman Collection of African art. See “Africa’s Ancient Splendor Still Gleams in the Akan People’s Golden Art,” Smithsonian magazine, vol. 3, no. 10, Jan. 1973. 27. Elisofon worked on various television projects, including ABC TV’s Africa, a four-hour documentary (1967). The Elisofon Archives maintains a small portion of original 16 mm film from the ABC series and a composite print from Focus on Africa (ABC, 1967). With permission from Westinghouse (Group W), the Archives has preserved and duplicated all the outtakes and sound materials from this series. 28. Phil Cohan, “The Photographic Legacy of Eliot Elisofon,” Topic, no. 193, 1996. hand, it encourages a re-view of his oeuvre through a range of presentational strategies—the large-format slide show, oversize aluminum prints with subtle lighting, and the juxtaposition of selected art objects and photographs in situ. Here Elisofon’s photography finds new modes of “performance” to be re-viewed with new meanings by different visitors. What the photography might mean to Africans and African-Americans, to educators, and to the widely traveled is part of the exhibition’s dynamic interface with the public. Ultimately, Africa ReViewed points to the legacy that lives on in the archives that bear Elisofon’s name and the works of art he donated to the museum. The photographs, film, and objects displayed in this exhibition stand as a testament to Elisofon’s lifelong love of and dedication to the arts of Africa. For many, his colorful images of the traditional arts and cultures of Africa have an enduring, timeless quality and have contributed to a genre of ethnographic realism that pervaded the twentieth century. The fact that his images are still frequently requested by exhibitors, publishers, scholars, and the general public today underscores their attraction and continued relevance for twenty-first-century audiences. At the same time, Africa ReViewed emphasizes the unrecognized genius of Elisofon’s work and the range of its impact upon African art in the twentieth century. Africa ReViewed: the photographic legacy of Eliot Elisofon Through August 24, 2014 National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. africa.si.edu NOTES 1. Before his untimely death in 1973, Eliot Elisofon bequeathed his collection of more than 700 art objects and his photographic archives to the private Museum of African Art, which became part of the Smithsonian Institution in 1979. Elisofon was a founding member and curatorial associate of the private Museum of African Art founded by director emeritus Warren M. Robbins (1923–2008) in 1964. To honor Elisofon’s contribution to the understanding of African art and culture, the museum named its archives after him. His bequest of more than 60,000 negatives, slides, and prints became the foundation of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA), which has now grown to almost a half million items of historical and cultural significance to the history of photography in Africa. Since 1973, the staff of the EEPA has worked to make its photographic collections and visual resources accessible to Smithsonian staff, curators, educators, researchers, scholars, and the general public. Elisofon’s photographs of Africa have been used in countless exhibitions and publications around the world. 2. Elisofon’s photographs (with credit line) appeared in LIFE magazine feature stories, including the following covers: “The Art of Egypt” (1948), “The Nile” (1950), “Birth of a Nation: Nigeria” (1960), and “Africa’s Savage Beauty” (1961). He also published illustrated volumes, including The Sculpture of Africa (Praeger, 1955), The Nile (Viking Press, 1964), Africa’s Animals (Doubleday, 1967), and A Week in Joseph’s World: Zaire (Crowell-Collier, 1973). 3. On the role of Man Ray’s photography and other collectorphotographers in this paradigmatic shift, see Wendy A. Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens, FIG. 28 (below): Eliot Elisofon dressed as a Mahdi warrior on the set of the production of Khartoum, Sudan, c. 1965. © United Artists Corporation, 1966. FIG. 29 (facing page): Sirige, kanaga, and pulo yana masqueraders, Sanga, Mali. Photograph by Eliot Elisofon, 1959. Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, EEPA EECL 3508. National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
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