83 By the 1920s, the most important urban centers in the region had a deeply rooted photographic culture. More than any other medium, photography inserted Africans into a global visual economy as patrons, consumers, and producers. POSTCARDS Postcards are images that are designed to travel: They are inexpensive, mobile, and multiple. From 1900 to 1960 the total production of postcards in West Africa reached almost 9,000 series. While this industry served and supported the agenda of colonial powers, postcards were not the sole domain of European production and consumption. On the contrary, this medium was quickly appropriated by African practitioners. There is evidence that local customers commissioned portraits that subsequently circulated (with or without their permission) in the form of postcards. A section of the installation presents a selection of twelve postcards dating from the 1890s to the 1920s produced by both African and European photographers. In defying expectations about the iden- FIG. 3 (below): Alex Agbaglo Acolatse (b. Ghana 1880–d. Togo 1975), Group Portrait, 1900–1920. Glass negative. 16.5 x 21.6 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visual Resource Archive, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (VRA.2015.1). This photograph exemplifi es Acolatse’s activity as a portrait photographer of the upper class in Lomé at the turn of the twentieth century. Using only natural light, he photographed a group of male sitters as they posed outdoors in front of a large backdrop. Painted backdrops like this one, showing an aristocratic interior, had become ubiquitous early on in photographic studio practices, introducing the possibility of instantaneously projecting the sitter into a different, artifi cial reality. FIG. 4 (above): Unknown Artist, Possibly Louis Hostalier (French, active c. 1890–1912), A Nioro (Soudan)—Femmes et fi ls de marchand ouolofes, French Soudan (Mali), c. 1900–1910. Postcard format photomechanical reproduction. 13.3 x 8.3 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visual Resource Archives, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (VRA.2014.8.026). Following established conventions of formal photographic portraits, the sitters face the viewer, rest their fi ngers on their knees, and turn outward their Moroccan shoes. This position allows them to better display the stitch-resist patterns of their indigo wrappers. Closely framed, the sitters fi ll the picture plane; their voluminous clothing creates a pyramidal composition that imbues the image with a sense of gravitas. The photographer has eliminated all semblance of motion, privileging their statuary presence. FIG. 5 (right): Unknown Artist (Senegal), Seated Man, 1930s–1940s. Gelatin silver print. 13.3 × 8.3 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visual Resource Archive, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (VRA.2014.8.027.1). During his leisure time, this unknown Wolof amateur photographer from Saint Louis portrayed his friends and relatives at social gatherings and special occasions. Among the dozen small vintage prints that have survived, several present his fellow Saint Louisians posing in front of “galleries of photos.” These portraits taken in the interiors of the homes of the Saint Louisian upper class attest to the ubiquity of photography in the interwar period: The walls behind them are crammed with dozens of small prints.
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