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its publication. Based on this seminar, we invited three of the participants to contribute chapters to the book. In order to ground the works of art in a more rigorous historical narrative, we proposed to the historians who are contributing authors that we integrate material works of art selected for the exhibition in their chapters. Once they provided their texts, we worked with them on many subsequent drafts that incorporated discussion of the works of art and content addressed by this particular project. T. A. M.: In your acceptance speech that was read during the PILAT ceremony at Sotheby’s in Paris, you talked about the challenging process of creating an exhibition and about the priority of studying “original works of art as primary sources that embody and reveal critical information about chapters of the human experience that are otherwise unrecorded.” This concept clearly relates to the importance that photography has in the book, with full-page illustrations and multiple detail views of the artworks. Many of those photographs were specially commissioned for this project. Can you tell us about the process of creating this visual record? A. L.: From the outset we knew that this project was going to require a lot of new customized photography of the works of art presented. We wanted to provide a sense of continuity and brilliant innovation across a great sweep of history through the creations of Kongo society’s most gifted artists. In order to achieve that, it was critical that there be a consistently high level of quality in the photographic record. Although we tried when possible to use existing high-quality images, the majority of the early textiles had not previously been photographed in color. Although this was not the case for some of the better-known nineteenth-century sculptural works, simply using a single existing photographic view would have made it diffi cult to bring the works to life in the round and in detail as we wished to do. Likewise, when making comparisons across a series of works, it would have been challenging to do so when relying on images that had been taken by many different photographers. We wanted the illustrations in this publication to refl ect the nuanced complexity of the works and to provide as effective a record of them as possible, given that not everyone will have been able to see the exhibition. Finally, we wanted the publication to be a useful resource for colleagues who are teaching in colleges and universities. For these reasons, we had many meetings with our photographer, Peter Zeray, about the views we needed him to capture, and we followed his progress in achieving this as he traveled to document the works on location. ABOVE AND BELOW: Double pages 40–41, 82– 83, and 258–259 in Kongo: Power and Majesty.


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